Happy New Year to everyone!
So.... since our last post when we were in our amazing resort in Thailand... we left there on Saturday 29th and flew from Ko Samui airport to Bangkok for the night... I don't know if anyone has ever flown from Ko Samui airport but it's really quite something! It's owned and run solely by Bangkok Airways and it's only about 10 years old... The airport staff all wear Hawaiian shirts, the departure gates are small bamboo lounges with free internet, drinks and food...! It's quite incredible! We'll add some pictures to Flickr...
Anyhoo, we spent one final night in Bangkok, our fourth visit this trip (!) and we flew out to Singapore at 1245 on Sunday 30th.
On arrival in Singapore it was quite noticable how affluent this city is, it's also incredibly clean and modern. The population are mainly Chinese but about 1/3 are Indian so the cuisine is a great mix between Malay/Chinese food and some great curries!
Our hostel is four stops from the main City Hall area. When we arrived at the hostel there we lots of people waiting to check in and one girl told me it had taken her 3 hours to get checked in...! The hostel is run by one guy who does all the bookings, cleaning and check-ins etc so he's pretty rushed off his feet...! Crazy place but quiet at night so not too bad...
We went out to Boat Quay for the evening and had a delicious meal of local prawns, fish cakes, rice and Carl had a black pepper beef dish.. yummy! Mind you, it cost about the same as our whole budget for a week in Cambodia so we're getting used to more Western prices already....
Day 2 in Singapore saw us go shopping....... Uh oh! We hadn't planned to spend any money but Carl bought two Lyle and Scott polo shirts for only 6 pounds each..! We think they're about 50 pounds in the UK!! Oh and a pair of Croc flip-flops... I desperately tried to find a fancy top to wear for New Years Eve but the Singaporean sizes are as bad as the rest of Asia.. roll on Oz where I hope (pray) that there are big-busted women there!?!?!
We then headed back to the hostel to shower and get ready for New Years Eve... We'd agreed to head out to Clarke Quay for the night in the hope that we could find a nice Indian restaurant for dinner and then a bar before watching the fireworks... We found a great Indian restaurant called RAS and fortunately they found a waterfront table for us... We had a really great, in fact possibly one of the best, Indian meals we've ever had. We then found a micro brewery called BREWERKZ where we sampled some of their beers and had some shots called Brain Damage.... Mmmmm. Getting tipsy!
At 2330 we headed out to the waterfront to watch the fireworks, there was a huge crowd of people there and as the clock struck mignight it seemed we were in totally the wrong location to see them! Lots of skyscrapers in the way! Hilarious! We were full of New Years sprirt anyway so didn't mind too much! A great New Years Eve for us.
Yesterday, nursing a small hangover, we headed out for some lunch.. In the afternoon we went to the CHANGI museum and chapel. This is a great museum describing the prison in Changi which was used by the Japanese during their occupation of Singapore during the second world war for POW's. The POW's built a chapel by hand so they could worship whilst being incarcerated.
For dinner we went to Chinatown and had some food at one of the famous 'hawker' stalls here in Singapore. Great cheap food and beer, all served on plastic tables in the street!
Today (Weds) we got up early to go to the ZOO! Not being a huge fan of zoo's I was a little uncertain whether we should go but we had heard incredible things about Singapore Zoo so we decided to go... WOWEEE, what an amazing zoo. By far the most incredible zoo we will probably ever go to... All the enclosures are as free roaming as they can be. The zoo is built in natural jungle and so the Orangutans can roam amongst the tree-tops freely and the lions have large enclosures and the animals seem really well cared for... We saw white rhinos, giraffes, gibbons, a leopard, and all sorts of amazing animals... A busy and exhausting day.....
Tomorrow (Thurs) we are going to potter around the shops some more and then head to the airport for our flight to Perth at 1945.....
We'll be in touch once we arrive in Oz... (we're very excited!!!)
Becs and Carl xxxx
