We really loved our time in Singapore; having originally planned to go back into Malaysia for a few days in between flying from Kuching and leaving Singapore we decided to stay and see the place properly!
Our first impressions weren't great as we arrived on a Friday afternoon and our search for a hostel in Chinatown proved quite difficult as everywhere we tried was fully booked for the weekend. 10 hostels later and the manager told us to sit down with our heavy bags and that his receptionist would find us a hostel online and phone ahead to book it for us. We were surprised and thankful for his generosity and this turned out to be a mark of things to come, people here just can't do enough to help you which is great. They found us a hostel just a few streets away which we stayed in for the night and began to explore the place. We found that it was quite similar in style to Malaysia or Hong Kong, but that it was very compact and very organised and clean.
The next morning we moved to another hostel- the Prince of Wales as we had spotted this one the day before and wanted somewhere to watch the rugby. We ended up staying here for the rest of the week as it was fairly cheap and offered half price food.
Apart from watching Wales annihilate England in the rugby we also got around to walking a large portion of the city, going to a waterpark, visiting the zoo ( which has a 'free range' ethos so a lot of the animals are loose), wandering around the huge botanical gardens, and having a singapore sling at Raffles, which was nice but was posh in a bit of a weird way- you were given monkey nuts with you drink, the shell of which you deposited straight into the floor!
As we were also trying to reduce costs (Singapore can be pricey) we managed to find a few free things to do- the national art gallery offers free entry and tours on a Friday night which was impressive and informative, we caught a free concert on the esplanade and did a free design walking tour where we saw lots of interesting products and buildings and stopped to have traditional Chinese tea half way around which we brewed ourselves at the table.
While in Singapore we also managed to catch up with some friends from home that happened to be in Singapore at the same time and on our flight to Cairns. It was nice to see some familiar faces and also exchange stories of our travels so far.
By the time it came around to our flight on the 2nd of March we still felt as if there was a lot left that we hadn't had time to see but that's a good excuse to come back one day!