Deb's here!

We left Bali in the evening and hung around at the airport terribly excited….being on our way to Singapore meant that we were closer to getting to OZ!!!! Think we had Macdonalds for tea (hem hem) and sat playing on our sonic game - the flight was delayed by an hour which meant it would be at 11pm on a Friday night (booo). Had quite a comfy flight and arrived bright eyed and bushy tailed in Singapore at 3am!

Knowing it was too late for the trains to the centre, we succumbed to a taxi. At $45 Singapore dollars (about 20quid!) Ouch! It was so weird being in a nice car with air-con and radio and sat nav that we didn't care …at least we didn't have to jump into a tuk tuk and barter over our destination. The driver did about 90 down the 'highway' and left us at a hotel in 'Little India' - the cheap place to stay. It was however equipped with sky tv, dvd player, air-con and a HOT power shower so after eventually falling asleep to some crappy 80's film about jailbirds, we got up the next morn, checked out and walked for 20mins to 'Bugis' where we got a bog standard dorm!!!! Our first ever time! About time too we think, who do we think we are getting private double rooms with swimming pools in Thailand!? The nearer we reach destination Oz, the more realistic prices became like back home! The dorm was great tho - plenty of different people to chat to!

Next we headed to McD's for some brekkie before reading up on what we could do with a weekend in Singapore! Now that it's become obvious that I can retain information if I'm interested in it, I have a few facts for you (Chris is very impressed)…..Singapore was found by a prince who named the city after a lion he spotted wandering around! There u go, that's it! No, im kidding! The story's true, vague, but true, and Singapore thus means 'lion city'. Now we know why our Thai/Malaysian 'Singa' beer has a picture of a lion on it, like 'Chang' beer has a piccie of an elephant because chang means 'elephant'! Amazing! No points for 'Tiger' beer having a picture of a tiger on it tho. Another interesting fact is that Singapore used to be a Malaysian fishing town, with it being so close to Malaysia of course, but then the Great British Empire took a hold of it until the Japanese seized it around 1942! But the Japanese allowed England to be friends and have entry etc etc. after WWII. I promise I'm not referring to a book here, my historical and geographical knowledge attained 11 days ago is astoundingly concrete! Something else…..oh yeh, 70% of the population are Chinese as they emigrated here at some point, and the rest are muslims and hindu's…but the language is Malay. That's why there is 'Little India' - pretty cultured place but like walking around Nelson, and 'China Town'.

So, bearing all of this in mind, we headed for the tube to hit the main street 'Orchard Road' to check out all of the Gucci and D & G shops before heading to the cinema for the afternoon!!! Hehe!

I'm not joking…that is what we did on Saturday afternoon! The country is just a massive city, a cross between New York and London (although there is meant to be a nice island somewhere that has jungle activities but we didn't have time for that) an all the people do, we were told, is eat and shop. We couldn't afford to do either of those so 'Sweeney Todd' thank you very much! If you haven't seen the film then you've got to…..a vengeful barber…so weird! Chris would like to take the opportunity to thank my mum for the tip off and the reason why he sat through a musical squirming in his seat at both the singing and the gore (he doesn't like blood)!

Anyway, that night we headed back to tubes (we literally lived on them, so easy…and definitely puts London's tubes to shame) and headed to the Irish pub to catch the footy and get some real food with a REAL PINT OF BEER!!! In a pint glass and everything! Chris was the happiest man ever after having bottles of beer for 5months! He wasn't as happy however when I wanted to have a pint of Guinness and when he got the bill the 3beers came to more than our lamb chops and fish and chips! Headed off home quite early that night! Ended up playing cards and chatting to 'Bastian' (in our dorm) who'd just come from Oz and was telling us all about it!

The next day, as it had been lashing it down all Saturday and was even worse on Sunday, we got McD's breakfast and then set off to the internet café to waste some time before our 10pm flight to Oz! We felt quite bad about this but there was nothing else to do! It had only been about 18hours since I said, 'ooh, isn't it sad Chris that there's all this technology and yet the kids in Cambodia and Thailand with no shoes were the happiest people yet?!' Such a strange transition, there were Chinese teens everywhere with the latest clothing, brand new mobiles, thumbs going at a million miles an hour texting, and ipods in their ears…all looking unhappy! And we disagreed with it but then spent 7hours uploading Bob Marley and other new found musical taste onto our ipods! Oops!

Anyway, that was Singapore! Hence the reason why the pics are pretty naff! (Sorry Vicki, tried our best! Chris was like, Debs, why are u taking a photo of that?!) Was a really good weekend actually, helped with the transition from South-East Asia to Australia (Ozzy ozzy ozzy!!!!!) and made us feel like we were at home. The overcast atmosphere and rain definitely made us feel like we were back home, jumpers and jeans weekend…mmm!

So the slate was wiped clean and ready to begin the 2nd half of our travels as though it was anew, all charged up and excited about becoming 'pommes' and eating 'tucker'.

Hope u are all well and looking forward to Spring!

Miss u all and love u lots and lots xxxxxxxxxxx