Singapore

We eventually made it into Singapore and jumped back on the 170 bus to the central bus station.  My first impression of Singapore was that it seemed to be overrated and the suburban areas were not that impressive.  First impressions, as they often are, proved to be very wrong on this occasion.  When we arrived we got to our shitty hostel and they didn't want us to check in.  They wanted us to have lunch, but as we'd already eaten in Wendys (you can get every type of food here) we just went online and eventually they let us check in.  They didn't seem too nice, but we were here and we wanted to have a look around.  We decided to go for a big walk and set off for the Esplanade first. We passed a few cool buildings, including the Raffles hotel, which is very nice, but I kept getting images of super posh colonial English types, 'yah-yahing' their way over dinner.  Urgh.  The esplanade is a cool designed building that looks like fly eyes, though Cannelle thinks that's bollocks.  Jaywalking is a real pain in the arse in Singapore.  In a city not designed for pedestrians, it is super frustrating to have to wait 2 minutes just to cross the road.  Especially when there are no cars around.  This city is cool, but very expensive.  We headed past the average cathedral, past the really beautiful colonial fire station and into the overrated Fort Canning Park.  We walked past the tacky wedding photos and headed down to the Quays.  We walked through all three of them, from Robertson Quay (seemingly residential and full of French people, but really funky and well decorated, past Clarke Quay (which is the most touristy and seemingly the epicentre of Singapore nightlife, at least for the expats and ended up in Boat Quay, which seems to be colonised by English pubs.  The walk along the Quays is really beautiful and Cannelle fell in love with the city, deciding that she wanted to live there.  I think the sight of people having a barbecue around their swimming pool in their residence tipped it over the edge.  It was really cool, having an ice cream while we looked across the water and onto the multi coloured buildings.  There are a lot of really cool architectural feats in the city.  Just wandering around you come across impressive buildings that would be the highlights of other cities.  Its quite cutting edge.  We then headed through the CBD and saw some other nice buildings (it was Cannelle's first real high rise CBD area).  There is a super funky building in Chinatown and some nice temples.  They had a giant yellow snake winding down the streets for Chinese New Year and we went through the winding alleyways of the hill area, which has a great city centre alleyway park and is full of French restaurants.  Very Parisian, like a mini Montmartre.  After this we walked past the famous Merlion statue and headed over the bridge back to the centre.  Overall it took about 5 hours and we visited almost all of the city.  We were pretty tired, but its an amazing city to just wander around and soak up the atmosphere.  We met Jessica in the evening, after about 3 weeks apart.  We grabbed a local dinner in a Chinese place and then they went to an Indian, where I refused to eat, because I found the owner to be really rude.  In our dorm there was an English couple whose train had crashed on the way into Singapore.  They had taken the same train that we had taken the day before and it had come off the rails on one of the bends.  Luckily noone died.  We chatted for ages and the girl kept trying to persuade us that we should live all 12 months of our time in Australia in Melbourne, but I still fancy splitting time between the two cities.

In the morning we took the train to Harbourfront.  We had a look at the cable car and could see Sentosa Island on the other side of the water.  Its quite nice down there.  We decided to walk the 9km trail over the Southern Ridges.  It is nowhere near as bad as LP says and is a gentle stroll.  Plenty of people seem to go jogging there to get their exercise.  The walk involves a quick climb and then a walk of varying pleasantness. You walk up the hill to a viewpoint, that is crawling with busloads of tourists, before heading over a cool wave bridge, past a sentier sportif, that I stopped to work on my back with, before heading over a walkway through the forest, through a horticultural park and in the end at Kent Ridge Gardens.  There are some amusing Singapore signs about how to deal with local monkeys and having to keep the noise down when you walk around residential areas.  It took us a fair few hours to cover the whole route and it is nice for a day out, but not a must see.  We finished up at Haw Paw Villa, that is a super kitsch.  Cannelle hated it, but I found it quite cool to pass a bit of time.  Its so kitsch, its almost cool.  We then went over to the Marina Bay Sands Hotel complex, where what looks like a giant boat sitting on three hotels, but is actually a mental expensive casino and rooftop swimming pool.  Needless to say its very nice around there, with a sort of mini Venice in the shopping centre.  Its also far too expensive unless you came loaded with a big budget.  The garden pods out the back are also quite cool.  We headed to Orchard Road (the Oxford Street of Singapore) afterwards and its equally as shitty, with far too many people and far too many shops.  If you like that sort of thing then you should be fine.  We met up with Gaby and Laura (Austrian and English) and went to a bookstore, where we got an Indonesian dictionary, Gaby got some books for French and Jessica got an English textbook.  Iggys was shut so we couldn't make a reservation even if LP does not have it in the right place.  We went to Starbucks, got some dinner and then in the evening I helped to edit Gaby's letter of motivation for her law masters.  We had done a lot of walking in two days.

