Advertisement
Published: October 28th 2007
Edit Blog Post
Singapore
View of St Andrew's from Esplanade Theatre I am writing this entry from aboard the Theodor Storm, the freighter that will be taking us on to Brisbane and the final leg of our adventure. We have just learnt that the freighter will be leaving on the morning of the 19th so that will be in about 36 hours. As such, this seemed like a good time to give you an update on our time in Singapore, although we won't be able to load it onto the blog website until we're in Australia. So when you're actually reading this, we're in Australia... WOW!
We arrived on the bus from Melaka and pre-booked a room in the Emerald Hotel, in the Geylang district (also the red-light district). We only had a vague idea of where the hotel was so I naturally volunteered to head off on my own in search and leave Jenny and Cat to look after the bags. Everyone in the area seemed very friendly, particularly the girls who all seemed keen to make an effort and smile. Eventually I managed to locate the hotel and it wasn't long before we were unpacked and ready to hit the sights of Singapore.
We were immediately struck by
the fact that you are not allowed to cross the road until the green man comes on and this takes a very long time to happen. So, most of the first hour was spent at traffic lights continually grumbling about the red man. I had to literally hold Jenny and Cat back from jay-walking there way into a big fine. It was a lot of fun. We spent the first night on the Esplanade taking numerous pictures and generally taking in the vibe of the city.
One of the exciting things about coming to Singapore was the chance to see Jenny's Grandparents old house. They used to live here in the seventies and we were keen to find it. We knew it was on Sembawang Road, what we didn't know was that Sembawang Road is possibly the longest in the Singapore. No taxi seemed to want to take us so, with much protesting from the Goward girls, we made our way along the road on foot. We finally found the property and tried to ring the bell to alert the current owners to the joy that was about to befall them. Unfortunately no-one was home (or no-one was prepared
to admit they were home to two screeching English girls and their able cameraman). We have film footage which we may put on-line if we can. Either way it was lovely to see the house after hearing so much about it and we returned to the city a content three.
Singapore is pretty synonymous with shopping so that is how we spent the next few days. It is very much a mall culture here and there are some very tempting items to be had - this coming from a confirmed non-shopper. We shopped and shopped... and then I dropped. So we decided to head over to Sentosa Island. This is an island (there was a clue in the name) just to the south of Singapore. We got the cable car over to the island and were afforded great views of the port and all of the container ships. Once on the island we went up a sky tower for even better views, dipped our feet in the ocean (quite symbolic as we had now reached the edge of Asia) and walked around the gardens. As this was to the south of Singapore it contained an island that was officially
Tiger Live
Bar tender Jenny serving up Tiger Beer. the southern most part of Continental Asia. It is a little bit of a stretch to say so, in our opinion, as this was an island, off an island, off an island(!) that is connected to Asia but there you go. Never ones to miss a photo we had our picture taken and enjoyed the moment. We realised that we had been travelling through Continental Asia since the second night of the Trans-Mongolian train journey in Russia so it had been quite a long way!
We were sad at this point though as Cat was due to leave us and continue her adventures in Borneo. We were very sad to be splitting up but tried to drown our sorrows with a nice McDonalds takeaway. It helped a little and it wasn't long before Cat was getting into her taxi and heading back to Malaysia and Johor Bahru airport. We had had a great time together and hope to travel together again someday soon.
And then there were two.
By now, we felt like we had seen a good bit of Singapore and needed to get things ready for Sydney so we did lots of tasks like trying
Raffles Hotel
Sipping a Singapore Sling in the Long Bar. to arrange accommodation in Sydney, transport to Sydney from Brisbane and a strange notion called working. I seem to remember it from a while back but it is all a bit blurry.
So that was Singapore really. We had a nice Mexican meal on our last full night, walked around the Esplanade a bit more and started to pack. We were sad to be leaving and it did feel like the trip was drawing to a close but we were excited about the freighter and our new life in Sydney. We're hoping the freighter journey will go well and we won't get too seasick. By the time we end up in Brisbane we will have been aboard for ten days so that should be an experience!
Yours in travel.
Jay and Jenny.
x
Advertisement
Tot: 0.06s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 7; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0297s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Michelle and Robert
non-member comment
Hi guys, thanks for all the updates on your travels. IT is has now been part of my daily working week and going to be a bit strange that we wont receive these anymore - it was a bit like having my own personal Judith Chalmers! Hope all goes well in Sydney and you manage to get sorted with a job and accommodation soon. Sure it is going to be a great start to another exciting adventure. Spk soon xx