Singapore - 10th to 14th November 2008

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They are right when they describe Singapore as “east meets west”. With its skyscrapers and men in business suits it's a lot like a tidy version of London or New York. But then there are bits and bobs of the old Singapore around, like the old shop houses by the river (which look funny backed against the skyscrapers). Everyone is so well dressed and seems to own a designer bag, which makes you feel quite scruffy! There are T-shirts for sale everywhere saying “Singapore: the fine city - and they really are not exaggerating! You get fined for eating and drinking on the underground (in particular eating durians - ha ha!), dropping litter, jay walking (not crossing the road at the crossing) - and we're not talking a measly fine, it's serious cash, so you don't want to get caught breaking the rules! All in all, it makes for a very clean and tidy and law abiding city - nothing like any of the cities we've been to so far!

The first day we arrived and checked into our hostel, Empire, which is the teeniest place ever! The rooms were the length of the bunks and not much wider - very cosy shall we say! But it was really clean and everything was new and from Ikea, so we were happy!

We decided to go and explore, so headed to the nearest MRT station - the fabulous underground system which made getting around Singapore a dream - to jump on a train to see the famous Merlion (a half lion, half merman creature which is Singapore's emblem). It's by the river and in the Central Business District, so we had a wander round, got sore necks from staring up at the skyscrapers and headed back to the hostel. Matthew had seen the ships on the river when we flew into Singapore when we first set off on our adventure, so wanted to go and see them up close. This meant taking a trip to the East Coast Seafood Centre and eating chilli crab - a chore but Marissa would do it so Matthew could watch his ships. This turned out to be another occasion when the Lonely Planet was wrong and we ended walking for over an hour trying to find the damn place - but we got there in the end - and the crab was worth the wait! Marissa ended up having a whole crab to herself, and it took her over an hour to eat it (at $36 dollars she was going to finish every bit!).

Next day we went to a Chinese Temple, which was beautiful and very interesting, as it actually explained who the statues of the Gods were and why they were made into Gods (when they were alive they were just normal people, who had done something brave or courageous or selfless), then went to the Asian Civilisations Museum to escape the rain (which was very good). In the afternoon we headed over to Raffles (yay!). They have turned part of the building into a posh shopping mall next to Raffles (called Raffles!), so we went and had our daily (but very posh) cake (!) in a little tea room in there, then went up to the Long Bar for a Singapore Sling! The Long Bar is all decked out in dark wood with shuttered windows, and obviously a long bar! It was fun throwing the peanut shells on the floor - they were everywhere, and as the drinks were a tad expensive at $52, we made sure we ate as many nuts as we could! We dragged out our one drink and took some photos. Then we headed over to Boat Quay and had a beer whilst looking out over the river, which lights up and night and looks amazing - our favourite thing to do in Singapore! We then went home via Little India and had a curry, where we quite literally got what we were given because everything we asked for they didn't have (luckily the "suggestions" made by the guy were quite tasty!).

On our third day we went up Mount Faber in a cable car. It doesn't really deserve its name as it's not a mountain and it was pretty boring to be honest! Just an expensive restaurant, a shop and a woman selling icecream. The best thing was watching the lightening over Singapore, and wondering when the storm was going to reach us! Anyway, the storm did get to us and the rain was bad, so we decided to go and watch the new Bond which was good! After that we went back to our new favourite place and had drinks in one of the bars by the river (happy hour 2 for 1!), then headed back home for some food and sleep in our little box room.

The next day we woke up to more rain, which meant we couldn't decide what to do with ourselves, as we didn't really fancy getting soaked in the city. We just hung around the hostel and ended up playing host to a few people who had just turned up, as the hostel guy had gone AWOL!! It started to get late and as we didn't want to waste the day we decided to brave the rain and go over to Fort Cannon Park, where there is a WW2 underground war bunker which they have turned into a museum (indoors- yay!). It is the bunker where the British made the decision to surrender Singapore over to the Japanese and you go round the bunker and they re-enact that day. It was so interesting and quite emotional. We then rushed home to get ready, as we were meeting Stephen our Aussie friend at 8pm at Bierwerkz and wanted to look our best for our night oot in Singapore! Only a little bit late, we met Stephen and drank lots of beer and had a good "Western" feed - Matthew had a proper burger and chips and Marissa had steak (we thought what the hell, as if they were going to do a decent English meal anywhere, it would be Singapore!!). We left there about midnight and Stephen got a taxi home as the last train had gone, but we were going on to a club called Zouk which we thought sounded pretty good. It was only quite small but the décor was very swish and the music was top! So we had a very nice time watching all the Singaporeans dancing away and the English blokes trying to chat the girls up, with us bopping on our stools, then left around 2.30am.

Our last day! Marissa felt that we should be complete tourists and go on a river cruise, which was quite nice but not that riveting, as it didn't really show us anything we hadn't seen already. We then had another drink by the river (told you it was our favourite thing to do!) before heading back to the hostel to get packed up and leave. We were going on a bit of a mission as we were getting the bus to Johor Bahru, not knowing but hoping and wishing that we could get a bus from there to our next destination, the Cameron Highlands!!!!

PS: Again no pics - gutted.

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