At the moment I am in Singapore airport, waiting to fly out for Frankfurt. I have been here for a week long stopover whilst I am en-route to europe.
It has been a bit of a change, having to go from cold rainy sydney to Singapore. I got of the plane wearing leather boots, trousers and carrying a sweater and a wool lined leather jacket.
From cold rainy Sydney, to hot rainy Singapore.
I am staying at a hostel here in Little India, where there is a cluster of hostels within a few blocks around the edge closest to the city, and close to a few train stations. I have to say the train system here, the MRT is brilliant. It is a full blown metro system that covers most of the city and it is cheap like a budgie.
It cost me $3 to get into town from the airport, which took about half an hour, with trains running every three minutes! Compared to sydney, where I paid $18 for an hours ride into the airport, with slow trains that run only every half hour.
One thing that I am particularly fond of is the public safety video they have on the screens where they have a live action video of a terrorist planting a bomb on the train and the bystanders thinking it was a little suss and not doing anything. There is then footage of the train leaving the station and going into the tunnel before there is a dodgy CGI explosion coming from the tunnel.
It then cuts to some stills of the London and Madrid train bombings, showing the destroyed carriages and even some human remains. It is just the thing you need to see before you hop on a train.
I checked into my hostel and collapsed into bed the first night.
The next morning I met an aussie girl, Jamie down in the common area. We were both in town for the same amount of time and both did not have plans so we decided to head off together.
First afternoon was a quiet one, mainly walking round the downtown area, and areas like Boat Quay. I thought it was looking a little nasty as I went down into the MRT, and sure enough ten minutes later when we resurfaced it was pouring down.
So we chilled for an hour till the rain cleared.
After the rain cleared we headed around the colonial district for a while and eventually ended up where every other tourist does, the Merlion. I don't get whats so great about it but any way. From there you could look over the harbour and see this totally bizarre group of three buildings that have what looks like an oil tanker on top.
Turns out it's the bloody casino. Makes sense I guess, only a casino would do something so tacky.
Here is a pic of Fabien and myself in front of this stupid thing
Also, something that made me laugh my arse off was when jamie had a "It's coming right for us" moment when this mad giant goldfish in a pond out the front of an office building launched itself at her. It swam on it's side really fast on the surface and smashed into the concrete. No idea why it did that but she freaked out and I pissed myself.
Next day was a nature day, and we headed out to this island off the north coast of the main island called Palau Ubin (malay for island of granite). To get there you have to catch a train out to Bukit Timah station and transfer onto a bus to Changi village and then catch a bumboat out to the island.
The bumboat only runs when it has a full load of 12 people to go across so there can be a bit of a wait to get across. We were lucky and only had a half hour wait which we used to have a bit of lunch which we got from the supermarket.
On the boat across we met an englishman named Paul, who was on a quick visit from Jakarta, where he is teaching english.
Palau Ubin is like what singapore used to be like back in the day. It is covered in jungle, sparsely populated and undeveloped, which was a nice change from the busyness of the middle of Singapore.
We hired bikes and spent the rest of the day cruising round on the dirt roads, checking the place out, we found a chinese temple in the middle of the jungle, a few national park things, and most curiously an old tudor style house that had been built there about a hundred years ago as some blokes holiday house.
There were also some unreal looking lakes that had formed in the old granite quarries. After the days adventures we went to one of the places in "town" and had a beer at the end of the day.
The next day was taken up with a visit to Sentosa "asia's favourite playground". There they had "Singapore's hippest beach" which was on the bay and looked out at the shipping and oil refineries. Also the white sand on the beach was trucked in from a river somewhere. I actually thought it was brickies sand it was that course. I also managed to get epicly sunburnt.
There was a heap of other attractions as well, like a bird exhibit and show, roller coasters, a universal studios theme park, a theme attraction in an old british fortress on one corner of the island.
To get out to sentosa you have to catch the train down to where else but a giant shopping centre. You then have the option of taking a gondola for $20 or a monorail for $3 over to the island. Funnily enough I went for the monorail.
There was also a heap of young american blokes with jarhead hair cuts hanging round there, particularly at the bars. Turns out there was a US Navy aircraft carrier in singapore harbour, so 5000 seppo sailors on leave were disgorged into singapore. Do not want.
The next day jamie and I did our own things, she had a girl day and went shopping, I found another aussie bloke, Fabian and we went off cruising round singapore looking for more rad stuff.
We went down to the train station to organise a train ticket to KL, and then off on a pilgrimage to Raffles. Fabian as a bar tender is huge on cocktails and the Singapore Sling from Raffles is iconic, so we went down and got one.
It was a backpacker budget blowing S$25 for a Singapore Sling, which was premixed. Still, I have been to Raffles and had a sling.
Later that night we met up with Jamie and her room mate, Elizabeth who was down from KL with a few of her friends for the weekend, and we were going to teach them how to trash on like aussies do.
Activities included drinking cheap scotch on the steps around boat quay, tearing up dance floors of random clubs, and staying out till half five in the morning.
Funnily enough the next day was more of a rest day, although I did check out Orchard rd, which freaked me out with it's large scale consumerism and masses of people.
I did however get off orchard rd and up into Fort Canning park, which is on a hill overlooking the town. There used to be a colonial fort there. And later a command bunker was built there, just in time for the second world war.
The bunker is now open to the public, so I went in there and checked it out, it was pretty rad. There is also a resivour on site. It was exactly what I needed after the mentalness of Orchard rd.
I had a rest day for most of the next day, organising travel plans and doing some writing, before heading out to the Malay quarter for a look around, before I went over to the Art-Deco skyscraper, Parkview Square and lost my shit.
I just looked it up, and although it looks like it was built in the 30's or 40's was only built in 1999. I am regretting that I didn't take my camera with me. The square out the front had statues of famous world leaders, scientists and artists.
There was also a bar in the ground floor lobby, that had this massive ceiling, a wine chiller that went up three stories, and art-deco furniture. I so want to come back here for a drink one day.
I later went for a walk down to the Marina Promenade, and over to the haggard casino. It is around where they have a temporary stadium set up for the Youth Olympic Games, the F1 circuit and a heap of restraunts.
And on my travels I came across a section of eight "tactical response" police officers on patrol around the harbour. They were kitted out in body armour and were carrying sub-machine guns. Although they were wearing berets so they looked less aggressive then similar police I saw in new york who were wearing helmets.
The next day I hit the botanic gardens, which was amazing. I think I spent something like six hours in there and covered most of it on foot. I got caught sitting in a pavilion there for about and hour when an afternoon storm blew in and it bucketed down.
And then the next day I had a plane to catch to Frankfurt, so here I am writing this. The check in staff QANTAS use in Singapore are provided by the airport so they are not as good to people using staff tickets as real QANTAS staff are.
They are making me wait round till 50 minutes before the flight as I am on standby, even though they are staying I am pretty much definitely on. Let's see eh.
