Singapore

Ah, Singapore - the place where backpackers come to bankrupt themselves. I mean, come on, it almost has 'poor' in the name!!

So, we were in Singapore mainly to sort out our visas for Indonesia and due to a slight lack of forward planning on our part, we ended up having to spend 6 days there. Instead of staying in and eating pot noodles we agreed that there was no point in coming in Singapore and not actually doing anything…so 'sod the budget' became our little mantra for the week!

We got the bus straight down from a very wet Melaka, where we'd had a funny early morning encounter with a local Indian chap who had worked for the British services, he even recounted a bit of Shakespeare for us! The rain meant that it was actually quite nice and cool when we arrived in what seemed like any other city - little did we know just quite how much we would fall for the city over the next few days! The first thing we noticed almost immediately was the care and attention given to pedestrians trying to cross the street...for the first time in 10 months when we got a zebra crossing - the cars actually stopped!!! It was such a novel experience and we were both taken aback slightly!

For reasons quite obvious, we were embarking on a new adventure for our trip - staying in dorms…eek! We had panic booked one the night before once we realised that we weren't going to hear back from the CouchSurfing request we'd pinged off and so we ended up in quite a lovely little hostel that was unfortunately quite far out of town. Although we did notice quite a few pubs on the walk from the metro station - they turned out to be dark, windowless bars full of rowdy men…and we were not feeling that adventurous in the name of beer. Instead we opted for a beer and dinner at a nearby Chinese food court - worked out a lot cheaper! Our Argentinian friend was in Singapore as well, having travelled down a day earlier, so we moved to a new hostel in Chinatown for the rest of our stay - much closers to the action!

But not before we'd tackled the Indonesian embassy. To avoid us having to backtrack later when we changed hostels, we loaded up with all of our bags and walked down to the bus stop (about 1km) to pick up the bus that we were reliably informed would take us to less than half a km away from the embassy - excellent, this was going to be a piece of cake. Well, depending on what you consider a piece of cake…

The embassy hours were 9-12, so we left our hostel at about 8am to give ourselves plenty of time…The bus actually dropped us off about 1.5km away from the embassy (the lovely bus driver kept an eye on us and told us when to get off and which way to walk - everyone was so friendly in this city!) - we'd read up on what to do and what to take to the embassy and thought we were fully prepared - t-shirts, no vests; trousers, no shorts (well James had long shorts on), shoes, no flip flops. We'd printed and filled out the forms, had copies of passports and pictures. The only thing we were missing was money and confirmation of our flight into the country - but we couldn't get this until we knew when we'd get our passports back - so we'd try and wing that one.

James was certain there would be an ATM at the embassy, so off we trundled up through an increasingly residential looking area. After James had donned some rather fetching bright red nylon trousers to cover his little knobbly knees (yep, even his long shorts weren't suitable!) we were in, feeling confident that we'd hand it all in and get our passport back the next day (they quoted 2 working days, but we were there first thing Thursday morning - surely they'd count this as day 1??). Erm, well. Firstly, it was quite apparent that there was no ATM - we were informed that the nearest one was 5 minutes away by taxi. Hmm. But we could submit our applications and pay later - fab.

"Sorry, you need proof of our flight out of the country? Well, yes we have that but we don't have a printed copy, can I just show it to you? No, you need 2 copies? Ok…." (lesson #2096473; stop skim reading instructions!).

Thankfully they were kind enough to let us leave our big bags with them…armed with my online map, off we went in search of the ATM and internet café in the Lucky Plaza (1.5km away). I was confident of what road we needed to take, so when we found an ATM, we were somewhat surprised to not see the Lucky Plaza anywhere. Ah, we took the wrong road…2 sides of a triangle later (doubling our distance there) and being chased by a rather ominous looking storm cloud, we found Lucky Plaza, just as the heavens opened. Luck was on our side (tee hee, Lucky Plaza - get it?) and we found the internet café quite quickly despite it being one of the larger shopping malls and S$6 and a lot of huffing and puffing later, we had the best we could get to confirm our flight out of Bali - not the Jetstar itinerary they needed (and of which we had an example copy), but confirmation from STA travel including all the relevant information - fingers crossed. So with 50 minutes left before the embassy shut, we hot footed it back covering the 2km in record time. Arriving back hot and sweaty, James again had to don some fetching trousers - this time some nice cosy thick grey traccy bottoms! Time ticked by with no new numbers being called, so with 10 minutes to go before midday, we jumped up to the counter and waited with baited breath…finally a little smile and confirmation that we would get our 60 day visa back on Monday. Great, at least we had a date for when we could book our flight to Java!

And relax. All we had to do then was pick up our bags and walk the 2km back to where we'd just come from to get the metro to our new hostel - who needs to do exercise when you can cover 10km in a morning, some of which with 15kg of luggage (Army training?? Pah - try travelling!).

