Singapore

The Merlion (Symbol of Singapore) at night

During our last few days in Cairns we stayed in an amazing hostel called Tropic Days which was such a nice Oasis in the desert of horrid Australian hostels. It was half the price of hostels in Sydney and it was a 'Labour of Love' as Jemma calls it. In other words, it had a lot of personal touches and a lot of character. Because it was slightly out of the town centre, they provided a free shuttle bus to run you into town and they also had an all you can eat pizza night where they ordered takeaway for everybody. The people it attracted were a little bit older than the travellers we have come across in the rest of Oz and it was nice to actually meet people we had something in common with. So we spent a few days chilling there and then we did a day trip to the Great Barrier Reef, which I am still a little bit traumatised by so I will leave that review for another time.
Anyway, we left Cairns on Sunday morning for Singapore, and after a 3 hour stop over in Darwin, we arrived at Changi airport, Singapore at 9pm local time. I was SO HAPPY to get to Asia!
We took the MRT (metro) to our hostel (Little red dot), which I was a little bit disappointed by (I was expecting more of Singapore hostels, but South America continues to trump every other continent when it comes to hostels). Nonetheless, it was nice enough and has air con so we just went straight to bed.
The next day (Monday) we really had a full day. We got up and had the free breakfast (so nice to have free breakfasts again! And it was the first hostel I have ever had free cocopops in!) and then we set off to explore the city.

I last came to Singapore when I was 8 (so, a very long time ago) but I still have fond (but vague) memories of it and I wanted to go and see the hotel where I stayed as a child and see if the memories came back. We decided to go on foot rather than take the metro and about 2 hours later we got to Orchard road which is the designer shopping area. We saw lots of designer shops (the most designer shops I have ever seen in my life). We also saw two catwalk models doing a photo shoot outside them. We kept ducking into shopping malls and hawker centres (Singapore food markets) to keep cool and we were overwhelmed. Especially Jemma, who has never been to Asia before, couldn't take in the sheer quantity and variety of cheap, delicious food. We were in heaven. Especially after coming from Australia, where the prices were astronomical, we couldn't believe our luck when we could have any flavour and combination of freshly squeezed fruit juice for a pound! In spite of this, the first restaurant we ended up in was McDonalds (can't visit a country without sampling the Maccas and comparing the price to the last country). The prices brought tears of joy to our eyes and we hurriedly placed our order (Jemma had sea weed shaker chips and we had chilli sauce and curry sauce for free for the first time in months!). After McDonalds, we continued on to find the hotel where I stayed 18 years ago and as I walked into the reception, the smell brought a wave of memories back (strange how smells can stay the same all that time!). A lot of the interior had changed but I could still recognise most of it. After a bit of snooping around, we walked back to Orchard road and then got the MRT to the Esplanade which is where that skyscraper is with a swimming pool on top of it (Marina Bay Sands Hotel). We looked into staying there but it was slightly out of our price range.

We walked around this area for a bit (The central business district) and saw the Merlion that is the symbol of Singapore. Near to the hotel that has a swimming pool on top of it, there is also a massive shopping mall which has an ice rink and a river(!) inside where you can take a gondola ride through the mall! We continued on through the CBD, took lots of photos and saw an English chippy (the first proper English chippy I have seen on the trip. And yes, I am ashamed to say, I had some chips in paper with salt and vinegar). At this point it started to get dark and we stumbled upon a free waterfront open air concert with a Thai rock band playing that really reminded Jemma of Pink Floyd. The music fitted the atmosphere very well. After this we walked and looked around an arts display that was lit up at night and admired the Singapore skyline. By this time, our feet were really starting to ache and it was gone 9pm. We headed back to our hostel via China town (which, unlike China towns in other countries, is actually like a mini China). We ended up eating at a Hawker stall near to our hostel before collapsing into bed absolutely exhausted.

See the Singapore photos here: Singapore