At last - another country appears in the Where am I? section on the right. You’ve looked over and guessed it, I’m in Singapore. My replacement cash cards (and a spare phone) arrived to me in Phuket on Friday, so I hurried down the internet cafe and booked a cheap flight to Singapore for the following morning. Those familiar with my itinerary will wonder why I’m not in Malaysia, but as I think I may have mentioned in my last post if my cards hadn’t arrived by Wednesday I’d have to skip it, otherwise I’d be spending too little time in each place and the land travel involved would eat up much of what was left. A shame, but these things happen, plans change. Anyway, It was only about an hour and 20 minutes on the plane but I had three seats to myself so I got some much needed sleep.
Arriving at the airport here, I took the train to the centre of the city nearest the hostel I booked online, and had a look round the shops a bit. There’s some very trendy little boutiques I have to say, and I went in an electronics shop and played on an X-Box 360 for a while, before eventually going to find my hostel. It’s a pretty cool joint, dorm-style, so there’s about 16 beds/people in the room I sleep in. I could sleep through an apocalpyse though so it doesn’t affect me.
Singapore is an excellent city. Everything is so clean and modern and efficient and easy. The MRT train system is superb, you can get practically anywhere you want to go hassle free and cheaply. And there’s so much to see and do around here, I doubt I’ll scratch the surface before I leave for Oz. The first night my hostel arranged a barbeque at a local venue so I went along for that to get to know some of the folk I was staying with. Then we went to a funky little bar playing a nice bit of progressive house. I got up quite late on Sunday, and took the train to Singapore Science Centre, a big ol’ see-and-do interactive learning kind of place, I’ve been reading Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything so I was in the mood. They also had an exhibition there, The Art of Star Wars, with props and models and what-not from all six Star Wars films. You got a free limited edition thingy-bob at the end of it which I intend so sell on eBay to some geek in America somewhere.
In the nightime I ventured into Chinatown for a meal, then got on the train again to an area called Clarke Quay, which is a load of bars, restaurants and clubs lining the river side. Very cool place. Today I’ve been to the Zoo. Which was nice. Got lots of photos and stuff which I can’t upload at the minute because this computer won’t accept my digi cam. No plans for tonight yet but I might go to the theatre. How very bloody cultural of me eh? It probably won’t materialise. The only bad word I’ve got to say about Singapore is that it’s costs and arm and a leg to get drunk. Booze is heavily taxed so you’re hard pushed to find a pint for under 4 pounds! That’s quadruple the price I paid for a beer in Thailand! Disgraceful!
That’ll do for now, I might be able to update once more before I hit Australia but we shall see.