Singapore Sling

After many times of flying standby dressed in smart clothes (and only once getting an upgrade...), we arrived at Bangkok airport with our backpacks and sandals, jeans, t-shirt etc ie. not very smart, to be told that the flight was very busy, so they had to upgrade us to Business class, and once on the aircraft we had to go up the stairs....woo hoo!!!! Anyway, for those who have not travelled upstairs on a 747 it was great, not many people (only 8 rows) with champagne, great food, sleeper seats... pure luxury for travellers like us! ;-)

Back to reality... we checked in to our hostel, which was actually pretty smart, and then took the metro to the shopping district down Orchard Road to see the Christmas lights to get in the Christmas spirit. With all the travelling we have been a bit oblivious to the Christmas run up but here in Singapore everywhere is lit up, with Christmas songs playing in all the shops.

Singapore has a reputation for being very efficient and orderly, so it was no surprise to find there are rules for everything but all mentioned in such a polite manner that we found it all very amusing! The best one we found was on the train, instead of "please give these seats to the elderly and people with children" the sign read "Graciousness is... Caring for others by giving up this seat to those who need it more." in a great big red heart! Even the ATM's give you a quote for the day once they have given you the money!!

Even though it is Asia in some ways Singapore is very similar to home. You have the old style colonial buildings, financial centre with small skyscrapers and there is even a smaller version of the London Eye. One thing we couldn't help but notice was that the prices were very similar to home as well which is something we will have to get use to considering we are in Australia next...

One evening we walked around Raffles hotel to have a look at how the other half live and stopped at the Long Bar for the obligatory Singapore Sling, which actually tasted rather nice contrary to what we had heard. It was a great old style bar but with peanut shells scattered on the floor....does anyone know what the significance of this is as we couldn't work this out!! Even the barman just swept them off the tables onto the floor!!!

The best thing about Singapore in my view is the bar we stumbled across called The Cavern, decked out in Liverpool flags, shirts and pictures....fantastic!

After 2 1/2 months of our travels around China and S/E Asia we now leave for the Southern Hemisphere and Australia... we will now find ourselves missing the hustle and bustle of the street culture, with the all the different smells from the food cooked on the streets, the constant noise in all the cities and the people who were all very friendly and welcoming everywhere we went. Although after this length of time we are both looking forward to more than noodles and rice on the menu, steak and chips here we come!!!!!!!!

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