November 17th - 20th
Our last bus journey in Asia, from
Bukit Lewang to Medan in Sumatra, was typically hot, noisy and
cramped. What with not getting much sleep in the jungle, however, I
was very tired and managed to nod off, only waking when I heard
Robbie calling my name in Medan. I jumped up, feeling somewhat
confused, grabbed my rucksack and almost fell off the bus with my
shoes in my hand just as it started to pull away from the bus stop.
At Medan airport we met up with Sam and
Nick (who we'd travelled with from Malaysia to Lake Toba in Sumatra)
as we had convinced them to book the same flight as us to Singapore.
The English lads who I'd camped with in the jungle also showed up
shortly after as they were flying on to Kuala Lumper. How easy it is to recognise white Westerners in Asia! As we were
hours early for our flights, we all sat and chatted about our travels and
then went through the airport procedures together, grumbling in turn
about the 75,000 Rupiah we had to pay in departure tax.
Our flight to Singapore was scheduled
to land late evening so Robbie and I had planned to sleep in the
airport to save on the expense of a night's accommodation. The air
stewardess told us that up until a couple of years ago, Singapore won
the award for the best airport in the world for sixteen years running
so we became ever more convinced that our idea was a good one and
actually started to think the airport floor could be a lot nicer than
some of the hostels we've stayed in.
When we stepped off the plane, it felt
like we had travelled through time again. Bright lights, clean
floors, people in designer labels wearing shoes instead of flip flops, free
internet terminals, expensive coffee shops, spotless bathrooms with
toilets that flush when you stand up and taps that know before you do
when you want to wash your hands. No more squatting, no more going
around with our pockets stuffed with tissues to use as toilet paper,
disappointingly no more wonderful random conversations which are
easily started by strangers intrigued to know where we are from and
where we are going to (the two classic questions in Indonesia) and,
to my horror, no more coffee for 40 cents.
Despite the cleanliness, I didn't get
much sleep in Changi airport. We searched for a quiet spot with some
chairs we could push together but all the seats we saw had arm rests
making it impossible to lie across them. At midnight, after walking
around three terminals, I suggested to Robbie that we sleep in the “Viewing Area”
for that way although we'd be on the floor there too, at least he would have some planes to look at. The floor was cold and hard, airport
security personnel tapped us at about 2am to ask for our flight
details and passports (and surprisingly allowed us to carry on lying
there despite our flight to Australia not being until November 20th),
music played all night long (although the soft piano tunes were
tolerable after Sumatra's soul-destroying karaoke music) and cleaners
came and went frequently on motorised vehicles. At around 7am I
decided I'd be more comfortable on my feet and, in the style of Tom
Hanks in the film “Terminal”, went to the bathroom to get washed
and clean my teeth. It's tragic but true that, despite having
saved money on a night's accommodation, we then spent about half an
hour walking around the airport comparing the price of hot drinks at
different cafes. We felt rather chuffed with ourselves when we
discovered the staff's cheap food court in the basement of Terminal
1. With the bargain price of $ 0.85 for a cup of tea, we surely would
have picked up the first prize in the backpacking competition to
organise accommodation and breakfast in Singapore for as little as
possible ... if such a sad competition was to ever exist. Forget the
Lonely Planet's “Asia on a Shoestring” ... we're going for
“Travelling around Asia, Tramp Style.”
We left Changi airport at around 10am
after a twelve hour stint there and got the MTR into the city to go
to our youth hostel, “G4 Station”. There was some confusion about
whether the beds we had booked on-line were actually reserved for us
but after the typically Asian “no, no, no, no” we then got a
“yes, two beds, no problem”. The way that things always just
seem to work out if you ask three times in Asia I find very
interesting.
I can't really comment too much on
Singapore itself as most of my time there was spent stressing about
my camera being stolen, filing a police report and sorting out
documents for an insurance claim. It's quite a story but one I won't
go into here.
What we did do was meet Eva, our new
travelling companion for the remaining eight months of our trip. As
we waited for her to come through the gate, back at the airport which
we were becoming very familiar with, I thought about how everything
would logically change from then onwards. Our two was to become a
three, we would start speaking in German instead of in English, we
were about to change continents and, wonderfully, we had a third
person to share everything with.
Eva appeared before us, wearing a top
covered in goodbye messages scrawled in ink by friends and family, just as I imagined: looking
practical (“I don't think there's anything I haven't thought of
bringing”) and ready for an adventure. She kindly said she would
accompany me to the police station to report my stolen camera and Robbie went to spend the day
with Nick and Sam, returning in the early hours of the morning very
drunk, a lot poorer but happy about having managed to get into the Swiss Hotel and see Singapore from the 71st floor sometime during the course
of his twelve hour drinking stint. We agreed that "drinking" could be his substitute activity for my diving etc. so that he needn't feel guilty about the money he had spent.
For our last day in Singapore, all three
of us went to Santosa Island (a Disney-style beach island only a few
minutes on the train from the centre of Singapore) and then went to
Chinatown for lunch where Robbie and I introduced Eva to the wonders
of an Asian Food Court. We then wandered back to our hostel, taking
in the churches and temples among the sky scrapers, hotels and
shopping malls, to pick up our rucksacks and head to the airport. It
was a relief to sit on the plane but we couldn't sleep during the
night flight ... there was too much entertainment on offer and we
didn't want to miss out on any of the “free” food and drink.
Instead, I settled down to “Sex and the City” (the film) and
munched my way through lamb and rice, bread, salad, chocolate, ice
cream, (dinner) a banana (at around 4am), a pastry cake, fruit salad,
two biscuits (breakfast), two gin and tonics and a couple of coffees.
It would seem that our "Beef Fried Rice Days" were, unfortunately (because we'd both enjoyed the Asian food and four
months have already gone by!), behind us. We couldn't
deny, however, that we were looking forward to some burgers and sausages and we had
a feeling we wouldn't have a problem finding these in the land of
barbecues and beer where we were to land next.
