Singapore

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Singapore

20th March to 22nd March 2011

Not a cheap place to stay Singapore but definitely worth while stopping over at for a couple of days as it tends to be a connecting point for a lot of flights. We didn't spend much time at the airport but even this is supposed to be amazing with cinemas and i've heard talk of a swimming pool too. Surely not! We landed at the impressive Singapore airport at 9pm and with a little bit of asking about were on the MRT heading towards Little India. We had booked a dorm room in Footprints hostel in one of the back packer areas and my god were we glad to be in a bed again, i.e. not the back of a car as in Australia. We were out cold in record time with the A/C blasting out.

The next morning we took to exploring the area with not much time. After breakfast in the hostel, we first got rid of some extra baggage we no longer needed posting it home (sleeping bags, heavy clothes, etc) trying to make the remainder of our trip as light as possible. Despite ditching 5kg each Kate's still seemed twice as heavy as mine. We walked around Little India initially seeing Sri Veermakaliaemen Temple and strolling down back streets. Next we went to Orchard Rd, the main shopping area with huge shopping centres and designer clothes shops way out of our league, similar to 5th Avenue New York. Moving swiftly on from here we walked down Stamford Rd to Raffles Hotel, too early (and too expensive) to try a Singapore Slingshot but gorgeous place. The views of the citys skyline were beautiful from the marina and river, after which we went for lunch in Chinatown. After that we saw the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple and Sri Mariamman Temple. At this stage we had done a serious amount of walking and retired to the hosel for a break. In the evening we went to the Night Safari at the zoo. This was really cool. We caught a bus from Little India to the zoo then boarded a tram which takes you around the sights with an opportunity also to get on and off at different places for closer looks. Everything from elephants, tigers, wolves, bats, deer and rats. The down side was it opened up out of the heavens with thunder storms aswell. The flash of disobedient tourists cameras were the least of the animals worries with the flashes of lightening getting very frequent. We later got back to Little India and grabbed some food in a cool little tapa's place near where we were staying.

The next morning we walked with our ruck sacks, noticeably lighter, to get a bus to Kuala Lumpur. A quick stop over maybe next time we'll be able to see it on not quite as strict a budget.

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