Judging a book by its cover

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Singapore

The bus ride down to Singapore was a nice surprise. It was the first bus ride I had ever been on that provided meals and a blanket and big arm rests… you got to have big arm rests! We stopped several times on the way - pee stops I call them - and I found that one of the most refreshing things to do was to buy fresh chilled fruit from one of the stalls nearby and eat it under the shade of the huge palms. Remember how I said I wasn’t happy about eating by myself - well check me out! Eating by myself under a tree! Obviously, something good was finally coming out of this trip ☺ However I still felt the need to talk and I really didn’t want to start talking to myself under the palms so I struck up conversation with the manly man sat next to me on the bus. Turns out Roman is younger than me, by something ridiculous like 10 years... so let’s change the manly man to child, shall we!! He tells me he travels a lot between Malaysia and Singapore, because although he is German, he moved to KL quite young (younger than he already is!) and now is studying in Singapore. After a painfully long wait at immigration to leave Malaysia and enter Singapore, he directs me on where to go when I get off the bus and we exchange emails. Another friend - BONUS!
I’d heard mixed reviews about Singapore (it’s to sterile, it’s too clean) and other people who really valued it’s ability to be a metropolis and still hold true to the name of Garden City. My first impressions were that Singaporean people were just so nice! I don’t know if I had stayed in HK too long to be able to appreciate the fact that he was chatting to me during the ride or if it was the lack of conversation on my trip but I still thought he was lovely! The driver ended up having no change once I had got to the hostel so he said I didn’t have to pay! Double bonus!!
I arrived at the Betel Box Hostel to be reminded that I was going to pay to share a room with another 15 people, dudes and dudettes. I made a big effort to enter the room with a smile, ready to talk to everyone and found 3 people in the room fast asleep. Crap! Well, it will have to be later that I dazzle them with my smile! I got showered and changed and headed back out to meet a guy I had met passing through Vietnam (he got in touch with me through this blog!). Stanley was now studying in Singapore for a semester so I warned him that I was coming! As I’m walking out of the door of the hostel, I see a blonde haired girl struggling with an enormous duffel bag and several smaller bags, none of which resemble a backpack in the slightest. I asked if she wanted help getting her bags up the stairs but she just replied with “I wish I didn’t have obsessive shopping disorder” and shook her head, denying my help. I got on the bus and went to meet Stanley at a Mall. Now, bearing in mind that I am coming from HK, I really didn’t want to spend that much time in a mall. I was happy for it to be a meeting point but not so happy to spend 5 hours there wandering around aimlessly. So I made this point quite clear to Stanley as soon as I met up with him. He suggested we could go to Sentosa and we hoped on the cable car to the beach. We ‘hiked’ the hill in Sentosa and went to check out the man made beach. I found it a bit disconcerting to have music coming out of speakers that looked like rocks while we were hiking, music made to sound like the jungle… I felt like I had been cheated of something, like nothing was real in Sentosa. We headed back to the mall and spend 4 hours in there (…) until I finally said to Stanley that I wanted to eat local Singaporean food somewhere that wasn’t a mall! We ventured out of the city to a hawkers bazaar and we ate local specialties to our hearts content. I’m the kind of person that will try any type of food once and when Stanley suggested barbecued stingray I was intrigued. It was delicious! Phenomenal. YUM! We had some satay chicken and pork and drank fresh coconuts. A perfect end to the day.

The following day I was determined to talk to people and see what Singapore had to offer. I had one day left before leaving for Kota Kinabalu so I really wanted to make the most of it. I went down to the communal area and I sat down for breakfast. There were a few people milling about at the breakfast tables but they were all deep in conversation and I felt that my best bet was to target single travelers, as they would probably be as desperate as I was to have a good ol’ chinwag. No such luck, so I sat down and had my breakfast while reading the newspaper. When I thought that my plan for the day was going to be a lonely one again, the blonde girl I had seen the day before struggling with her bags moseys in to the breakfast area. Yes! A single traveler! She sat down in front of me and we struck up a conversation. It just so happens that Heather was also leaving Singapore the following day so we were perfect sightseeing partners! Wohoo! Let me begin by explaining to you what Heather was wearing to have breakfast so you can get an idea of what I was thinking of her as a person - Heather was wearing a strappy vest top with no bra, shorty shorty shorts (I could see her bum cheeks without her bending over) and Ugg boots. Her hair was long and wild, she had panda eyes and was wearing a ton of lip gloss. For breakfast. She looked like this to go eat breakfast in a communal area. She sat down and was friendly enough but I was so skeptical of be-friending her, I felt like we had nothing in common. When we started talking about how long we had been traveling I find out she had been traveling since October (we were now in March) and that she had been staying in Thailand for most of the time. When she finds out where I’m living (HK) she asks if that is where the big wall is…. hmm I feel this isn’t really going the way I was hoping. Do I really want to spend 12 hours walking and talking with this girl? I mean she seemed nice enough but I didn’t want to get pissed off with her as the day progressed and ruin both our days. Then she tells me she’s 20 years old. OK, so she’s younger, less life experience. She goes on to tell me she wants to return to Canada and become a hairdresser that most of her friends are already at college doing a similar thing but she wanted to travel a bit beforehand. And I’m suddenly full of admiration for Heather. To have the courage to leave your country at such a tender age, when no one else has done that, to literally venture into the unknown resembles, to me, the explorers that left Portugal to discover the world, all those years ago. Way to go Heather! I also find out that she spent 3 months in Thailand in a kickboxing camp! I decide that it is probably safer and better to stick with her and do some sight seeing together as she probably would kick my arse with a series of power kicks or whatever…. so with that thought in mind we head off to explore the land of Singy., me dressed in shorts and a t-shirt and Heather in a floral mini dress heels and caked in make-up.

I found Singapore to be pretty, beautifully colourful. I liked it, but I felt like after all the walking we did that there wasn’t much else to see. I’m sure there was more to see but I felt satisfied leaving Singapore and having seen as much as I did. I like feeling like I don’t need to return to a place just because I haven’t felt like I’ve seen enough and I felt happy that I had seen plenty. I enjoyed seeing the different cultures that exist in Singapore. The mix of delicious food available to me made me hungry all the time and the different communities, Little India, Chinatown and the metropolis of Singapore made it a diverse place to visit. We were able to meet another person that I had previously ‘met’ through the travelblog, Michael, at a bar called China One in Clarke Quay. Michael has been studying in Singapore after doing a stint in Thailand and it was great to meet him face-to-face. Heather didn’t have a drink as she was on her way back to a kick-boxing camp the following day and apparently it takes 2 weeks to get rid of alcohol in the body! I also found out that she is completely addicted to lipstick! She even puts it on when she goes to sleep!

Anyway enjoy the photos, I think this is enough writing ☺

Lots of love

M xx

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