Singapore

Right, from the beginning. I'm writing this on the 6th of August in a internet cafe in London, so bare with my while I try to write as if I was still at the current date! Mostly I'm going to use emails I've written, so if you think it sounds familiar that may be why. :)

The flight here was sooo long. I'm not looking forward to the even longer trek I'll be on soon. We got delayed in Wellington, and then delayed even longer in Auckland due to the fog, our 747 from Singapore had landed at Ohakea!. So we ended up only getting on the plane in Auckland at about 6pm that night. Got to our hotel at 2am local time. Thats 6am NZ time. A long day. The beds were crap and the pillows were the hardest thing I've ever put my head down on, suffice to say I didn't sleep much. The next morning Matt and I spent some time looking around the local streets, we went to a market and checked the place out, it was amazing, so completely different to the norm in NZ. The appartments around were huge, I can't image having to live in one of those places. But on the whole Singapore is a cool place, very clean, very green and super efficient. Taxis were very cheap and seemed the easiest way around. It was fun looking around the local areas because it was the real Singapore, we were the only white faces around, we were cracking up that here we were in an Asian country and we were two white guys wandering around taking photos of everything! Later we went on a tour bus thing and it was totally different. We went to all the tourist places and it just looked like any city. Interesting, but pretty lame. We went places like the "Maoist Temple", which I'm 99% sure was complete bullshit, for one, there was noone except tourists there, and the whole thing was geared up for tourists, there was even fuckin COKE MACHINE inside. Haha, I think the real temple was down the road somewhere. :D

We went out on the town that night, pretty quiet being a wednesday and all, but was fun having a cruise round. Booze was very expensive. $11 CC & drys. Great experience walking down past the restuarants though, you get stopped at every place by people, "come in here, look at menu. Happy hour for you. 30% off for you." So much fun. This was at every place. We settled for a free jug of beer and a table on the riverside. :)
Talk about scenic man. Sitting by the river, everyhting all lit up and boats cruising past, it was very cool. The food was OK too, had a curry laksa which was very tasty. Haha, then they shaft you on the price. Little extras on everything. we ordered $56 of food and the bill came to $72! Classic. We paid $70 after Matt argued that there was no way we were paying for "tiblets" which they just stick on your table and consist of some sort of deep fried cardboard. $3 worth!

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