Singapore was such a nice break from the chaos and hassle of the previous two months - after our not-so-nice arrival, it was such an easy five days! We took an overnight bus down from Kuala Lumpur, and got stuck waiting in the wrong queue with the slowest immigration officer ever while he asked us our names (while holding our passports), and where we were going (quite obviously Singapore, no?). We'd known we were going to get to the hostel really early in the morning, so we'd emailed them ahead to make sure someone would be there to let us in...but we still had to hang around outside, banging on the doors and shouting up to the open windows, all the while terrified that we might be breaking one of the zillions of rules in Singapore. Eventually, the receptionist just got up off the sofa behind the desk in reception and let us in, having apparently decided that we probably weren't just going to go away given a bit of time. But after that, we really didn't encounter any hassle at all, and barely even did any haggling while we were there! It felt a lot like being back in London plus 30 degrees, and it was certainly roughly as expensive as living in London!

We got there just in time for Rosh Hashanah, and some MEAT! Being at shul there (which was on the same street as a church, Chinese temple and Hindu temple) felt uncannily like being back in Northwest London too - the faces all looked so familiar, despite being complete strangers.. We met a load of exchange students who were spending a few months studying there, and took advantage of their local knowledge - after two months in Muslim countries during Ramadan, it was a relief to finally be able to go clubbing easily, and with other people! Eating during the day without feeling guilty was nice too. We also got chatting to a Singaporean guy called Marcus, who was going through some tough things (he didn't really specify) when he was about 18, and stumbled across the Chabad and Aish websites one day...He's now 29, and is going to Sydney next year to complete his conversion and then hoping to move to Israel!

We also did quite a few touristy things there, of course, like going to the Raffles Museum, Singapore museum, and to the new harbour. We'd hoped to go to the top of the Marina Bay Sands hotel and see the infinity pool on the massive boat which is perched on top of three separate hotel buildings (see my facebook pictures - it's amazing!). But at $20 it seemed like a bit of a rip off, so we just admired the view from below, and enjoyed the shopping mall at the bottom. The number of shopping malls in Singapore is just crazy - it felt like we constantly had to walk through one to get anywhere, every time we exited the metro we ended up in another one...just insane. It actually got a bit much by the end, and despite the joys of having everything in English and not getting hassled by tuktuk drivers all the time, we were ready to move on by the end.