Although really really long (22 hours) the trip from my hostel in Auckland to my hostel in Singapore via Brisbane was a pretty good trip. As it was a day flight from Brisbane to Singapore, I was not desperate to sleep and managed to catch up on some movies as I had enough time to watch 3 movies that I had missed in the last 6 months. Fabulous. Singapore airport was pretty cool and rather modern and smart not disimilar to OR Tambo International in Joburg although more Asian of course. It was fairly late by the time I arrived in Singapore but as the public transport system is great I was able to get from the airport to my hostel in Little India which was very Asian (Lonely Planet compares it to an area in Mumbai) with little difficulty. I had a teensy bit of difficulty finding my hostel but it took all of maybe 20 lively minutes to get there from the Underground system. As far as the smells and hot, humid weather went it was definitely obvious that I had arrived in Asia.
I am afraid to say that Singapore did not make a huge impact on me although as far as travelling to Asia for the 1st time went it was a great starting place as it was very much Asia but it was pretty clean & Westernised etc so that I was able to ease into the Asian thing & put my initial fears of Asia to rest. I was also fortunate that there were enough western loos in the various shopping centres & in my hostel that my squat loo experience would not be starting in Singapore.
I walked around the city for a couple of days, to see some off the sights, got a new mobile phone at this electronic super store that was 5 crazy floors of electronics, ate the food, went to the cinema when it rained to watch Australia which was in English with subtitles which was great as I was so movie deprived, met up with a cute Canadian guy, Adam, in the cinema who was waiting for a flight to Australia at 1am so we chatted and went for a bite to eat to pass his time which was pretty cool, checked out some of the shops, watched the Fountain of Wealth at Suntec City with a cool laser show which is apparently the biggest fountain in the world, snapped pictures of the Merlion (symbol of Singapore), Sir Raffles & the high rise, concrete city business district & visited the lovely Buddha Tooth Relic Temple.
I would be very interested to live somewhere like Singapore for a year purely for the experience of it as my initial impression is one of concrete jungle and a place that is filled with sky rises on a little island with very little greenery. Not ideal I think for a place to live permanently but certainly an interesting one to observe for a year.
