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Merlion.
The real one.Well, got up about 7am, got a taxi - with the same driver that gave us a lift with Julie to the bus station. He spent the whole journey impressing us with his realistic mimicry of baby crying sounds, and his limited knowledge of several European languages. We nodded, smiled at the correct intervals and prayed that the Taxi ride would be a swift one. It was far too early for hyperactive taxi-drivers.
So, we got the bus and travelled from Melacca to Singapore, stopping only at the border to get an exit stamp and a Visa stamp.
Singapore is a city, a country and an island all in one. Well, 63 or so periphery islands also, but the largest is Singapore itself.
It's known as the 'fine city', and with good reason. The list of things you can be fined or imprisoned for include...
...Chewing gum, Seeming to be suspicious, Not flushing a public toilet, Jay walking, Littering, Swearing in public, Smoking in public, Taking Durian fruit in Public areas. And people call England the Nanny state! Oh, and any drugs offence - the death penalty.
So, we arrived in the city itself
and made our way to the fabled
7th Storey hotel, which as every traveller with a LonelyPlanet guide knows, is about the only affordable place here. It was full. Bummer. So a bit of stress later - Backpacks are hard work in a busy Singaporean shopping complex- we finally got a room at
MacKenzie hostel, on MacKenzie road, Little India.
We didn't really do much that night, just went and looked round one of the various shopping centres. Leanne found a Dorothy Perkins and a Topshop - with the prices being exactly equal to those in their English counterpart shops. That is to say, after being in SE Asia for 3 months -Expensive. Matt bought some Converse all-star flip-flops for walking round in. The Jesus Sandals are great for trekking, but not such a contemporary look for the modern world. Would you wear sandals in Australia, Hawaii and the like ? 12 quid from a converse shop.
Saturday 5th: Today, what did we do ? Yes the only thing there is to do here. Shop.
After spending a nice relaxing morning at the Singapore Botanical Gardens, where we tried the local delicacy - ice-cream inside bread, like
an ice-cream sandwich except the bread is coloured pink and green.
Then we spent the whole day looking around shops. Went to Millionaires walk (all Alfred Dunhill, Cartier, Tiffany, Ralph Lauren etc and so out of our price range.). On to Orchard road (To put it in perspective here - imagine a shopping complex so large it has a motherlode of fast food chains inside, 3 x McD's, 3 x KFC etc. Cinema and so on.). Matt bought some Crocs - for beaches, the sole wears too quickly for concrete. Leanne bought some shorts.
Then we went to see Raffles hotel (Which is where the Singapore sling originated) and the Merlion. Half-Mermaid, half-Lion. The naffest landmark in history. It was so crude you had to laugh.
Another thing to note. On the MRT (Mass Transit Railway) here they paint arrows on the floor to show you where to stand, so people can get on and off in order. Singaporeans pay meticulous detail to this rule, until the precise moment the train doors open, and then it's like a maul (Rugby not shopping centre). At times they can be the rudest, most arrogent midgets you would ever meet.
Of course this is a sweeping statement and several people here have been very nice.
Sunday 6th: Bored with Singapore already, we went over to Sentosa island for the day. Sentosa is a resort, theme park type thing. We decided to get there by cable car which was fun, and very high up.
Once there we went to see the polluted man-made beaches, and the
Southern-most point of Continetal Asia, which being on an island (Sentosa) just south of another island (Singapore) isn't really all that continental. Plus it had an island directly to the south. In any case, it was interesting. Finding out we were only 1 degree North of the equator (latitude), a mere 136 km from the equator!
Note - Matt made his Asiatic theory here - The centrifugal force of being closer to the equator explains why people in Singapore are short. The same with all people that are near the eqautor are by nature short, and the ones furthest away are taller. Escimo's shortness is genetic, and Italian's are weighed down by a Carb-loaded diet.
After all that excitement we figured we'd do some activities - you have to pay for
everything here, except the buses, which are covered by the cost of setting foot on the island.
So we went on a Luge (
Loo-Jeh each, which included a ski-chair type thing back to the start. It was great fun, and Matt went really fast and so did Leanne. *Note: - It's quite hard to write in the third-person perspective.
On the way back we nipped into the Bugis or Lucky shopping complex (1 of several million here, the names merge, Leanne is sure it was Lucky) on a Dorothy Perkins shorts mission. During this expedition and trial of endurance, we found a diving shop and both bought proper diving masks - our cheap snorkelling ones will die if we go deep, and Bali is good and cheap for diving - with dolphins, the wreck of USS Liberty sank by the Japanese in WWII and more. Getting carried away Matt found a Matalan type place and bought a new pair of swim shorts and a smarter top.
That night we got woken up by this crazy Sri Lankan lady, she was speaking as loud as she could into her phone, her recipricator being on loudspeaker simultanously. At 1am,
Sentosa island.
