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When we arrived at Singapore airport in the morning Lucy was soooooo excited.... 'its the best airport in the world!!'
Before going through immigration we went and found a bookshop where we purchased an Australia lonely planet so we could do some research whilst in Singapore. Our initial plan had been to leave Singapore straight away and have a couple of nights on an island called Tioman just off the Malaysian east coast before returning to stay at Singapore for 2 nights, but we changed our minds to 5 nights in Singapore :)
After making our way through the friendly immigration staff we exchanged some money into Singapore Dollar.... definitely the cleanest money in South east asia. Had a bite to eat at a copy of subway in the airport, we knew this was going to be the most expensive place we had visited so far. We shared a can of orangina as it was around £2.25!!! Our next mission was to find our accomodation we had booked, located in Little India. It was easy, on the skytrain then onto MRT. The MRT (underground) is very useful and runs very quickly and promtly. On the MRT Peter fell into a few people as the train set off whilst he was trying to take his big rucksack off, haha.
After a 10 minute walk from Bugis MRT station we located Footprints hostel. Unfortunately we had to wait until 2pm to check in and it was only around 10.30am, so we just hung around in the lounge. Our first impressions weren't too good, as we had to make our own beds and they put us in a dorm with only 1 available bed... until we told them and they found us another dorm room. Unfortunately we had beds at the opposite end of the room to each other.
After a quick freshen up and Peter making it 4-0 against cockroachs, we went for a walk around the Bugis area. We found a really good food court where we both had roasted duck. After we walked around the shops whilst enjoying some ice cream :)
That evening we ate at the tekek food centre in Little India. All the meals we had at food courts were very good and well priced. On the way back we stopped at the bar next to our hostel for a quick beer as it was buy 1 get 1 free. It was the japanese Asahi beer which was lovely, unfortunately we didn't have more than 1 as the prices are quite high in Singapore. So our first night in the dorm we didn't get to sleep for quite along time as Dicky (malay man) was snorring all night!
The following morning Lucy enjoyed some cereal which is very rare in south east asia. We then went and visited the Orchard rd area of the city. This area is full of shopping centres. If only we had the money and room in our bags to by lots of things. We did get some new trainers for Lucy as her old ones had ripped apart.
Later we hopped on the MRT to the promenade near the bayfront, where we got a good view of the impressive Marina Sands Hotel (look at pictures, the one that looks like a boat on top). After wandering around for abit we came across abit of park land where there was a baseball competition taking place, so we sat and watched for a while in the sunshine. Afterwards we headed towards Raffles Hotel, this is where you can purchase a singapore sling cocktail for the expensive price of SG$24... thats around £12. Lucy really wanted one but we resisted as we are backpackers.... not flashpackers!!!
Back at the hostel we met an interesting character called Jon from Bedfordshire, he was quite funny but in a wierd way sometimes. That evening the 3 of us ate at the tekek centre. Jon loves his curries and basically had a curry 2 or 3 times a day whilst he was in Singapore. Before going to the tekek centre we watched the hot-dog challenge.... At the bar next to the hostel you could purchase a giant hot dog, served with lots of chips.... it was big! If you could eat it all within 18 minutes you didn't have to pay a penny... around £19 though if you failed!! ooouch! The man we watched attempt it was very dissappointing :( , he failed badly and didn't even eat any chips!!! We were tempted to try the challenge.....
Once back at the hostel a few of us chilled outside the hostel with a couple of bottles of tiger from the local shop. We slept abit better that night as Dicky decided not to snore!
The following day we didn't do much at all apart from chill out in the lounge of the hostel, doing some research and updating our blogs. In the evening we went out with Jon again, we ate at a food court then bought some beers and went to find the light show we had been told about. After sometime we finally found someone who knew what we were on about and they kindly directed us to it. The light show was made from simply just light and water.... it was amazing!!! Tingle down your spine...
We then watched some people dance to jazz music infront of a really nice shopping centre. Inside we were going to go in the casino but they required us to have our passports on us and it was too far to go back to the hostel to get them. Heading back to our hostel on the MRT we had to switch trains at a couple of stops. At one stop it was quite a distance and not knowing when the last train exactly was, we ran through the station... we made the train easily but it was very funny. Jon would talk to anyone he met, on the train he got talking to a local.... as he was talking to Jon he realised he had missed his stop, hilarious!! On returning to the hostel we had a couple of games of twister, while Jon tried to round some people up for a trip back to the casino. We decided to call it a night and head to bed.
Next day we headed to Senosa island, it has lots of attractions but they all cost abit of money.... we had come here though to watch the beach netball competition. Its played abit different to the netball we know as they only have 1 net! After walking around for abit and watching the netball a thunderstorm arrived and the competition was put on hold, so we decided to head back to the mainland.
That Sunday evening we went to the tekek centre in little India, the streets were full of indian men... we're not exactly sure why to be honest. They were all just loitering around! After eating we walked away and headed to the MRT station, then we realised we hadn't paid. ooops! When we arrived back the chef wasn't there as he had gone looking for us... luckily he understood and was fine about it.
After getting on the MRT we went back to the bayfront area to watch the light show again and get pictures as we didn't take our camera the previous evening. Again, the light show was stunning.
The day after we had planned on going the zoo, but as Lucy wasn't very well we didn't go. We just had a couple of cheap food court meals and hung around the hostel.
Our last day in South East Asia we did some laundry in the hostel so we were going to Oz with fresh clothes. Watched a couple of movies and waited until it was time to go to the airport....
SOUTH EAST ASIA WAS AN AMAZING ADVENTURE
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