Singapore Stopover
Trip Start
Apr 20, 2004
1
16
21
Trip End
Mar 30, 2005
Singapore,
Singapore
Saturday, October 16, 2004
At the moment we are currently driving up the east coast of Australia, having great time bar-b-q-ing and checking out the fab beaches, but more about that later.
First, I thought we would just fill you in on our stopover in Singapore, en route to Sydney.Recovering from our encounters with the Navan girls, with sore and seedy heads we boarded our flight to Singapore.
We arrived late and exhausted, but we still managed to notice that all around us everything was spotless. As we drove though the city to our hostel, we couldn't help but be impressed by all the sky scrapers and unusual buildings.
With only a limited amount of time to spend there, we decided to visit at the Singapore Zoo. There are two zoos, a day zoo and a night one. We bought a combined ticket for each and headed off. We spent the whole afternoon wandering around the day zoo checking out all the exhibits. I think the most impressive thing for me were the salt water crocodiles, they were absolutely huge, the biggest real life animal I have ever seen. No joking they were about 5m long and 1m wide.Martins favorites were the Polar Bears.
At around 6pm, when the sun went down, we took a break after walking around for 4 or 5 hours, we were beginning to think we maybe had overdone the zoo thing, by attempting two in one day. However, as soon as the night zoo opened and we went in, we were glad we did.
We were one of the first people in there, and headed straight for some walking trails. There was one else around and it was extremely eerie wandering through the tracks on our own in the dark.Even though we knew all the animals were safely in their enclosures, every noise made us jump about 10 feet in the air.
Apparently, over 90% of animals are nocturnal, which meant as soon as it was dark they all came alive. The animals were way more active than their cousins in the day zoo.
We were standing in front of the Bengal Tiger exhibit straining to see where he was hidden in the dark, when out of no where, he came running down a hill and stopped about three feet in front of Martin, ok, so there was about 5 inches of plexi glass in between the two of them, but this did not stop us getting the fright of our lives.
After the zoo, we headed home, exhausted and weary, but delighted with all the animals we had seen.
The next day we ventured down town and checked out some of the shopping districts on Orchard Road. And I have to say, we were really impressed with the public transport, its amazing, all the trains are spotless, run regularly on time, and they even refund you some of the money for the ticket at the end of the journey if you hand back over your ticket - you can't ask for more really can you???
However, our short time in Singapore was up, it was time for us to leave for Australia.
We were a bit sad to leave Asia, as we had a great time for the last six months there, but at the same time we were really excited about Oz.
We landed in Sydney on the Oct, and since then it's been non stop travelling. We have alot of ground to cover in only 3 months. As I said at the start we are currently about half way up the east coast in our camper van. We will update you on all our Oz adventures in the next entry.
Until then, take care
Roisin and Martin
