08/11/07 - 10/11/07 Prince of Wales Backpackers Inn

The easiest way to get back to the main Melaka bus station is by local bus, so we headed off in the general direction of the bus stop and were relived to see another couple of guys waiting... it turned out that they weren't sure where the bus stop was either, but apparently as long as your somewhere near-ish the bus will stop for you. These guys were from New Zealand and were sort of doing our trip backwards and planning to work and travel round the UK for 2 years, so we gave them a few pointers. They also told me about some van tour that a load of kiwis and aussies do around europe each year which sounded really cool.

From the bus station it was easy to get another bus all the way to Singapore and the border crossing was another really straightforward one and luckily we had a lovely bus driver who kept pointing us in the right direction and keeping us on the straight and narrow!!!

The bus arrived at one of the many random bus stops, but with a bit of help from the driver and Mel's rough guide we were soon on (another!) local bus heading towards the cheap hostel area. We went to try and stay at The Inn Crowd first as that seems to be the place everyone stays and has really good reviews from people we've met and comments books I've read... but they were full. So we headed down the road and quickly found the prince of wales, which has it's very own living mascot in the form of Jess the border collie... awwww!

We got beds in a six bed dorm, which was called the love room or something weird... very amusing. Although alcohol is still fairly pricey in Singapore we decided that the detox had gone on for long enough so went downstairs to chat to the barman and have a few drinks!

Everyone had warned us how expensive Singapore is and that we would only want a few days there and that there isn't much to do... but I have to say I'd disagree. I could definitely have spent more time there and I really liked it. Yes it's much more expensive than the rest of Asia, but in comparison to England or Australia it's not. There are loads of cool and cheap shopping malls (as well as the expensive ones!) and there are plenty of sights to take in.

We went to the famous Raffles Hotel, which is super posh and apparently the cheapest rooms start at S$600 per night. We went in the free museum they have there and it was really interesting to read about the history of the place and all the famous stars who have visited (I couldn't hellp thinking that my grandma would have been really impressed by some of the stars who'd been there!). You also get to see the first ad's for the P & O ferries that used to make the journey from England which took weeks to complete.

As we didn't have loads of time here and I'm a child we also took a duck tour... which was absolutely awesome... although I was singing the ducktales theme tune for the entire day!! You get to go in this army vehicle, which is painted up as a duck (ours was a girl duck called Katrina) and the vehicle can travel over land and water so you get to go on both... I absolutely loved it!!! They have them in England and the US too, but I've never been on one and I was nothing but impressed!

Singapore is still in the process of reclaiming land from Malysia and is really trying to get itself in shape to attract the big business of tourism, so a lot of the things we saw on our tour were things in the middle of being built and there was a lot of "over here there WILL be" and "what you can see being built here is", but it was still a great tour and we did get to see a few completed things like the Merlion (half lion, half fish statue... very odd! I was also quite impressed to learn that we took some of the route that the grand prix will be making next year. They're turning half of the town into the grand prix route and the race will be run at night. Sounds like the things computer games are made of!!

We went to check out the christmas lights on one of the streets, which was great... the theme this year is "fairytale christmas" unfortunately they don't actually turn the lights on until mid-november... which would have been much nicer to see, but we got the jist!

We spent our last evening in Singapore at the airport as we had an early check in for our flight to Australiaso figured it'd be easier... unfortunately the flight got delayed so turns out we could have spent the night in an actual bed... ah well!