Singapore, Singapore

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Although we originally had not planned to visit Singapore, we felt that after visiting Kuala Lumpur, that we did not need 4-5 days in Melaka so we squeezed in a quick jaunt across the water to Singapore. The bus ride from KL to Singapore cost 39RM and was 4 hours long.

Once again our bus is fairly empty, but this time, luck is not on our side. As the bus arrives in Johor Baru (the Singapore/Malaysia border), the driver decides he doesn't want to cross the border with only 4 passengers, so he gives us a ticket for the local bus and drops us at the curb and drives off. We argue and fight his decision but make no progress so we decide to not waste anymore time and board the local bus. The bus takes us to Malaysian immigration, where we get off, get our passports stamped, walk to the Singapore Immigration for another stamp then board the bus again on the other side of the boarder to get into Singapore city.

We stay at the Cozy Corner Backpacker Hostel, because it's the only place in our guide book that is in our price range. This is the thing with Singapore -it's no geared towards the budget-conscious backpackers! Here, we pay 15 S$ each/night for a 6bed dorm, which includes breakfast, air-con and a great location. This place is worth it for the location alone, because we were able to walk pretty much everywhere within the city.

We spend the afternoon sight-seeing around the colonial district and come to the conclusion that Singapore is awesome! It is clean and green and feels almost like home - the people are so nice and there is a shopping mall on nearly every corner it seems! The entire city is decked out for Christmas, with more decorations than the big cities in Canada have! It is weird to think that Christmas is so close when it's so hot out, but it's comforting at the same time to see familiar things.

We walk along the river and see a giant ferris wheel, where each car is a dining cart where you eat dinner in while getting a stunning view of the city.We also admire the impressive Marina Bay Sands hotel, some creative bridges and lots of colonial style buildings. The symbol of Singapore is the ugly Merlion, a half mermaid, half lion character.

It seems that everywhere you look there is a shopping mall, and most of them are in the most unique/crazy style we have ever seen! We spend the evening by the waterfront, enjoying some musical performances and the cityscape lit up in the dark. This place has a great ambiance and is teeming with people, even on a week night.

The next day we visit Fort Canning Park to get some good views of the city and learn a bit about the history of SIngapore. Next, we cross the river to visit Chinatown, which has lots of old buildings, beautifully restored, mostly turned into shops and restaurants now. As we wander through the markets, we notice that most of the souvenirs are the same as they were in Malaysia, just of a slightly better quality and a much higher price. We decide that Singapore, overall, is very similar to Malaysia, but in a prettier package and it's more developed. The ethnic variation and food is very similar, the temples and mosques have similarities.

We visit a colourful hindu temple but many areas are closed off to tourists. We manage to avoid paying the 3$ camera fee tho, which makes up for some of the other times we paid entrance fees into temples, only to find out that it was not necessary because no one checked our tickets!

Next, we check out the impressive (and odd) Buddha Hair Relic temple, a temple that is said to house a hair of Buddha buried in a gold statue on the top floor. The main room was huge with over 10,000 small Buddha statues! We have lunch at a food court across the street where we eat delicious chicken laksa, a local specialty.

After doing more wandering around Chinatown and seeing just how much the stereotypes are true about Singapore being all about rules (signs everywhere saying 'No this' or 'No that'. We take a free shuttle bus to Sentosa Island, which is a very touristy theme park. There are lots of rides, places to eat and buy souvenirs, resorts and beach areas. We buy tickets to ride the luge, a 650 m track which is really more like a downhill go-kart but it's fun! a 17$ ticket includes 2 rides on the luge track and the sky train to the top, which offers great views of the island. The track itself is fun, but there are too many people going slow on the track so that makes it hard to really get a good speed going so it's hard to race. Im pretty sure I won. Ya, let's say that.

We walk around the island since thats the only free thing to do and opt to not swim since the water doesn't look overly clean. Later we take the bus back to the mainland and check out Little India, which is vibrant and colourful, just like the other Little Indias we have seen in Malaysia. We have a most delicious Indian dinner at a food court in little India, of chicken curry and chapati and mutton briyani. We wander around for the rest of the evening, getting lucky and being able to change over our Vietnamese dong. This is a stroke of good luck since the vdn is a dead currency and it's virutally impossible to get it changed outside of the country! After finding 3 places that would change the money (but only certain bills and only ones in good condition), we get 65$S for every 100,000vdn, which is not terribly far off the real price!

Our last day in Singapore we spend on Orchard Rd, which is the main reason why many people come to Singapore in the first place. This is a shoppers dream. It's 2km of shopping malls, totalling over 15 malls! The streets and shops are all decorated for Christmas and are very pretty! We definitely feel out of place here in our ratty traveling clothes, while all the shops are expensive, name-brand stores. We don't even go into any stores, knowing that we can't afford anything! Lots of the malls have membership programs with discounts and deals for members based on how much money you spend at that mall. It's kind of like a casino with their high-rollers clubs! I think we pass about 8 Starbucks in the 2km stretch of stores! Wowza!

Overall, we feel like Singapore is a place that is better visited when you have some money to spend. We were there on a backpacker's budget and a backpacker's wardrobe and we definitely felt out of place and dressed drably at times. There were lots of unique and interesting things to Singapore and it certainly is unique, but to truly get the Singaporean experience, we would have been better off putting the trip off to another time when we had more money!

We check out one last mosque in Little Arabia then hop on a bus that will take us 3 hours to Melaka, Malaysia. We pay a little extra to get on an earlier bus, rather than wait an hour for the next bus. When our bus stops at a rest stop, we end up waiting over 45 minutes for the next bus to arrive, and then we are forced to get off our bus and onto the other bus, which has worse seats and a crying baby. We are not impressed!

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