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Ok so we finally arrived in Singapore after a long day for us. Up at 4.30am for a two hour flight from Cairns to Brisbane, then a five hour wait at Brisbane airport. Then finally on our eight hour flight to Singapore. Poor Matt! But he was great and we had pretty good food and movies on the flight and the scenery was really interesting. Flying along the coast of Australia, through the red centre, over Kakadu, Darwin and then the large Indonesian volcanoes before landing in Singapore.
Landing at 8pm gave us a fair indication that Singapore does not ever get colder than extremely hot! We were wearing our flight clothes (to minimize weight in bags we wore tramping boots, tramping pants, fleeces, etc) which was pretty intense! Matt loved the guards with guns at the airport and kept smiling and staring at them, so of course they started watching us pretty suspiciously. A first impression of Singapore is that it wasn’t as sterile and fancy as we expected, maybe because our hostel was in the outskirts of town. Although there sure are great efforts by the government to ensure a clean attractive city such as fulltime litter collectors,
sweepers, boatmen who fish out leaves from the river after rain, and roadworkers who only work late at night to avoid inconveniencing people. Another thing we realized quickly is that we needed regular food, water, sitting and air-con breaks (malls have all four). This is also a convenient place to stop in the very regular downpours which are intense and quite short. We look like pretty dumb tourists running around trying to get out of the rain, but it’s the one time of the day when you can actually breathe air that isn’t absolutely thick with moisture and heat (and body odour).
Our hostel was pretty great, spanning two blocks of open air building right by Little India. Singapore is an expensive city to stay in, we found that the cheapest hotel is $100 a night, and so our hostel seemed a bargain at $45. We have free wireless, breakfast, aircon (whew) and great staff. On our first day we got up at 7am and decided to go for a ‘stroll’ to look around. Bad decision! We started at Little India, through the central city until we finally met Chinatown. Getting back at 5pm after spending all day walking
in the heat was extreme! Little India was full of Indians, curries, incense, Hindu temples, saris and men who wouldn’t stop staring even with Matt there the whole time. Chinatown is a large, busy place with markets, hawker stalls, huge Buddhist temples and lots of foot traffic. Arab St is a smaller ethnic precinct but with the large Sultan Mosque probably one of the best for photo opportunities.
We definitely think the highlight of Singapore is the food, most of it being Chinese, Malay or Indian. It’s pretty awesome to not have to cook anymore (or eat microwave dinners and noodles). We started with noodles for 80c for breakfast and then found my favourite food of all time (steamed pork buns) comes in 6 different flavours (including honey chicken and coffee!), and they are available in 7-11’s similar in popularity to our mince pies. Another great find is Yong Tau Foo, which is a Chinese soup where you choose at least 7 ingredients for 40c each (like fishballs, tomatoes, tofu, dumplings,etc) and they put them in a large soup with noodles. It’s a great cheap way of getting full. Food can be very expensive here as well, and fast
food is similar in price to New Zealand, although KFC and McDonald’s have far less variety (but they do have McSpicy). Chinatown has great variety and they love fried chicken (so Matt is happy) and Little India has great Prata (naan served with gravy for 80c). The desserts here are very random, including Malay deserts such as coconut gelatins and many mango and papaya fruit dishes.
But the signature Singaporean desert is Ice Kachang which is shaved ice, syrup, …red beans and corn on top! (we didn’t know about the corn and beans til too late!) (The whole country is obsessed with corn; McDonald’s even sell it in cups!) Matt was almost sick after eating this but tried to keep going so we didn’t waste it! The amount of sugar in that thing must have been intense because we were so hyperactive after that and had a laughing fit for about an hour…
We tried not to spend much money in Singapore, seeing as it seems to be one of the most expensive Asian cities and we want to save our money for the rest of South East Asia, so we didn’t do any paid activities and walked most
places. It was exciting going on our first ‘subway’ (or MRT here) between destinations, so fast and cheap. We went to the Botanical Gardens on one of our afternoons, which was a great refuge from this ‘country that’s a city’ place. Great variety of flowers, trees, and even turtles in ponds and we saw our first squirrel (cute). We went to Suntec Mall where there are four large towers surrounding the world’s largest fountain (only runs for one hour a day). This Mall/business centre also houses Singapore’s megachurch where Joseph Prince pastors (he is guest speaker at Hillsong conference this year) and we missed Hillsong United playing the day before we arrived. We spent our last night having a look at Singapore by night; the cbd lights, the merlion (crazy mermaid/lion cross waterfall statue), the river, the Singapore ‘eye’ and various amazing hotels along the waterfront.
So goodbye Singapore you crazy city/country/island/whatever and onto our next destination: Kuala Lumpur.
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Nigga
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Fabulous Singapore
Looks as though you had a good time in Singapore!! Matt looks pretty happy, wait till Trub sees the dessert. Nothing like a challenge eh Matt. Can't wait for Mum to read about the steam pork buns, she'll be a starter for a visit to Link Drive, on second thoughts maybe takeaways would be a good idea for her. Keep up the wonderful coverage, we all love reading about your adventures.Love, Mum, xxoo