Singapore

Trip Start Jun 15, 2008

Trip End Jun 15, 2009

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Where I stayed

Harbour Ville Hotel Singapore

(Singapore hotels)

Flag of Singapore Singapore, Singapore
Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Singapore was like the opposite of all that we had experienced in Asia. Clean, well maintained and expensive. There is a joke that you will see on many posters and magnets in Singapore which says :Singapore is a FINE city" with the emphasis on FINE. Why? Because Singapore has laws, and lots of them. Eat or drink on public transport and you are breaking the law, chew chewing gum in public and you are breaking the law, spit in public, litter or jaywalk and you will be breaking the law and slapped with a hefty fine and possible even corporally punished(rattan cane).

But despite all of these laws, which makes Singapore one of the safest countries in the world, myself and Caroline really enjoyed our brief time in Singapore. We arrived in by plane at around about 7.30 pm. We would be traveling to our hotel by train and getting off at a stop which we thought was about a two minute walk from our accommodation. How wrong were we?

See one of the problems we have had since we started traveling is that our back packs have gradually being getting heavier and heavier

In the cable car

. Caroline's weighed 13 kg at Dublin airport, it now weighs just under 19KG. Where has the extra weight come from? we do not know, but all that weight on your back is not comfortable to walk around with and especially not comfortable to walk around with after a days traveling. We thought our accommodation was two minutes walk from our train stop, as we were getting out on the road our hotel was on. One problem with the roads in Singapore is that they are long, very long and they deviate without warning. Tired and frustrated after 50 minutes walking we eventually found our Hotel. Thank god.

As I said we did not have long in Singapore, just three nights, but we still packed loads in. On our first full day in Singapore we went shopping, but not the kind of shopping which every man in the world hates i.e. clothes shopping, but the kind of shopping every man in the world loves - GADGET shopping. I mentioned in a previous entry that men love anything with engines in them, well this is also true of gadgets(We are a pathetic bunch, I know) It was my birthday in a few days time and I decided that I needed to invest in my first proper MP3 player(Yes, I John Walsh, a DJ and radio and sound engineering graduate do not own a MP3 player!) and where better to so it then the technology capitol of the world - Singapore.

Walking around Siam Square, which is a huge shopping centre just filled with electronics shops, I was like a child from Cambodia who had just been adopted by Angelina Jolie(in heaven)

Merlion

. Everywhere I looked there were mega pixels and gigabytes, MP3 and MP4. Unfortunately Caroline did not share my enthusiasm, so we didn't get to stay there for the day. The rest of our day we just explored Singapore and made our way towards Singapore Night Safari that evening. The safari was recommended to us by friends and it turned out to be really enjoyable. All the usual stuff you would expect on a safari; lions, tigers, rhinos and elephants. We also got to go into an enclosure with some of the biggest bats I have ever seen in my life. These guys were HUGE. It took every fibre in my body not to tip Caroline's head and pretend it was a bat because she would have killed me. Well she would have screamed, ran away, punched me and then start to cry. I decided it wasn't the best thing to do.

On our second full day in Singapore we headed to Orchard street, which is the main shopping street, but it turned out to be a bit posh for us so we decided to head to Sentosa Island instead. Sentosa Island is a small Island to the south of Singapore with a beach and lots of tourist attractions. While there we got to go on the Tiger Beer viewing tower which brings you up 130 metres into the air and then rotates you around so you have 360 degree views of the city and Harbour. Located on the Island is also a huge statue of the Merlion (Half mermaid, half lion) which is Singapore's national symbol. We got the cable cars back from Sentosa to Singapore. You would not want to be nervous going on these cable cars. Any wind at all and they were shaking all over the place. Unfortunately Caroline had a curry the previous night, so there was plenty of wind that day!

One of the other high lights for us in Singapore was visiting Molly Malone's pub, which claims to have been built in Dublin and then shipped piece by piece to Singapore. Not sure if I believe that, but I also couldn't believe the bill when I got it. 14 dollars for a pint of Guinness or 9 euros!

So that was Singapore for us, good fun, expensive but a lovely experience. Next stop - Sydney