Singapore

Flying to Singapore we had no idea what to expect from it. We understand it is expensive and very modern but par that we have no knowledge of the city. Arriving at the airport which is immaculate and clean, the toliets the nicest we had seen in a long time, we jumped in a taxi to get to our accomodation. The taxi driver is pleasant and spoke highly of his city saying the price you pay is for the luxury you get. He also reminded us that cheming gum is illegal which is good as we both got a handful of sweats from immigration as we went through which should keep us going. The city was immensely clean and pristine, the gardens and roads being worked on by masses of people sweeping and pruning the hedges. We have planed to stay at my parents' neighbour's apartment who works and lives in Singapore and has a spare room, a great help and would save us nearly £200 and means we don't have to stay in dorm rooms. On arrival at his apartment we had to wait for a few hours for the guard to come of his lunch in order to get the keys Jereon had left for us to use. He finally showed up and showed us to the apartment, it was really nice, a real house and place to live, even having its own kitchen and washing machine, we spoke about cooking but lets be honesty that was never going to happen. We quickly settled in and had a brew, scoping out trip adviser and finding a little Chinese cafe which we went to for lunch.

We explored the city every day visiting Raffles hotel, the national museum, the main shopping street as well as going to see some famous gardens and parks as well as Marina Bay Ssnds Hotel with a garden on the 100th floor. We ate out every day except for breakfast where we got some milk and cereal. The food was really good and you could still eat out cheaply at hawker centres and street food stalls for under $5pp (Singapore dollar). We headed to little India and China town to get some grub a few times and all was tasty and relatively cheap. On the last day Jereon took us out for tea, we had told him we missed British food so he took us to a gourmet British pub and we had fish and chips, roasted salmon, potatoe and veg, a real treat for us and it would have blown our daily budget out the window.

One of the top attractions was to go to Singapore zoo and night safari which is part of the zoo complex. It was easy to find and get a public bus to the zoo where you get a joint ticket for the zoo and night safair. The zoo sells its self as being different as there are no cages and the animals are seperated by moats from tourists. This is half true but I still felt sorry for these animals and I vouch to never go to a zoo again as it just doesn't seem fair. Don't get me wrong the animals seemed okay and some cages were big, others not so big, but they shouldn't be in a zoo in my opinion. We saw lots of things like white tigers, polar bears, lots of monkeys, everything you can think of from the plains of Africa and the jungles of Asia as well as much more. The night safari was defiantly something new to us, on arrival after it gets dark you board one of many small trams which do laps of the park. They stop off and you walk around different areas. The fact that it was dark gave a spooky feel as you walked around. The animals on show were nocturnal like bats, lepords and flying squirrels etc. The safari was okay but after spending most of the afternoon and evening walking around we were ready to go home, not getting back 'til after 11pm.

The nice thing about Singapore was the cleanliness and convenience of everything. Everything was always sign posted, the subway was really good, cheap and went everywhere you wanted. My only issue was it all felt a bit to controlled in the sense that everything was so easy and controlled it took a bit of adventure out of it and felt a bit easy. It almost felt like you didn't want to step out of line, cross the road without the green man, chew gum or drink and have a crafty fag in the wrong place without being pulled up and told off for stepping out of line. All the buildings seemed very new and modern, Jereon himself says the only thing Singapore hasn't got is anything old, some would say it lacked character as the old is quickly refurbished or replaced with the new and on turn losing some of the old which can be the most interesting and enjoyable to explore.

Singapore was no doubt a good city and enjoyable, its modernism and convenience a nice change and break for us. However one of the best things for us was the fact we stayed in the apartment, we took the opportunity to wash virtually every piece of clothing we had and it was certainly needed after a few days in the national park at Kuching.

We move on to Sumatra, Indonesia, next next and I think this will be quite different from Singapore.