On the third day we decided to go to Universal Studios theme park.  Our hotel staff are total dicks.  Everything we ask them they just ignore or fail to do anything we need.  The theme park is quite expensive but its worth it and going on a week day meant that there were never queues of more than five minutes for any of the rides.  They have a madagascar crate ride that's ok but for kids.  We did the two little roller coasters and the shrek 4D that scared the shit out of Cannelle with the spiders.  We were building people up for the bigger rides as they had never been on anything like them.  The Mummy Returns underground roller coaster was cool, but it was mental that there was a 45 minute queue for the shitty old car ride for kids that is in every theme park.  The lockers here are mentally expensive and even though they give you 30 minutes for free, we didn't want to take any risks and had to go separately onto rides.  The Waterworld show was quite cool if somewhat repetitive and definitely impressive for a little budget.  After that we grabbed some lunch in the pizza place, before doing Lights, Camera, Action (overrated) and accelerator (a rubbish version of the teacup ride).  That left us with the two roller coasters (both of which are really good, but the blue one is by far the most fun).  Amir had recommended that we do the Transformers 3D ride.  I thought it looked a bit crap when we got on, but its one of the best rides I have been on.  That's how 3D should be used.  Its the first time I have forgotten that I am watching something and I really felt like I was a part of the action.  You need to sit in the front row to make sure you get the most from the ride as that feeling of being absorbed was lost a little the second time when you see people in front of you.  Laura was super scared of the roller coasters and initially declined to do the blue one, but eventually we got her on it and she loved it.  Gaby's ex Chris turned up in the park and had been visiting the rides as well.  We went back on the blue roller coaster, the mummy and transformers as they were the stand out rides.  Its expensive, but its still a cool park to visit.  It would be the 3rd or 4th best park in the UK.  We decided not to go to the aquarium and I think it was probably a good decision, because after you start scuba diving I don't think you can enjoy an aquarium.  The Americans in Taman Negara had told us that you can't go to a zoo after a safari and I think its the watery equivalent.  Afterwards we decided to go and watch Zero, Dark Thirty, which is a really, really good film.  Possibly the best I have seen for the oscar, with Django and Life of Pi.  Strong field this year.  I got super sick in the cinema and had to run to the toilet and missed the very end of the film.  If only I could have held on for 5 minutes.  I got back just to see the credits role and apparently I didn't miss much.  Its still annoying though.  We missed the last tube and ended up walking back to the hostel.

