Singapore pt 1

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After all the travelling yesterday we were in bed by 8pm. The hostel is really good as you get free tea, coffee, toast and water and the facilities are quite good. Our dorm has about 10 sets of bunk beds in but no-ones really that chatty here. For the record, it’s called Rucksack Inn and is the nicest for the price in Singapore for £12.50 a night (most expensive accommodation of our whole trip).

Today we woke up at 9am feeling refreshed after 11hours sleep and after our free breakfast, set out for our own little walking tour. Singapore City center is tiny, we covered it in a day. First we walked up to Little India, then Arab Street, Marina Sands and Chinatown. All 4 areas are really different and show to culture of Singapore. Little India is obviously....full of Indians, and here (much like in Dubai) the Indians are the poorest in Singapore with most working on construction sites. The food looked good, and the buildings were really interesting too, so colourful!

Arab Street was full of carpet shops, bit odd but worth a stroll down.
Marina Sands is the posh area of Singapore which runs alongside the marina and has all the skyscrapers and fancy bars and restaurants. We found this building that has a boat on top. Yes, a boat (see the photos). By this point, we were sweating our arses off (Singapore is 30-35 degrees every day which is cooler than Dubai but the humidity here really is something else) so we got a taxi to Chinatown for SGD8.20. Best part about Singapore Dollars is the exchange rate is 2 dollars to a pound so price conversions are so easy, also they’re completely waterproof and crumpleproof!

We wanted to eat lunch in Chinatown so we looked round a few places but this was proper Chinese, chickens feet, pigs trotters and all kinds of weird things. Terry already has a dodgy stomach so we settled with a food court selling BBQ Pork Ramen. It was great that we could walk everywhere this morning, even with the humidity, the roads aren’t too busy, the city is clean (no eating/drinking on the trains for example) and the people seem friendly. I can even crack out little shorts and a vest as everyone here dresses really western.

Terry took a nap so I tried to go and get some train tickets to Kuala Lumpar tomorrow night. After a little metro ride, I tried to withdraw the cash for the tickets but put in the wrong pin 3 times and blocked the card...clever! Luckily, our prepaid mastercard account has two cards, so Terrys card worked fine. This time, Terry came and we walked down there which took about 30mins but the surrounding area was interesting so it flew by. Unfortunately, the only tickets they have left are seating tickets (it’s an overnight train so we were hoping for sleeper tickets) so we just had to get them and hope we can still stretch out. It was SGD32 each (£16) which I think is good value for an 8 hour train ride but apparently, due to pricing issues between Singapore and Malaysia, this is actually 3 times more than it would cost if we were doing the journey in reverse. Were both excited about the cheapness of Malaysia already.

Dinner tonight was Vietnamese and a Singapore sling by the river. One bar wanted £10 per drink! We eventually found someone who would give us a sling for £5 but then added about £1 each “service charge”. Oh, and the Vietnamese charged us 30 cents for using a freshen up towel, shocking. I know the rest of Southeast Asia will be similar little tricks.
Tommorow we are going to Singapore Zoo which is rated as one of the best in the world! Late in the evening (22:30) were heading to Kuala Lumpar where we should arrive around 06:30 the next morning. Going to start doing some research about Malaysia.

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