Singapore - Food, glorious food !

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We awoke, bright and early in Cairns for our first flight of the day - a short 3 hours flight to Darwin, the flight took off on top without hitch and we soon landed in Darwin internation where we had a 4.5 hour lay over until our on would flight to Singapore. Originally we had planned to leave the airport and visit the town of Darwin, however when we arrived we were informed that as we had effectively left Oz we were stuck in no man's land and would have to wait in the connection lounge (which only had one small coffee shop in) and we would have to wait until we arrived in Singapore at around 9 o'clock for our first meal of the day - Que a hissy fit from Scott who was abslutely starving, but the time passed pretty quickly and we were soon in the air looking forward to the Asian leg of our trip.

We landed in Singapore and quickly cleared imigration without a problem before marvelling at the airport which was very impressive compared to the awful airports in Australia.
We managed to get a seat fairly quickly on the airport shuttle and were the first drop on the 30 minute ride at our guest house/hotel in the Little India district of Singapore. We were both very impressed with our room and the hotel itself and decided to explore the area we were staying in.

We could not believe the number of Indian restaurants that were here, all at very reasonable prices and after a quick look around choose a small family run restaurant where we sampled possibly the finest indian cuisine we have ever eaten - After not having a curry for so long and both ravenous from not eating all day - we ordered enough food to feed a small island for a month -but it was delicious and the total meal for 2 with drinks worked out less than £12. We were now very full and tired (as it was close to midnight) so decided to get a good nights sleep for a full day of sight seeing the next day.

We woke up and as breakfast was included decided to eat in the hotel, aswell as the usual breaKfast faire of cereals, fruit, eggs etc we also had the option of singapore noodles - which were gladly demolished by the pair of us. We walked outside and the temperature was about 32 degrees and very, very humid. The first stop on our list was Orchard Road - famed for it's huge shopping malls and designer stores. After looking around for a few hours and marvelling at the shop's (none of which our traveller's budget allowed us to shop in) and huge christmas decorations in the street (which put London's efforts to shame) we decided to catch a bus to China town.

We first visited the oldest temple in Singapore, which was very intersting, before walking down the main few streets which were lined with various stalls selling all things chinese - food, clothes, dragons, waving cats, etc. All of a sudden the heavens opened and we had never seen anything like it, the rain drops were huge and it was liek buckets of water were being tipped out of the sky. In this area there were also lots of beauty salons and Scott decided to have his eyebrows threaded for £2...no Vic didn't persude him but sat watching and laughing when he twitced in pain every minute! As it was almost lunch time by then, we decided to head to one of the famous 'hawker markets' called Maxwells, which Vic's was very very excited about. This specific market consisted of around 200 food stalls selling various asian dishes (Korean, Thai, Chinese, Malaysian,etc) for only about £1.50 each - we decided to smaple a few dishes so set off in seperate directions around the market to pick what we would eat. Scott first tried the Singapore dish chicken rice, which is...chicken and rice, but the chicken is poached so really tender and the rice had been cooked with onions and garlic - it was delicious. Vic tried a duck noodle soup which was also good, and by then although we were pretty full, as the food was so cheap we thought we'd try a few other dishes. We shared a char sui pork rice dish and also a pad thai noodles which were both very tasty, and we left the market extremely satisfied at all we had eaten, for £6 between us -Mc Donalds costs more than that per person!

When we left the market the rain had stopped so we walked back through china town and caught the MRT (tube in Singapore) back to our hotel for a rest, as we were tired from all the walking and the heat/humidity was getting too much. We decided that in the evening we would go to the Night Safari, which is a big attraction in Singapore - it opens from 7pm - midnight and is a bit like a zoo only the anmial enclosures are much more open and natural, and as it is dark and night time you can see a lot more of the nocturnal animals. First of all when we arrived we got a tram/long jeep around the park which had commentary on all the animals we passed such as hyenas, lions, elephants, leopards, zebras, giraffes, hippos and more - this was great as it was like being on a real safari at night and seeing the animals up close (especially the lions, who started roaring loudly) was awesome. We then got off the tram and took a trail walk through some more of the park and saw various fruit/fox bats - which were huge (the size of small cats)birds, a taiser, and giraffe's/zebras before jumping back on the tram and continuing with the tour - we got the chance to see elephants, rhinos and various other highly endangered species before arriving to the exit. The safari was really cool and a novel way to spend an evening.

After we got dropped off in the town centre we deiced as it was our last night in Singapore, we had to go to the world famous Raffles hotel for a Singapore Sling in the Long Bar - the place the cocktail originated from - so jumped on a bus to the hotel. The hotel itsef is gorgeous and very colonial feeling, there was a band playing in the Long Bar, and the SS was very good, even if it did cost S$30 (£15!), but it was something we had to do whilst here as well as munching on peanuts and throwing the shells on the floor with everyone else. We then headed back to Little India and once again had a huge feast of Indian food before retiring for the night both exhausted from the long dy of site seeing.

We woke up brigh and early and visited the Boat and Clarke Quay in downtown Singapore which were both very nice - we then had a quick bite to eat at the Tekka hawkers market before grabbing a taxi to the airport for our flight to Phuket, Thailand which we were both looking forward to so, so much . . . .

x

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Comments

[Susan]

Thailand next............
Can't wait to hear about Thailand...... Love you. A.S.