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Published: October 26th 2007
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To get to Singapore, we had the misfortune of having to get rid of our sticks of chewing gum (illegal under Singaporian law) and then catch a flight at 6am from Sydney. As Scotland v Argentina was on TV at 4am, I decided to get out of bed then and go down to the reception of the hostel where the match was being played on plasma screen. Sitting alongside a couple of other Scots, we took in the first half and then hollered a taxi outside at 5am to get to the airport.
The 8 hour flight on Singapore Airlines was fine and as airline food goes, excellent. Once we collected our bags, we took a train from the airport towards the city centre to look for digs. The first thing we experienced on exiting the airport was the feeling of intense humidity in the air. The air was so thick and hot, almost to the point of stifling. This contributed to make our first experience of finding a hostel in Asia a pretty difficult and draining task. After finally managing to get a taxi in the city centre, we got taken to the totally wrong area by the driver. We then managed to find a hostel but it was full up so we used their internet to seek out other options. We found another couple of decent looking alternatives and then set off into the humitidy with our heavy backpacks secured to our back's and our smaller rucksacks over our chest's.
It wasnt long before each stride was accompanied with a brow rub from the back of the hand to clear the perspiration and when we reached our target hostel in the Arab Quarter, called 'Sleepy Sam's', we disappointingly found out it was full up. We plodded on a further 20 mins to the next place and finally landed a bed in a grotty hostel in Bugis Village. The room was sweltering, a mixed dorm of rattly bunkbeds with a capacity for about twenty folk. With the heavens now unleashing torrential rain outside, we took it. We dropped our gear, had showers (a hose, not a shower head) and walked back to Sleepy Sam's to see if they had availability for the subsequent nights of our stay in the city. Sleepy Sam's really looked cool and we were chuffed to find they did have space for us, although
when we told them where we were staying that night, they warned us to keep our backpacks closed as a former resident had turned up at Sleepy Sam's from Bugis Village with beasties crawling out their backpack.
Staying in the Arab Quarter was pretty interesting and I had no idea that Singapore had such a large Indian and muslim population. I felt like I was more in Karachi than in Asia, with a large beautiful mosque at one end of the street and lots of Indian street vendors with quaint bizarres all around. It was a great time to be there as the Muslim festival of 'Eid' was coming to an end so the streets were full of festivity and decoration. It made me feel ethnically and culturally disorientated though and not quite what I expected for the first stop in Asia. In Australia, every large city we visited had very large contingents of Asian folks but now we're in Singapore, it's quite a colonial looking city by appearance, quite European, plus we're living in the Arab quarter where there are few Asians. It was really quite confusing and every now and again I would forget that I was
in Asia and still think I was in Australia somehow.
As we're taking each day as it comes on this trip, we were glad to hear tips from Camilla in Australia to visit Singapore Zoo, where she had previously dropped by. It was a great place to check out and I loved seeing all of these incredible animals; however, on seeing the big cats prowling around in tiny enclosures (as they do at Edinburgh Zoo) I felt a sharp pang of guilt and sorrow for them that took a wee shine off the visit. In the evening, we wen't on the night safari in the dark and it was great to walk around the fruit bat enclosure where you could get as close as you wanted to the bats hanging in the branches at head height. You could also see many of the animals sleeping or prowling around and it was very cool to see them go about their lives under moonlight.
In the evening's, we sauntered around our neighbourhood to see what there was to do. There were few options apart from KTV Bars, which are effectively karaoke bars, where you can hear the performers strangling Asian
love ballads down the street way before you actually see you entrance to the bar. We tried to get into one but were given the: "Bar is full" rejection from the dude on the door. I think we were taken as outsiders (me especially surprisingly) and this is most definitely an insiders 'hood. Maybe they were scared I would sing a number, which would be fair enough really.
We found a relatively quiet'ish bar around the corner where a couple of guys in suits (just out the office) were perched on barstools and performing duets to these cheesy love songs so we stayed to play pool and take this in which was quite entertaining. After a while, we were challenged by the locals and the barmaids and the evening turned into an impromptu 'Asian Master's' around the pool table. Little did they bargain for that Trung and I are black belts in the
Frames (our dodgy pool hall in Stirling) technique and we kept on winning the games. Karate chop! After a while at 'winner stays on', we realised we were hogging the table and made our excuses and left.
Before leaving the bar, we got chatting to
touchy-feely-Jeremy, a friendly Singaporian dude who recommended a trip to the harbour area of the city, so the next day, we took the tube to Sentosa Beach. To get to Sentosa Island, we took a fernicular cable car across from the mainland which gave us awesome views of the Singapore skyscrapers as well as the industrial port area. It's an incredibly thriving city from the sky and we were amazed by the size of the operation going on at the bustling port with thousands of ships and container boxes being loaded and unloaded into and out of South East Asia. In saying that, the rumour that Singapore is a very clean and tidy city is entirely correct - Trung reckons you get a public spanking in the town square for dropping litter so everyone abides by the laws as they should. Or maybe he's winding me up...
Sentosa Beach was a great call by Jeremy and it was cool to stroll around the beautiful gardens there and check out the beaches. It's certainly somewhere I'd go back to, although I wish there was some way to control the sapping humidity in the air.
The next day, we took
Trung at Malaysian Immigration Checkpoint
I reckon Trung subliminally realised that he was about to get interogated for loosing his exit visa from his passport - whoops. the tube to the train station to book our train ticket to Kota Bharu, an outpost on Malaysia's South East coast, but terminus of the Jungle Line train journey and the perfect stepping stone into Thailand, where there's a Consulate General for us to sort out our required visa's. We were disappointed at the ticket office as the guy at the counter explained the trains were full for the next 4 days with lots of Muslims travelling North for Eid. This was a real spanner in the works to our schedule that we hadnt forseen. It was also a great disappointment , as travelling on the Jungle Line was something I'd been looking forward to since the inception of the trip.
After a bit of stock taking and sizing up our options from Singapore, we decided to off-the-cuff an interim trip to Kuala Lumpur and then (not to be outdone) take the Jungle Line as a night train from KL. It was a go'er and we booked our tickets and left the station happy we'd overcome such a disappointing hurdle with such a positive alternative.
The next day, we left Sleepy Sam's and boarded our express loco to
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia...
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