One of the 4 man-made beaches. right outside your room this was unacceptable. Leanne went "Rarr'", opened the door in her Chun Li Kung Fu Kimono and told the lady to "Shush.". Eventually she did.
Monday 7th: Woke up, whilst waiting for shower room to be free noticed strange behavior. Another Indian woman (Sri Lankan Hindu to be precise) was in toilet with door open. After seeing footprints on tiolet seats - where people from non-westernised countries have used a normal
western toilet as a squat, whilst standing on the seat (thoughts of a dolphin's kiss from a high come to mind.) Matt thought nothing would be shocking anymore...
...however, the water hose thing next to the toilet, like a douche except it is quite literally a bit of garden hose coming out of the wall. This hose that people use to wash there bits with. This woman was washing her plates, cutlery, bowls, and cups in there. I don't care where you come from, nobody washes there dishes in a toilet. Nobody. The next incident slighly less shocking was to see the original handphone woman leaving shower room. No toileteries in hand. However there were manky looking yellowy orange petals all over the
floor. If we should travel again, Sri Lanka will not be on our itinary. Goa might though.
Went to see 2 temples in the morning, 1 was called the temple of 1000 lights and the other one across the road was pretty groovy too, although it had a parrot inside the temple. I guess this must save work on the chants, i mean if you say the same thing 500 or so times you can easily get bored and just plain blank, and then you forget what it was you were saying. So a Parrot must come in handy in a temple.
Then we walked around Chinatown, and walked about Little India for a bit. Then made our way to the URA Gallery (Urban Regeneration Gallery), which showed what Singapore used to look like, what it looks like now and how it is supposed to look in 2010. It was interesting, but blatent propoganda, looking at a scale model of Singapore it was obvious that in a few years time the poor (impoverished) people will have to walk for a good few miles to even see a tree, whilst the business centres and posh (more affluent) areas are
On the Luge.
Great fun, Matt won the race. surrounded by greenery. Also if the model was truly to scale then either the houses will be really, really small, or the cars will be really, really big. Some of the cars in 2010 will be as big as a tree! I can't wait.
After that we went in search of peanut soup. We had it in Avenue Joffre, Causway Bay, Hong Kong and it was great, so seeing that a shop in the
Golden Mile Shopping Plaza (No#3 of about a billion) sold it, being called
'Ah Balling Peanut Soup.' we decided to walk there, despite Matt's Converse flip-flops uselessness (The material keeps curling and has caused a blister - Crocs are better). Following the directions in our LonelyPlanet guide we got there. Unfortunately it has been a Thai food place for around 3 years now, obviously our 2006 edition book had not been updated. Sadly we walked back, Matt sulking.
To commiserate we went into Burgerking and got Spidey meals. Matt insisted on asking for the meal by it's full name which is stupidly long and just confuses the issue. The guy there is the only one here who has passed the 'ice test.' (Go into
On the Skytrain.
Just after the Luge. McD's, KFC, BK etc and ask for a drink with 'No ice.' They still put it in.). We got 2 free Spiderman 3 cards aswell, which were fun for about 2 seconds and then became as boring as the reciept for the meals.
After that we went to the tax-free shop, which costs more than the normal 'With-tax-added-on' stuff does elsewhere. Searching for a Lenspen-Lensfriend. It's a pen you use to clean the lens of a DSLR (Camera). After several pygmy-moron sales people tried to sell us several variations of 'something even better than a lenspen (PDU screen cleaner, Blowerbrush amongst others.) we left the tax-free place. *Note here that this was not a language problem, I had an old, nearly dead one, in my hand whilst asking "Do you sell this ?". No wonder colonisation was so easy.
So then we crossed the road, ignoring the 'No Jaywalking' sign, which incidentaly looks more like a sign saying 'Beware alien abduction occurs here' we got to a Nikon shop. They knew what they were talking about, although he did try and sell Matt a whole box set of pens, after some careful negotiation we got 1 lenspen for
Stingray
Sentosa. S$18 (6 Quid). Careful to avoid the Nikon hardsales pitch - Matt's bankcard was getting hotter and hotter in his pocket at this point, Leanne dragged him away to the safety of the street.
Tuesday 8th: Checked out, wasted time, Gave away some clothes (Well Leanne did, her bag is heavy), gave away some maps of Singapore to some Irish people that just arrived. Had a Spidey meal at BurgerKing. Matt had to be calmed down from the MSG and sugar-high, went to the interenet, wrote this and we'll waste some more time before going to the airport for 9.15pm flight to Bali, arriving about midnight. Rubbsih time to arrive.
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Mr Humbug
non-member comment
Happy Birthday
How old ??? lololololol have a good one