So it has been a crazy few days! On Wednesday we left Malacca for Mersing to get our ferry to Tioman Island on Thursday morning. Mersing is a really small port town with not much to it at all. We stayed the night in a cheap hotel and made our way to the harbour in the morning to catch our boat only to be told that it may not go cause of weather. After 20 minutes of hanging around they decided that there would be no ferry today due to rough seas and to come back tomorrow morning. Tough luck.
We walked back into town annoyed but not that bothered as it was only 1 day. We did find it funny though that when we asked a local guy what to do in Mersing he suggested we go to Malacca, a 3 hour drive away as there is "absolutely nothing of interest in Mersing". Annoying but not the end of world. We checked back into our hotel and then decided to go to the ferry office to look at hotels they had available on Tioman as there was now a backlog of people. When we got there we were told that the ferry was cancelled for 2 days and that they told us that at the harbour. They didn't because the lady even gave me the time it was leaving the next day. We now had a decision to make, hang around in Mersing with nothing to do for a few days and hope the ferry goes the next but 1 day, head back to KL and find something to do up north/fly to Borneo, or head to Singapore and then fly to Borneo/come back in a few days.
After a discussion and an apology to the hotel, we got a refund for our room and booked a bus to Singapore which was leaving in an hour.
The bus didn't quite go all the way to Singapore however and we had to stop at the border town of Johor Bharu and then get a local bus over the border into Singapore. This was fine with us as it worked out a lot cheaper.
After a fairly Uneventful journey which included a friendly female monk taking us under her wing so we didn't get lost going through immigration we arrived at queen street station in Singapore. We found a hostel and checked in exhausted. We were supposed to be on a nice sunny beach on a tropical island and instead we were in a different country in a large city. Not what I expected when I had woken up in the morning!
After a quick wash we decided to make the most of the evening and headed to the Singapore night safari. I'd been before but it was every bit as amazing as I had remembered. There is something so special about seeing animals at night, especially in a zoo where it appears that there are no fences!
As I'm a massive nature lover we bought a multi park ticket and on Saturday we visited the Singapore River Safari and the Singapore Zoo. Both were absolutely spectacular and included polar bears, orangutang, pandas and countless other animals. Almost all the enclosures appeared to have no fences, some of them literally had no fences, which brought the animals so close to you that you could literally touch them. Amazing to be walking along the path looking at one thing, here a noise, look up and an orangutan is 15ft above you staring at you.
After all the excitement of the zoos and the countless kilometres covered we ended up in Little India for dinner and found a restaurant that was absolutely full that billed itself as the best vegetarian southern- Indian restaurant in Singapore. I have no idea what we are as the manager ordered for us but it was absolutely delicious. After dinner and back at the hostel we discussed our plan of action and decided that it was to risky going back to Mersing as no one could guarantee that the ferry would go. Instead we decided to book a flight to Borneo for Monday morning. We can still dive but have the added bonus of pristine rainforest and going back to my favourite place I have ever travelled to.
Today we had to change hostels as while we were making our decisions they became fully booked for tonight. Not an issue as we found one right round the corner. After we had dumped our bags we headed to the botanical gardens and spent hours wondering around the park, spotting turtles in the lake and enjoying the sunshine. After the gardens we visited Orchard street for lunch, the main shopping street in Singapore full of high end shops and malls. Then we got back on the subway and headed to the coast and to the "gardens by the bay" to have a wonder and see the Marina Bay Sands hotel. The gardens were again lovely but by this point our legs were starting to tire! We decided to go for dinner in China town and came out of the station right into one of the main streets and into complete chaos. Not only was the weekend market on but it is Chinese New Year on the 18th so there were people everywhere buying decorations and other things needed to celebrate. We quickly found a bar and had a well deserved beer and people watched for almost an hour. After a wonder around the streets with the 10 million other people we found a cheap hawker food centre for dinner and had some delicious noodles and wontons with fruit to finish. Coming out of the hawker centre there now appeared to be 20 million people in china town and after fighting our way through the crowds we found the subway station and headed back to the hostel. Our flight leaves Singapore tomorrow at 10 so it is an early start for us. Hoping to be in the hostel in Kota Kinabalu on Borneo by 4pm as we have to go via Kuala Lumpar.