The main purpose of our journey to Singapore was to catch our onward flight to Indonesia. So the plan was to just stay one night in a cheap hostel (there was no way we could afford a hotel) and then off we would fly.

We arrived in singapore quite late in the day after a very luxurious coach ride (with huge massaging seats!). Our hostel was located just off Arab street which was a great place to explore the city. The hostel itself was incredibly basic we even had bunk beds in our room and a shared bathroom with the shower literally over the toilet, however it was very clean and the owner was lovely and very informative of the area and we actually ended up staying for 2 more nights.

On our first morning we popped across the road and had a murtabeck which is like an Indian/malaysia naan bread and is very tasty! Then with our full tummies set off to look around the city, we visited a Mosque which Joel informs me was designed by an Irish man, we walked passed the beautiful Raffles hotel, went in St Andrew's cathedral, had lunch at a very impressive food hall, we visited china town, the conservation area and then ended up at Clarke Quay which we both loved as it was full of brightly coloured converted warehouses which were full of trendy bars and restaurants. we thought about treating ourselves to dinner here but the cheapest beer was about £7! This was way over our budget so we walked back to our hotel and had a Turkish meal around the corner for dinner which was Equally as nice. The restaurant was in a lovely pedestrianised road just off Arab Street, which was full of lots of little Colourful restaurants, cafes and shops and literally had been opened to the public after intensive renovation a couple of months prior to our visit.
The next couple of days were spent visiting some very modern gardens which had just opened, looking at some unusual new buildings, one is particular looked like it had a giant ship stuck to the top of two skyscrapers and eating at some more Indian restaurants:)

On our last day we said our goodbyes to our friendly hostel owner who very kindly gave us about 8bottles of water for our trip- (very thoughtful but very heavy in our backpacks!!)and as we were ni longer catching our flight to Indonesia caught a bus towards Taman Negra (the national Park). We really enjoyed our time in Singapore, the people in particular were very friendly and the city itself was so clean and well managed. poor Joel was a bit overwhelmed by all the walking we did there and had sore knees for most of our time in Singapore so as you can imagine was really looking forward to the national park to do some more walking!!!

Joel - on our 2nd evening we sat down to book our flights for the next morning to Indonesia. Before we did we thought we should just check the weather. It was their monsoon season and thunder and lighting was in store for the foreseeable future! Ok we thought lets go to Borneo - same! A little disheartened we thought well at least we can see eastern Malaysia as they have some beautiful islands there. We couldn't believe it when we discovered that it was monsoon season there too and the islands were closed!

A friend had recommended Taman Negara in the jungle so we decided to head there initially by coach to Johor Bahru (I think) where we arrived there after an hour or so coach journey. We lugged our backpacks about trying to work out the next stage to our journey. We worked out that we had to take to take an 8 hour train into the jungle but couldn't leave until about 5am the next day so we found a hotel to stay at just by the station where we spend all day watching TV and updating our blog.