The next day we woke up late and I saw that we had lost 2-1 to Leeds in the cup. Shitty, but we can focus on the league and Europe now.  We changed our plan to go to Borneo next and booked a flight for the 12th from KL to Kuching.  Then we headed off to the waterpark.  Its much cheaper than the theme park, but not as much fun.  We still had a really nice half day there.  It was my first proper water park and was a little bit of an anticlimax, but Cannelle correctly pointed out that there is only so much you can do with slides.  There was a slow floating tubing around the park where you can see some rays.  We went on some shitty, average rides but there were some good ones.  There was one like a whirlpool where you spiral round, one where you go up the sides and the best one was a tidal ride where you go down and up three times and we overturned at the end.  Security is mental here.  I even saw a sign that said 'safety first if you want to work'.  Sounds like a definition for Singapore.  The boat catcher at the bottom missed one boat and the security guard came over to stare at him.  I half expected him to be sentenced to death the next minute and I doubt he has the money to pay off his sentence.  They have a little assault course over water, which is fun and you could see the unease in one of the guards when some tourists were clearly having a laugh, but with a blatant disregard for safety.  We went snorkelling there as well, but it was disappointing because you have to wear a life jacket and are floated by currents around an artificial course.  Not like the real thing, though the locals enjoyed it.  Afterwards we headed to Boat Quay to do a pub quiz.  Laura and Jessica, who had been shopping, were late and we started with just the two of us, which involved a technology round on geek things and of course we didn't do too well, finishing third from last.  There was a team using our Norfolk'N'Chance name.  The girls had booked Iggys but there had been a mix up with the restaurant and we had to walk there afterwards to change the booking back to 12pm on Thursday.  When we got back I got chatting with a guy from Abu Dhabi in the reception.  He told me I should go and work there, because I can earn up to $10,000 a month.  Interesting.  I could buy a house quickly.  He said that salaries were double those of Dubai due to the oil money.  He also told me that he had been convicted of manslaughter for running someone over when he was speeding.  It comes with a minimum of 9 years imprisonment, but being Singapore you can pay a fine instead.  His was $180,000 which he could afford from his salary.  You can pay off almost any crime.  Interesting.  He even told me that in Singapore they round up drug dealers every 3 months, which come with the death penalty and then they pay fines instead.  Ah the moral conviction.  So effectively there are no crimes in Singapore.  There are just activities that the Singapore government effectively takes a cut from and to all intensive purposes the government is just a racketeering outfit.  Unless you are poor.  Then you are fucked.  Though if you are rich there is nothing you can't buy your way out of.

It was our last full day in the hostel and we had to check out and change rooms.  Only the stupid dickhead guy at reception refused to answer any of our questions and just plain ignored us.  Arsehole.  So we left our bags in Jessica's room and checked out.  Only he wouldn't give us the key deposit without a receipt.  We really didn't like each other.  I got quite rude and so Cannelle had to check out for us.  When we checked in again later, he said ah not that guy to Cannelle and this time we did not have to pay a key deposit as I didn't trust them to pay it back.  They were often away from the desk when you are most likely to need them and that way they kept keeping key deposits.  Anyway.  We went to the zoo.  Its a really cool zoo, though the animals still have a lot less space than at somewhere like Whipsnade, but its still good for a city zoo.  I will just mention the highlights, which included giant pandas, red pandas, tree kangaroos and saltwater crocodiles (all to make us anticipated for the next trip).  We also saw orangutans who were semi free and a fair few smaller animals were allowed to roam around as they saw fit.  We saw a lot of Borneo and Indonesia wildlife, which made us excited for the rest of the trip.  The white tigers and jaguars were impressive as always.  We got to see a flying fox up close in the aviary and its a really beautiful creature.  It was Jessica's birthday as well, so her and Cannelle went out for dinner in the evening.  I walked into town later to join them and we went to a Cuban bar on Clarke Quay.  Nobody wanted to buy any drinks so we stalled the as normal persistent barmen until we couldn't anymore, danced for fifteen minutes or so and then left without buying anything.  Cheeky, but its expensive there.  We got back and I read some more for Borneo.  Some Dutch guys came in and asked if they could turn the light off.  I told them to give me 15 minutes, which didn't seem to please them much.

We got up late for the last day in Singapore.  I went to use the computer and the dickhead at reception told me that I couldn't drink there, even though there was clearly a sign that said 'no drinking beyond this point' about 5m away, so I told him that I clearly could.  He really hated me.  We checked out and took our bags with us to Iggys.  Its in the Hilton and I don't think they are used to people turning up loaded with rucksacks but they looked after our bags for us.  The food was exceptionally good as you would expect from the 26th best restaurant.  The pudding was perhaps the best I have ever had and its the first time its been my favourite course ever.  The lamb and tuna were excellent (both food I don't normally love).  At the end you got to watch the pastry chef making the desserts and she chatted with us.  She was new to Hong Kong and really nice and chatty.  It was a really good cap to the meal.  Shame we did not get the chance to try the other 2 restaurants in the top 100, but I am sure we will be back there in the future.  If Cannelle has her way we would live there and I am not opposed, though I have to say that I lean towards Abu Dhabi if the salaries are to be believed.  I think a roll call of Sydney, Melbourne, London, Tokyo, St Petersburg, Abu Dhabi, Buenos Aires looks like a nice list for the next 10 years of places to live in between travelling.  Singapore is awesome.  Expensive, but awesome.  How will the rest of Malaysia stack up against it.