At this point in our stay, we were still trying to combat the overwhelming cost of accommodation with eating cheaply. Our new hostel was right next to China town, so perfect for picking up some cheap eats! In fact, we were that desperate to save those all-important 50cents, we queued for about 40 minutes to get the cheapest chicken and rice in the China town complex - to be honest, it was totally worth it and we went back a few more times - no wonder the queue was so big! Gradually though we let our grip loosen on our wallets a bit and ate a few times at an awesome little place next to our hostel that served everything on a stick. It was full and rowdy with locals and there wasn't a huge amount in English other than a personalised write on menu - but it was perfect after a long day of stomping around and it meant that we were able to get some decent vegetables into our systems!

We certainly got 'back to nature' in Singapore with the botanical gardens, gardens by the bay and the zoo but all but the latter was free so why not! The Botanical gardens where really lovely and as they span over 70 hectares, we ended up spending most of the day there - not helped by the torrential rain!! We paid the S$5 extra to get into the Orchid Gardens and it was totally worth it…although I think we've now seen enough orchids to last a while! We also managed picked up a tip for good Indian food in Little India; one of the grounds keepers was taking his lunch break just as we were taking cover from one shower and he had a surprisingly good knowledge of English football - so much actually to quite obviously hate it, much preferring Argentinian football! As Little India was on our way home, we stopped in for some food - only to see the same guy going there after his shift had finished - in fact we bought food and chai from exactly the same places as him without realising - and it was really really good!!

Gardens by the Bay was amazing, especially all of the big trees lit up, it looks like something from another world, we managed to get to one of these areas just in time to see a light and music show (60's classics of course!). It's amazing that you can go somewhere like Singapore, to a main 'attraction' and still find yourself walking around completely on your own in parts, nice and relaxing…and then a complete contrast when you leave through the Marina Bay Sands hotel and shopping complex with it's high end shops, sky bar and canal complete with punt boat through the middle - you definitely need to have money to live here!

Colin had suggested we contact an old work buddy (Peter) of his as we were in the country, so after trying both of the numbers we had with little success, we googled him. Found out he's MD of a company and so tried the phone number online expecting to get a secretary to leave a message. James was a little surprised to get straight through to him and after a slightly awkward conversation ("Hi, I'm the son of a guy you haven't spoken to in over 10 years ….") arranged to meet up later that evening for a drink. Neither of us were sure what to expect or where we would end up, so 'dressed up' (as best as you can 'dress up' when you have a limited selection of clothes, none of which could be described as your Saturday night 'best'!) We needed have worried though as we decided an evening of craft beer and hawker stall food would be preferred over a seafood restaurant! Peter's daughter had given him the name of a craft beer place in the China town complex (how had we not found this already?!)…in fact, we found 3…well, you can kind of guess how the rest of the evening went and as much as James and I tried to pay for a round, we weren't allowed!

I'd already booked tickets to the zoo for the next day as it would save us 10% and of course, that's the very last thing either of us wanted to do after a night of drinking pints of beer (we haven't been drinking pints for a very long time). But, after a bit of soul searching and a nap, we ventured out into the cruel light of day to trek most of the way across the country (or is it technically just a state?) to see some animals. Eventually, as they do, the hangovers subsided and we made the most of trip, spending almost 5 hours walking around and going back to visit our favourites! A definite highlight were the orangutans that are allowed to roam free (well, up the in the trees anyway, they are stopped from coming down to mingle with the riff raff). We also saw an enormous white tiger acting like a little kitten and pouncing on a big ball in the water and an even bigger salt water crocodile, confirming that we will definitely not be going anywhere near the sea when we're in the north of Australia!!!

Then before we knew it, it was Monday and time to pick up our passports. In keeping with the rest of our trip here, we incorporated a few other missions into this outing and of course, a lot of walking. So we took the train up to Vanda Avenue - where James's parents lived in the late 70's, took a few pictures and then headed back to the embassy where we were in and out within 5 minutes, passports and visas safely stowed. All that was left was a quick hop on the metro to Raffles for a celebratory gin & tonic (or 2) - we'd opted not to go for the Singapore sling as it would have been so clichéd…we've now added a 3rd notch to our 'Iconic British Colonial Hotel' list - how very British of us.

And that was it! Our stay in Singapore had been surprisingly wonderful, it's such a nice place, it's clean, the people are friendly and everything just works - we both would quite happily move there if it wasn't quite so expensive! Maybe I can land a fancy job with a top financial company and blah blah blah - pipe dreams!! Yes, we were leaving slightly poorer than intended, but we it was totally worth it, we'd clocked up an amazing number of kilometres over the 6 days, and learned that actually sleeping in dorm rooms isn't as bad as we thought (even the snoring man/possible tiger in the next room that kept us up till 3am!). Next stop - Jakarta.