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Published: August 7th 2007
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Singapore Skyline at Night
Nice view from our hotel at night So after catching the Jetstar Asia plane (with the smallest amount of legroom imaginable, no tv, but lots of food and leather seats) from Cairns for a couple of hours to Darwin, we jumped off while they refuelled and explored the particularly large shed that is Darwin International Airport. Then got back on for just over 4 hours to reach Singapore (and got fed some more). Arrivals at Changi Airport was rather impressive and went easily through the airport and on to the MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) or the tube in our lingo. You get fined for absolutely everything in Singapore - $5000 for food on the underground, chewing gum banned and $5000 for littering it, cant j-walk or you get fined, no spitting, urinating in public places (apparently lifts have urine dectectors?!) and so on. Pretty strict. However due to this, the streets and pavements are insanely clean - like, shiny and can have your dinner off them clean. Got to the hostel (standing all alone in a patch of grass with nothing else around it) and was quite impressed. Used to be a 5* hotel in the 1930s, but probably hasnt been decorated much since then. As it was
The Merlion
Massive tourist attraction in Singapore so late, had a quick wander round the local area, found some food and went to bed.
The shopping scene in Singapore is absolutely massive. There is one street, Orchard Street, that is totally full of shopping centres, one after another. There were Marks & Spencer, Topman, with Starbucks and McDonalds everywhere, to name a few. After looking round some of the shops, had a wander along Singapore River visiting the old bridge built in the 1800s, Parliament, the Merlion fountain and the harbour area. The city is packed still with colonial architecture, such as the Town Hall and the Courts, but also some massive, modern skyscrapers. Walked across a fairly large area of the country today, as it is pretty small in size, but has a population of over 4 million people. It also rained quite a lot for about an hour and then suddenly stopped. Problem with being in the Tropics I guess. In the evening, went to one of the Hawker centres (basically a giant food court selling almost everything really cheap) and then on to the Bugis Night Market for a walk around the crazy stalls selling mostly cheap clothes, DVDs and tacky souvenirs.
Singapore Skyline
Dotted with Colonial-time and new buildings Next day went to Singapore Zoo and it was a really hot day and the clouds cleared to show blue skies, which was nice. The orang-utans are pretty much free roaming throughout the zoo - you can look up and randomly find them hanging about. All the other animals are not kept in cages, instead in large open areas surrounded by moats so to allow you not only to see them better, but give them some space and not feel so trapped i guess. The elephants were however made to do some displays of pushing round logs and squirting water, not so cool, but they were quite funny. Oh, then the rain came again, kinda spoilt it, but managed to get round seeing all the animals in the zoo without too much problem. Really not as good as Australia Zoo, but the white tigers were pretty cool to watch, as well as the baby rhino, the swimming polar bear in its specially air conditioned outdoor area (very clever) and the hundreds of monkeys. The special thing about Singapore Zoo that is unique in the world is that it has a Night Safari, whereby you jump on a small train-bus and
get taken around a different area of the zoo where all the nocturnal animals are kept. As it is nighttime, they are all active and you can actually see them doing what you would normally miss during the day. Like the deer foraging, the rhinos wandering around, the lions stalking and the hippos wandering about. The highlight was the leopard, who was pretty smelly, but about and in view of the crowd as they would usually hide during the daytime. Great addition to the zoo and the voice of the tour guide was pretty fantastic - she made all the animals sound sexy.
The next day went across the cablecar from the south of the main island of Singapore to Sentosa Island - branded as the 'fun' resort of Singapore. Was not actually all that interesting - the Underwater World was not too great (probably as i just been to the Great Barrier Reef!) but did have a clever conveyer belt taking you thru a massive tube in the tank. Then went to Dolphin Lagoon which, after seeing wild dolphins in New Zealand and swimming with them, was really sad to see. The dolphins were made to do tricks
and looked blantently bored and not excited at all. Wanted to go set them free! Anyway, after that went back across to Singapore on the cable car (probably the most exciting part of the day) and went for a wander around Little India and had a fanstastic curry.
There we are, a whole country in 3 days flat (you really could probably do it all in 2 if you tried). It does tend to rain an awful lot here, hope that Malaysia will be a bit drier.
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simone
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Hi! Shame it rained, but u still got loads done and the white tigers look cool! spk 2 u soon sim: )