Bye Bye Singapore
Trip Start
Jul 12, 2006
1
159
230
Trip End
Jun 18, 2007
Singaore,
Singapore
Monday, February 12, 2007
We spent yesterday looking around yet more IT shopping malls (yawn!), it was kind of interesting I suppose but only in a people watching exercise, still it gave me lots of time to read the Lonely Plant about Thailand.
I still can't get over just how much the people of Singapore shop, it;s un-relentless, they just shop shop shop in such hoards. I've never seen anything like it. The people over here are lovely though, such a diverse mixture of people. It's not surprising that they are so nice though because the police over here just look really scary, you certianly wouldn't want to mess with them. I saw a t-shirt yesterday that said 'Singapore a FINE city' adn they're not wrong... fines for spitting, littering, jaw walking, the list goes on, some of the stuff is just plain scary but it makes for a very safe city and it was a pleasure to walk around knowing that you are in relative safety and that you're stuffs ok, unlike what Thailand is going to be like I'm sure.
We walked to Chinatown yesterday, which was just rammed with more people doing more shopping and eating, but the streets were wonderful, so colourful and vibrant, full of chinese new year pigs and red banners and good luck symbols. We had a good old look around, a wander through the markets, a couple of bottles of Tiger and a look at the temples and stuff before walking through from there down some really werid streets that were deserted apart from rows and rows of kareoke pubs. Then we walked through the CDB, which was full of really tall glass buldings and was dead quite, as you would expect on a Sunday.
We found a fab little food market though, where all the stalls were selling satay stuff and seafood. If we hadn't have just had some satay chicken at the National Heritage Museam cafe. Then we wandered back through Clarke Quay, which is this utterly fab waterside drinking and dining area. Full of bars and restaurants and huge, mad, umbrella type things covering some of the walkways (presumably to keep the monsoon rains off when they arrive?!. We went for a drink there on the second night and found a HedKandi bar which was just fantastic. Why haven't they got one in London? Needless to say we blew our whole entire nights budget on two drinks - but they were Singapore Sling cocktails, just had to be done, and they were gorj! :)
I love Singapore, it;s such a nice place, so many different areas and so much to see and do. I'm really pleased that we are coming back here as it's where we are getting the flight home from.
As for our destination today, Thailand, am slightly worried about heading there just because I have no idea what it will be like. I know there are lots of scams and dodgy people etc... and it does worry me beacuse we've been so lucky up till now and I haven't got a receipt for my laptop so if it gets nicked, it's a gonna.
Still, as my book told me - you have to move out of your comfort zone every once in a while and I think going to thailand will be doing just that. Wandering into the unknown and facing a challenge. Lee says I worry to much but, personally, I don't think that's always a bad thing, at least I'm always prepared for stuff.
Well, boarding is about to happen, I can see our Jetstar plane being loaded now. Managed to get my rucksack down to 16kg, which is amazing. Although most of the overflow is stuffed into my day bag, so now that weighs a ton - they joys of travel eh?!? :)
