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Published: August 10th 2007
Saigon's airport is one of the worst airports we have ever been to (apart from Heathrow that is!), everything was overpriced and because you cannot exchange your dong (ha ha) outside of Vietnam, you end up having to pay over inflated prices to get rid of a worthless currency. So a packet of banana chips and a Mars Bar later, we were ready to board our flight to Singapore, the international requirement of not carrying liquids in your hand luggage was ignored by the Vietnamese and we could carry whatever we wanted onto the plane! We both managed to sleep almost the entire flight...Donna fell asleep during the safety demo and woke up briefly not even realising we had taken off!
Landing into Singapore we were intrigued to see it by air during the day, other times we had always landed in darkness and getting off the plane, it was seriously cold. Yes, cold...28 degrees, with dull skies, a bit of drizzle and cold. Funny how spending a long time in hot climates makes a temperature that is actually hot feel cold. It was like arriving to Britain, this similarity continued as Singapore is so like the UK, with double
yellow lines, signposts and streets like home it was so, so weird! We decided to get the MRT (subway) to our hostel which we had booked and there was 2 ways to get there, we could change twice and get to over the road from the hostel or we could go to the nearest station without a change and walk for 40 mins with our big backpacks just to save changing and 50p each! Which did we chose are you wondering? Yep we chose the one with the walk...thank god it wasn't hot or we would have been in trouble.
We arrived at the hostel very tired and hungry, we checked in (good so far as our reservation hadn't been given away) and were led into a 10 bed dorm room...we were both puzzled as we had booked a private double room. The bloke showing us to the room then pulls open a plastic patio door to reveal our 'private' double room. Well it would be private apart from the fact that there were 10 other people separated from us by the thinnest piece of plastic you can imagine. On the plus side we had a shower and a
our hotel...
....NOT! It's the Intercontinental by the way!sink in the room, which meant we didn't have to run through the hostel half naked to have a shower or brush our teeth. Singapore is so expensive and not value for money, we just had to accept this is the standard you get there. However, the hostel hadn't bother to explain to the people staying in the dorm next door that it was a private room, so we continually had people knocking or trying to get into the room to see what was in there. There was also the problem that if next door had their light on or we had our light on late at night, we kept each other awake, the same as talking, we had to whisper although our 'room mates' next door didn't give us the same courtesy!
Anyhoo, after we had settled in, had a quick shower and change we headed out to get some food as we hadn't eaten since breakfast that morning and it was now 7pm. We didn't realise how out of the way our hostel was (the others we wanted to stay at were fully booked), on the outer edges of Little India, so we had lots of walking
colonial buildings
we had never really noticed them before, but after being to Malaysia we noticed them a lot more! ahead of us. We went to our fave Indian restaurant for food, had a fab chicken tikka, butter chicken, naans and rice and we set off to explore a little. That night we must have walked about 15km...we decided to walk to a place called the Quays, where Neil had been when he was in Singapore for his interview. We walked along the Quays, laughing at the stockbroker idiots paying stupid amounts for food and drink, sat by the canal and drunk a bottle of water watching a bungy chair over the other side. We stumbled upon the Asia Pacific's Cocktail-maker of the Year award and had another laugh at the bizarre-ness of it all. We wandered back to our hostel in a really round about way, looking for Carrefour - by the time we got there it was closed - but Donna did get to see the Pan Pacific Hotel, where Neil stayed and my, was that posh, it had an outside glass lift and an atrium and everything! On our wanders we also managed to find a Top Shop which we never realised was so close to Little India...my that was exciting!
The next day we were
up bright and not so early, took advantage of the bad breakfast option of toast, toast or toast with either jam or peanut butter and a cup of coffee and we set out to go to Orchard Road to do some serious shopping. Donna had lots of fun trying clothes in Zara and Top Shop and Neil spent lots of time trying to drag her out of said shops.
As this was our fourth visit to Singapore we felt completely at home here, although coming from Vietnam it was especially difficult to get used to walking on the pavement again, 7-11's everywhere and proper shopping not just street hawkers selling cheap tat. The biggest thing we couldn't get used to was crossing the road. In Vietnam, we just seemed to seamlessly slip into the walking out into the road without a care...in Singapore it is against the law to cross the road when the green man is on red (does that make sense?!). We had to stop each other from just walking out in front of cars to cross the road, it was actually a shock to observe roads with some kind of order to them and this led
the famous Raffles Hotel
...this was our hotel...honestly...really...ok not really! Donna to declare 'I don't think I like waiting for the green man any more'. We are thinking of writing a blog about how travelling has changed us, crossing the road fearlessly is one of these things that has changed and we will walk out into a road with no fear whatsoever!
Singapore, to us, is a strange place, it is so like the UK it's freaky. It's a country which is a city, there is so much development there but at the same time the Singaporeans haven't sacrificed their open spaces or heritage for this development, something we wish the UK was better at. It is a city/country which in our mind is quite sterile, the people don't really seem happy with their lives...they have so much money but are really NOT happy, there was hardly a smile to be seen. The government has decided to relax some of the more stricter laws - for example, couples are now allowed to hold hands in public places as it was worried about the birth rate falling. Whether the relaxing of too strict laws will help the country/city be less sterile and the people happier remains to be seen.
Donna on Orchard Road
this is the main shopping street in Singapore After a hectic few days we were up at 4am to catch our onward flight to the Philippines, this time however, we opted for the shorter walk-more changes MRT option to get to the airport!
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