Cheap as chips

---

I arrived in Singapore 5 days ago now and it has unfortunately turned into one of those places that traps you for far too long. Well me anyway. I can't wait to get out of the place now but it hasn't been all bad being stuck here for a while. It's not the nightmare of expensiveness I expected. There is loads going on once you get under the skin of the place and I'm staying in the best location possible.

The zoo has been the highlight of my trip here (as it is for most people I guess). On the second day we (me and an English guy by the name of George, 18) headed down in the afternoon to take a look at the place and it started to piss down with rain and continued until the evening came. If anything, because of the heat and humidity here, it was a relief though. The rain had the added advantage of clearing out pretty much all of the other tourists so we had the zoo to ourselves. My favourite part was probably the free roaming orangutans - they seem to wonder around pretty much wherever they want!. The whole zoo try's to give the animals as much freedom as possible and most of the enclosures have no fence, choosing a moat or something similar instead. It seems to be well controlled and we spent a while laughing at one of the young orangutans playing a game trying to steal a huge stick off the ground when one of his watchers wasn't looking.

Singapore as a whole deserves a lot of credit. The place has been extremely well set up and is very welcoming. It's easy and cheap to get around on the extremely good public transport - buses are airconditioned with flat screen TV's in them! Lots of the activities are free or very cheap to get into and though it's easy to blow loads and loads of money on certain attractions it's not really necessary. The place is always busy and particularly at night it seems to come alive in markets, shopping centres, eating centres and general public places.

Yesterday I went to a place called Sentosa Island, which is a big artificial resort type place. I wasn't expecting much from it but in fairness I think they've done a pretty good job. If you had lots of money it would be very very easy to blow it all but I had fun walking around the nature trails and view points etc for a while and then spending the rest of the day at one of the artificial beaches they have created. I was suprised to find that I really liked the place. It is of course very clean and all along it there are basketball courts, volleyball courts waiting to be used and conoes for rent etc. The strangest thing about it is looking into the distance where you can see loads and loads of huge cargo ships docked - hardly an idyllic view but I enjoyed just because it was different.

When I caught the bus back in the evening I was suprised (though I shouldn't have been really) to see 3 buddist monks armed with digital cameras and mobile phones also getting on the bus after a long day sightseeing on the resort island.

Later that night I went to see the largest fountain in the world where they hold a big laser light show and then caught the back end of a band playing Nirvana on the river edge next to the huge esplanade theatres with a beautiful backdrop of the city lights behind them. After they had cleared up and left I sat on the wall by the river, which was sickeningly full of happy couples, switched on my mp3 player and ended up falling asleep. Eventually I woke up and made the difficult decision to get up and head back to the hostel.

---

Photos

Classic Singapore
I imagined all of singapore to be a mass of huge skyscrapers squeezed together like this but in reality it's only this rather small central business district that is like this.

It's raining. It's pouring!
The glorious rain lasted all day while we were at the zoo and made sure we had the park to ourselves pretty much

Monster
This guy, at Sentosa Island, had somehow managed to make a web that was about 5ft across! I came extremely close to walking straight into him and landing up with him on my face.

Kids these days
A young free ranging orangutan at the zoo. They have guardians who watch over them to supervise things when they come down to the ground and this one was playing a game with his trying to steal a huge stick off the floor when his guardian wasn't looking. We spent a while laughing at his antics backing him all the way and making no effort to warn his guardian.

Keeping fit
In the middle of the afternoon, under one of the huge skyscrapers (a bank) they started blasting out music and had a massive aerobics session for all to join in. All ages and levels of enthusiasm took part with varying comical degrees of success

Artificial paradise
This is one of the huge artificial beaches they have created on Sentosa Island. To be fair they've done a bloody good job of it.

Bed for the night?
I fell asleep here and came close to staying the whole night but eventually managed to haul my butt back to the hostel