Singapore, one question..."WHY"

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What a weird place.

Is it a city or a country??? Well to be honest the country is just a big city!!


We arrived about midnight from Bali and already had a preffered hostel destination but after a phone call at the airport it was fully booked :-( We had a choice of ten from our South East Asia guide book and numbered them in order of preference. Nine down one to go.............come on, somebody must have vacancies................."RESULT", it did have so we jumped in a taxi and headed for the address. Frigging hell, it was clear to see why this place wasn't full. Without no doubt the biggest s#ithole we've stayed in to date.

Cockroaches (EVERYWHERE), bed bugs, stained mattresses and to top it all of a mad-man of a chinese bloke manning reception.
We both reallly didn't wanna stay there but it was early hours in the morning and the thought of wondering the streets with backpacks in tow didn't appeal to us either.

At first light we were awoken by building works going on the opposite side of the road and within five minutes we were heading out of the hostel for sum brekkie and a 'what da hell we guna do' conversation.

I tried our number 1 choice from the previous night and they had room for us thank the lord.

The hostel was puka except the it was in the 'little india' suburb of Singapore. I'm not racist blah blah blah but they are the most rudest, arrogant people i've ever come accross. I was thinking of travelling India on the way home but this stopped anymore research into how i was going to do it. On a brighter note they also cook the nicest curries in the world so there were some plus points about staying here.

We spent virtually the whole day on there version of the london underground trying to locate a place to watch the Champions league final in the evening which was also a great way to see the city/ country.......call it what you like!!

Bar located so we decided to head back to the hostel for a power nap to prepare for getting up at 2am to watch the match.............................................we woke up at 9am the following morning!!!! WHOOPS, we were so gutted cos there isn't anything more satisfying for both of us than watching Liverpool lose ;-)))))


The following day we booked to go on a religious tour of the city.
This involved visiting a couple of mosques of varied religion such as buddhist, hindu and muslim. It was all a bit surreal for both of us as we hadn't experienced anything like this before and didn't think i'd be interested in all this malarky but we were both mesmorised by what went on inside these places.
Some of the stuff is so far out of this world that it is hard to explain what they get up to. Was sort of expecting Abu Hamza to make a guest appearence but he was probably too busy planning to blow up london!!!!


We had the chance to have our fortunes told in a roundabout way so we thought we'd give it a go. Was hoping it would mimic the spiritual healer in Africa where basically, u walk out as though u've just spent a bank holiday weekend in Amsterdam but nothing of the sort.
We had to light these three 'jos-sticks' (sort of like scented sparklers if you can't understand my spelling) and shake them at the sky to the north and then to the south.
Just take time out to picture me and Daz doing this, twas so hard not to laugh but because the locals take it so seriously you'd feel disrespectful doing so.
We then proceeded to collect a cylindrical tin that held 100 sticks (chopstick sized) and knelt on a huge mat facing the big Buddha himself.
The idea was to shake the tin in a certain way so only one stick falls out; this was to decide your outcome of the rest of your life. Sounds a bit far fetched but by this point we were well into it.
After a stick fell we both had to return to the desk where we accuired the sticks and hand the 'chosen stick' to one of Buddhas apprentices.
He then asked us to tell him a question that we would like the outcome to...............haha there ain't no way i'm telling you lot what i asked but was soon shot down like Osama stepping off a 747 at Heathrow.
Basically my lifes in tatters; everything i do in life and everyone i love has a dark cloud over it.
I totally lost interest at this point and went outside for an ice cream!!
Daz however was on cloud 9, the future's bright for him and everything he touch will basically turn to Gold. He still winds me up about it now but i have to keep believing it's a loada b@llox!
The Prozak is being necked at a fast rate though so i'm still smiling!!

That evening we thought we'd endure a relaxing night chilling at the hostel but after bonding with a couple of lads from the dorm we ended up sampling a little too much of the local beer.
Not a wise decision considering we had to get up early and hike a couple of k's to board a bus to Malaysia.

As soon as we boarded the bus i thought it was safe to pull out my wrigleys for the first time in a couple of days. I was forgetting we still had to get out at the border and because i misplaced my departure card i had to wait in a room to get clearence to leave the country.
Without thinking there i was chewing happily when a voice pipes up "ARE YOU CHEWING GUM" ahh crap, think quick, roll it under my tounge and reply the best i can without moving my tounge. I sounded like a poor Chris Eubank impersonator but it had Daz in stitches when i told him all about it.

JUST A REMINDER WHY THE LACK OF PHOTOS ON THE LAST COUPLE OF BLOGS IS THAT I LOST MY CAMERA IN THAILAND AND ALSO 600 PHOTOS TO GO WITH IT. As soon the blogs catch up with me in thailand there'll be photo's galore again.

Next stop Malaysia.........

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Comments

[jiman]

abu hamza?
did you not find abu hamza in singapore? or were you too busy planning where else to invade after iraq and afghanistan?