Hello everyone,

WOW, Singapore was expensive!... but also totally worth it.

The start wasn't great. We had caught a bus from Melaka to Singapore direct, and were expecting to be dropped of at a bus station not far from where we were planning to stay, where we could have then caught the MRT, but that would have been far too easy!..... when we got to the border, everyone had to get off the bus, bags and all, to get our passports stamped. In the end, it took a fair bit of time, and when we got to the other side of the border, our bus had left without us!!! We were around 20km's for where we were expecting to dropped off, and there were no forward transport services without walking for a couple or few k's with our bags. Luckily, we bumped into a really friendly guy, Nisran, who offered to give us a lift to the nearest station... bloody nice bloke, he even gave us his number and told us to give him a call if we got stuck!

After about 20 stops on the train, we ended up at Little India, which is the Backpacker hub of Singapore... but was still REALLY expensive by our standards. We were expecting it to be pricey, but not as much as we found. In the end, after some searching around, we settled for a hotel (all the hostels could only offer dorm beds at $SD20-25 a bed per night), and had a comfy bed, hot shower, kettle and TV for $SD65 a night.... which considering what that equates to in Malay Ringgit (RM130), it was the most expensive bed to date!

We didn't end up arriving until around 10pm, so after a bite to eat at an Indian place around the corner, where we watched the latest Bollywood music video's while eating our meal... we tucked in for a resoanably early night.. which with Hindsight (we would definatly need)!

The next day we caught a few trains into the centre of the city and wandered around for most of they day. The city is sooo clean, even with smoking area's on the streets, marked by yellow boxes, and massive fines for litering. Incredibly modern city though, you buy a train ticket which you just hold over a bleepy thing and then take it back to the ticket machine when you're done and get a dollar deposit back on each ticket, which is then used again! Singapore is also very paranoid about terrorism. Each train platform has a tv which shows terrorist bombings and dead bodies on the screen lol. Not nice to watch and makes you a bit paranoid! The city itself was incredible. Massive sky scrapers absolutely everywhere and big glass buildings. We went to Raffles hotel which is the most expensive and posh place we've ever been to. Very old and a massive tourist attraction. It was beautiful and Ben promised me we would stay there one day haha. It was all very awe inspiring and quite pretty for a city. Eventually we got down to the marina where we sat a while and rested our weary legs! We walked past this amazing skyscraper which was 2 big glass towers with a huge boat on the top of them! Amazing. Got some incredible photo's. We then caught a train and bus to the night zoo!!

The zoo was soo much fun. All the animals were awake and walking around, not sleeping like they are in the day zoo. One of the tigers was being fed massive chunks of meat as we were watching and it sat against the glass, literally at my feet, chewing on raw pork, took about a minuete to get through the whole joint of meat... glad we were on the other side of the glass! Amazing to see him up so close, much bigger paws than your average cat (Bruce). Also saw flying squirrels, gliding right over our heads and went into an aviary with bats flying around us and flying foxes which were huge! Saw some hippo's (bigger than you could ever imagine by seeing them on tv) and elephants and deer and lions and leopards (of two kinds) and fishing cats and civets and bears and hogbadgers and otters and hyenas and giraffes and pelicans and loadsa different kinds of pigs and rhino's and mousedeer (like not even a foot high) and zebra's and so many more. No pics though as it was dark and couldn't use flash!

Once we had finished looking around, and taken a tram around the Jungle route (where they had conveniently placed all the best animals, and charged you more for the tram ticket), we caught a bus back to the train station... leaving an hour before the last bus back, which we were originaly planning on catching! When we turned up at the train station, after a short trip, we were very shocked to find that all of Singapore's trains and buses finish at 11.30pm every evening... so no late nights out on the town without a hefty taxi bill! As we had only $SD20 left on us, and couldn't afford to take any more out... we had to miss the luxury of a taxi, and started out on a 15-20km walk back to where we were staying, by then it was around mignight, and we didn't end up getting back until gone 3am... with feet that felt like they were going to fall off! To add insult to injury, we even had to climb 4 stories to our room, before finally getting into bed. We slept like logs, as we had been walking since about 11am that morning, and in total, we walked about 30km+!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The next day.. we packed our bags, and moved on once more. Although we probably didn't get to see all the sights, it was a wicked experience... and 100% worth the money we paid. Would have stayed longer, but we managed to spend a weeks money in two days... and it was nice to know we were heading back to Malaysia, which is starting to feel like home away from home!

Anyway, next stop Tioman =).. the first destination on our trip back up Malaysia on the East coast. Very exciting =D

Banyak cinta untuk semua!

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