Sling your hook, Raffles
Trip Start
Nov 01, 2006
1
105
179
Trip End
Oct 31, 2007
Singapore,
Singapore
Friday, May 11, 2007
That's this morning done, then. Later this afternoon we're planning to take a boat to the Indonesian island of Batam (one of the Riau islands off Sumatra), from where we head to the capital, Jakarta.
Singapore has been a blast these last three days. We arrived here by train (First Class, don't you know) from Kuala Lumpur. The journey was easy enough - though not really worth the extra over Premium Class - but it did give us our first taste of the ICAC (icy air-conditioning) that is all the rage down in sultry Singapore
01 Another afternoon tea, Darling
. We weren't that impressed with the efficiency of Singapore station, though. The station is not connected to the rest of the public transport system and at the time we arrived there were no taxis anywhere near the taxi rank. I'm blaming Singapore but in fact I seem to recall that the intercity rail system (including Singapore station itself) is actually managed by Malaysia so maybe it's not the host nation's fault. Certainly everything else here has been super efficient; this really is the city you copy if you want to get your infrastructure right.We're staying in Little India and on the fist night we walked round the beautifully preserved neighbourhood and gawped at the Sri Veeramakaliamman temple which, together with the smells of a thousand curries simmering all around, momentarily took us straight back to Delhi. That's where the similarities end though; Little India is for the most part incredibly clean.
The next day we had to change our flights (we'd slightly refined our plans and also our last few flights were too far ahead to book when we originally bought our flights). All went well except for our return flight from Rio to London. According to the agent, all flights on this route with the Oneworld alliance airlines (i.e. BA) were booked up from August to October inclusive
02 The original butter mountain
. So perhaps we won't be coming home at the beginning of November after all!? Joking aside this was a real problem and at the time the agent couldn't do any better than get us availability on a flight from Sao Paulo instead (for which we would have the privilege of paying $125 each to get our ticket re-issued). We changed the tickets as far as we could and later in the evening we e-mailed our travel agent in London who was thankfully able to magic up some seats on the supposedly full Rio-London flight we'd originally wanted. We can only assume that the Singapore agent we dealt with (who had the temerity to work out of the BA/Quantas office) was having a bad day with her computer. Certainly it was the case, that day, that "the computer says no". More annoyingly, we've had to pay 60$ Singapore to change our flights here and - because of the silly agent messing up - we'll need to do the same in Sydney to confirm the Rio flight. Oh well.We decided to restore our mood (for at this point it seemed we would have to make our new home in Brazil or agree to fork up another 250$) with a lovely cream tea at the Regent Hotel. It was beautiful; perfect scones and a whole host of deicious sandwiches and cakes. Possibly the waitress thought that our sharing a high tea was rather 'down-market' behaviour for the Regent's preferred type of guest, but us cheapskate backpackers have to economise where we can. At least I managed to stop Rach from stuffing extra rolls inside her knapsack on our way out...
The day before yesterday we went to Singapore Zoo which I'd been gleefully anticipating for ages as I enjoy looking at all the 'lovely aminals' (as one of my younger brothers used, so sweetly, to call them). We spent 5 hours there, saw two shows, and got round almost all of the park
03 White tiger at the Zoo
. Highlights were the white tigers - so majestic, the pigmy hippos - so cute (in a slippery, grey, waddling sort of way), and the reticulated python - so...erm...reticulated. We also caught a glimpse of the famous Komodo Dragon, which is handy as we don't really have time to get to Komodo island in Indonesia. In the evening we went to eat in an amazing food court just outside the CBD (Central Business District), where we sampled roast duck, the ubiquitous greens in oyster sauce and some tasty dim sum. There are lots of these semi open air food courts in Singapore and that doesn't take into account the hundreds of malls around the city in each of which is whole bevy of restaurants of every cuisine. Needless to say; we're in our element.Finally, we took it a bit easier yesterday, with a ride on the Faber Mountain - Sentosa Island cable car and then a trip to Vivocity mall to see Travolta and co in Wild Hogs . Not a great film by any means, but it will probably do for Harley Davidsons what City Slickers did for horseback riding and dude ranch holiday in the States. In the early evening we went to the Asian Civilisations Museum in the colonial district which was pretty interesting but unfortunately is no longer free on Friday evenings as there is a special exhibit on. To round off we went for a good Chinese meal with some head-blowing hot and sour soup (especially after I'd stupidly added lots of extra chillies) and then on to Jazz at Southbridge for some great live jazz and the most expensive drinks of our three and a bit days here. Frankly, I'm hoping the booze will be a bit cheaper in Indonesia - it's like being in London here. (T)
