The ninth day.
Today we decided not to venture far (after Nik's late night) and it was very very hot so we went to Arab Street and Bugis Street, which are both historic and touristed parts of the city. Arab street is unsurprisingly the Muslim quarter where the Arabs originally settled, and Bugis Street is so called as Bugis pirates once ruled the land there.
On the way, we saw one of our favourite sights, the Singapore weekly flea market - mother would love it. Arab street was really pretty, the mosque there is amazing and is amongst loads of really cute little side streets with beautiful houses. We went through a big wholesale market on the way there, where you could buy kilos and kilos of dried everything, mainly fish. It smelt like a pet shop.
It's a fantastic textile district, with lots and lots of fabric shops and tailors and in fact a whole shop of sequins (and singapores largest belly dancing shop). They also sell the traditional carpets and rugs, and the odd hookah pipe. We did however find one road which was called hajI lane and was like the lanes in brighton, full of really cool little boutiques, the odd coffee shop and people doing photoshoots. (there was also a Baghdad road, less interesting) We found an excellent shop of collectables and retro homewares which also had a whole area which was a collection of old toy robots.
Afterwards we walked to Bugis street area, and on the way we passed an amazing building called the Parkview Building, huge and really stunning. Sadly by this point the camera had informed us that the battery was exhausted and it gave up so we have no photo.
Bugis has a couple of big malls, where we went to exploit the air con before taking on the market itself. There is a big indoor section, which is a lot like Camden but really cramped and mainly sold miniscule shorts (the dress code over here, and they claim to be a conservative nation..). Its really funny in enclosed spaces like that, aa there is a sea of people all the same size (including Hannah) and then there is Nik, this towering figure at least foot taller than everyone else. Nik can see everything which is a plus though. Hannah is still surprised every day to find she is taller than a lot of people here. There was also an outdoor bit which sold everything, including lots of JML type products -Asia, land of gadgets.
We shared some chicken and rice in the big food court for lunch and Nik found a sock coffee (they filter it through a big sock) for 80c which made him happy. We went to see two nearby temples, one Buddhist and one hindu. Outside the Buddhist temple there were young men doing dancing with a big dragon on sticks and other mythical creatures, it was really impressive. They also had big drums. We also saw a big Buddha and lots of people were giving it a rub.
We wandered around the market a while longer before making a pitstop at the chemist. We have had to accept now that we are fully out of deodorant and had to cave and buy some. Whilst there, Nik also earned some husband points by buying Hannah some hair straighteners, he even argued the price down. They are basic but an improvement (before and after pictures will be uploaded for the full impact).
We headed back to the hostel, and saw men fishing in a bit of disgusting brown water on the way, but they were heaving out loads of fish - well impressive.
We couldn't decide what we wanted for tea, so we split the budget and each bought what we wanted from 7/11 to eat outside back at the ranch. Nik chose two tubs of instant mash potato with BBQ sauce, with a tin of tuna mayonnaise and a packet of cheese tortilla chips with a mountain dew to drink. E numbers galore. Hannah selected a carton of vitamin enriched, low lactose, low fat milk (with added milky flavouring - seriously, get an actual cow!) and a box of cereal. Both were in agreement of a delicious dinner. We had sweets for afters.
In bad news, yesterdays 'they don't hurt a bit and are the size of a pin p**** insect bites from the zoo yesterday have now turned into gigantic itch-a-thon jungle bites. Oh well. Its been a good few days since we had any new ones. Nice while it lasted!