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We arrived into Singapore late afternoon to some serious heat and got dropped off at the edge of the city not too far from where we were staying, or so we thought. We ended up once again walking with our heavy backpacks for a good 40 sweaty minutes trying to find our hostel. We eventually managed to find it and it was a really nice hostel, The Mitraa and the first of which that didn't have an en suite bathroom, although we still managed to get a private room and the bathroom (shared) was just down the hall. The place was spotless though and was absolutely fine.
Once again we dumped our stuff down and headed out to get something to eat at one of the 24 hour food centres, there are loads of hawker stalls selling a range of different food. Unlike Melaka they spoke pretty good English and the menus were also in English so were able to order exactly what we wanted.
The next morning we woke up fairly early to see the sights of Singapore. We headed downstairs for our breakfast of which was included in the price of our room. One of the highlights of travelling so far was that they had Nuttella, now this was a mistake by the hostel putting this in front of us both. We had about 4 slice of bread with Nuttella smothered all over it as it was free and were trying to both get our moneys worth and also fill up for the day ahead.
Singapore was absolutely boiling hot, with clear bright blue sky. We made our way to the MRT (Tube) station as we were a little way out of the centre only 2 stops out. So with my small backpack on and armed with my maps of the city we made our way to city centre to explore the place. The place was absolutely immaculate, you're not even allowed to bring chewing gum into the country for the fear you might through it on the floor! That is a little anal, but then again the place is spotlessly clean, although they tend to have slightly smelly breath for the lack of minty chewing gum, joke.
Suntech city was a large shopping centre where we were able to buy a hop on hop off bus tour of the city. The price included a river boat cruise of the city as well as a ride on the Singapore Flyer, Singapore's equivalent to London's London Eye only a little bit taller. We first opted for the hop on hop off bus tour of the city and headed up the top deck for the best views. The tour took us to the different districts of the city being Little India, China Town and the shopping districts as well as other stops. It was a good way to get around the city and also to get a feel for the place.
We took a stroll down Orchard Road which is the main shopping street in Singapore and it's big enough to rival both Oxford Street and 5th Avenue. The place has thousands of shops and loads of air conditioned shopping malls. Laura managed to control her shopping urges and we came away from there surprisingly empty handed. We made our way back to the hotel knackered from hammering the pavements of Singapore.
That night we decided that we would make our way to the famous Raffles hotel, to have the famous Singapore sling cocktail! We braced ourselves as we knew the cocktail was going to be expensive. We ordered a Singapore sling each. They cost us £15 each!!!!! Bloody hell we thought £3 was steep for a cocktail in Thailand. However there were complimentary nuts on the bar and we made sure we had a fair few of these to claw some money back.
We made the cocktails last a fair while and safe to say we did not buy another drink all night as we had spent half our daily budget on one cocktail. As the Singapore slings main ingredient is Gin I also thought not only was it going to be expensive but also I was not going to particularly like it, but to my surprise it was actually really really nice, and I would of had another one but for the fact that it cost so much. There was a live band playing some pretty funky music and we stayed and watched them before making our way back to the hostel.
Seeing as we got out of Raffles gone midnight, we had missed the last MRT home. So we ended up walking for a good hour or so home, navigating our way through the city back to the hostel. Walking round Singapore you feel really safe and is unlike most city's where you probably wouldn't walk home. But seeing as we had spent £15 each on a cocktail we were now too poor to get a taxi home.
We woke up the next morning packed our things, had breakfast and checked out, as we were to fly to Bali, or so we thought..... I went on the internet to print off the details of our flight only to find out that the flight was actually on the Sunday and not Saturday as we had thought, typical us. We asked if we were able to check back in, but unfortunately they were now fully booked. b*****. They did however manage to contact a hostel (The Hive) not to far away to see if we could stay a night there, thankfully they had one room left. So we made our way to our new little hostel which was only 5 minutes away.
Our extra day in Singapore was spent by the riverside, followed by a little more sightseeing and a little bit of shopping at Bugis market which is an in door market, with loads of independant traders selling clothes pretty cheap, we spent ages walking around this maze of a place. Laura could have bought loads in there but again managed to resist, good girl.
After Bugis we then decidied that we might each treat ourselves to a Notebook (small laptop) as we were spending so much time in internet cafés, paying to use the computers to write these blogs and keep up with emails. We made our way to Sim Lim Square which is basically a huge shopping centre set over 5 floors with each shop selling purely electronics so computers, phones, cameras etc. We found ourselves wondering around aimlessly for about 3 hours trying to find a bargain. Each of us ended up getting a small notebook and they were pretty cheap and a good investment that would probably save us money in the long run, also somewhere to store our photos, play music, we should of got one before we came away.
That night we didn't even make it out, not even for dinner! this may come as a shock to you all but it's true straight to bed without dinner. Basically we had spent another day walking all over Singapore and especially around Sim Lim Square followed by the walk back to our hostel, we were absolutely shattered. So we decided to hit the hay.
Next morning we checked out, as we were to fly to Bali. This time it was all correct and we headed off to Singapore's airport to take our flight to Bali.
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