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Our journey to Singapore included a stopover In Doha, Qatar. We were only there for 6 hours and it was the middle of the night and we were absolutely shattered so we didn't see much of Qatar! We arrived in Singapore on the afternoon of the 27th September. As soon as we went through customs and collected our bags we experienced a huge culture shock, even in terms of the airports! Coming from Nairobi to Singapore was crazy! Singapore airport was very impressive, it looked brand new and ridiculously clean! When we stepped outside we felt like we were in the future! Again, everything was brand spanking new and spotlessly clean - cars, buildings, shopping malls, the lot! I know I keep mentioning the cleanliness but you have to see it to believe it!! It was quite surreal to think only 48 hours previously we had been teaching street boys in a shack in sub-Saharan Africa; HUGE difference! It took us a while to get our heads round it!
We used the MRT to get to our hostel, which was a great method of transport, pretty similar too the London Underground, just newer and cleaner! (the last time I'll mention cleanliness!) We bought a 3 day pass for the MRT, so we could nip about anywhere and everywhere for our whole time in Singapore. The hostel itself was OK, it was just a few stops outside of Singapore city Centre, in a local area and out of the touristy bit, which was good; experience the local culture and all that! We were in a 4 bed dorm, sharing with a couple of English girls who were pretty sound.
We spent our first day at various shopping malls, which there was loads of! (A very very enjoyable day for Sar may I add), even though we couldn't afford much, we did get few cheeky things! :) On our second day we went to Singapore Zoo, which was absolutely fantastic! We got a free fish spa chucked in with the ticket, which was v.ticklish - hilarious! (Check out the photos). The zoo was brilliant because they had pretty much every animal you could think of and it was nice because some of the animals, most noticeably the Monkey - even the Orangutans! - were completely free and just swinging about over your head as you walked around! All the other animals had massive, open enclosures as well, so it was all good.
The food was good and dirt cheap in Singapore but it was difficult to know exactly what you were eating as everything was described as 'meat', which could have been any animal as far as we were concerned! There was even a vegetarian food stall that sold a variety of 'meats', but if it wasn't meat, what was it?! Sar was not the biggest fan of this, so whilst we at the Zoo we thought we would play it safe and go for some western food! We had a KFC, and whilst we were tucking into our Zingers we noticed a sign on the wall saying 'the best thing about our chicken is the REAL taste' - then with an asterisk and some small writing it read: 'chicken parts are subject too availability, thank you for your support' Eh??!!
On our last day we had nothing planned, which was convenient as it turned out it absolutely hammered it down for the whole day, so we just went and shopped around for our transport to Malaysia for that evening. After much shopping around and bartering we managed to a travel for a decent price, about fifteen quid each, the negotiations started at thirty!
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Annie Great to hear you comments about discovery of contrasts. Sounds as if you're having fantastic time. Looking forward to reading more about teaching.