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Published: November 26th 2007
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Well here it all starts! After the struggle of packing my back pack (what to take, I have so many pretty things!) I have finally managed to squash it all in - it's so heavy! As a little travel companion (and also to help me recognise my bag) I have attached Tigger to the outside of my rucksack. Tigger is my little Tiger Keyring and likes to travel aswell so thought it was only fair!
Took the train to Manchester airport so this gave me a bit of practise of lugging my luggage around and how to avoid knocking people out of the way (whoopsies!).
Met Diane in the coffee shop - we both can't believe we are actually doing this!- and then off to Terminal 3 for our 1st plane of the journey.
When we arrive we notice our flight has been delayed for 20 mins, therefore we decide to have a nice refreshing pint (we have to toast our journey!) and a catch up.
After looking at the board our delay increases to an hour, therefore after another pint we then head for our plane.
Due to the delay we are rushed through Heathrow airport to the correct terminal
and just manage to make it to our plane with 5 minutes to spare.
The 12 hour journey isn't as bad as what I thought it would be, a little bit squashed but the free food and drinks on board made up for it! They also gave us a little travel pack contaning socks, toothbrush and paste and a eye cover for sleeping.
We arrive at Singapore and it's nice to be in the warmth again but my, is it stuffy!
After waiting for 20 minutes at the luggage carousel we discover our bags haven't made it to Singapore with us (poor Tigger!). They have found them in Heathrow and will be delivered Thursday night which just means a day without our stuff, but they gave us 70 quid for the inconveniece and it means that our bags will be delievered to the hotel for us - nice one!
We take the MRT (their train service) to the city where we are staying - it's so quick and easy, plus so clean - you can actually get fined if you are caught eating and drinking in the stations or on the trains.
We arrive at Bugis Street station and after
a bit of map consulting we finally find out hotel, The New 7th Storey hotel. The reception man is really friendly and offers us a free tour of the city which we accept, he doesn't have much information about it but tells us the Manager will find us in our room tomorrow to give us more information.
After taking the lift to our floor (one of the oldest in all of Singapore and the only one with a Lift Man) we find our room. It's a bit smelly and doesn't have a bathroom (we have to use a shared one down the hall) it's clean and has air con so good enough for us.
With nothing to unpack, we head out into town to see what we could find!
As we could not really see any bars, we decided to try and head for the Raffles Hotel area as we figure it should be busier round there. (For those who don't know, Sir Stamford Raffle is very famous for taking leadership over Singapore and helping to create the city it is today. The Raffle hotel is one of the top hotels in the city to commerate him - and very nice too!).
We stopped at a Junction to cross the road and started talking to a friendly Australian fellow called Luke (very tall aswell, 6ft 4in). He tells us he is in Singapore working for 3 weeks, but just arrived about 5 days ago. He was just having a wander around aswell so we decide to all join forces, and after finding Raffles hotel and feeling we were not quite dressed up for it (me and di were still in our combats and not been able to have a wash!) we decided to try and find a bar to have a drink.
We come across a suitable bar and Luke offers to buy us a drink, although I think he regretted it when the bill came - $42 dollars for 3 halfs of lager! The only consolation was we got another one free but that still worked out to 6 english pounds for a pint - not really cheap!
Luke tells us that fortunatley it is really cheap to eat here, if you go to the Hawker Centres (like food stalls) you can get a big plate of food for approx $3 dollars, which is about 1 pound! But alcohol (as we discovered) is very expensive.
We finished our drinks and decide to go for a late bite to eat (it was now about 1.30am!) and find a 24 hour Hawker Cafe just around the corner. The menu contains a lot of Fish Ball Soups etc but we decline and go for what appears to be a meat noodle salad and three bottles of Tiger Beer (which here only costs 18 dollars for the round - think we'll be drinking here!).
They bring the food which is a big bowl of noodles and meat with chopsticks, which I have never used before! But I decide not to cave in and ask for a fork and instead be brave and give them a whirl. With help from a local who was sat oposite us (killing himself laughing at my initial attempts) I manage to conquer and eat all my food - wey hey! Am so pleased with myself and have only slopped a little of the food all over me.
After discovering that the time was now 3am, me and di head back to our hotel for some well deserved sleep. After a short browse through our free maps we collected at the Airport Tourist info, we decide to head to Sentosa tomorrow, which is a small island just connected to Singapore.
Bring it on!
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Kath and Christine
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Dolphin Friendly
I've shown your mum how to use the PC and she's ready to take over the cyber-world, in few more lessons! I.E. March 2008-2009! We think you are a freebie loading drunkie! How did you get all the nice people to give you stuff, it must be your contagious smile and good humour! Got the text about the dolphins, we are jealous and are off to the chippy, I wonder if they batter and serve them there! Glad you are having fun, Take Care love Kath and Chris xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.