Murpphy's little law is kicking my ass today. It all started when I was trying to leave Anitbes. I was at Sarah's parents place trying to print my ticket, and for some reason the internet wouldn't work. But i stayed calm, as her dad fiddled with the phone lines. He got it up and working and as we head to the station Sarha turns to the Gare d'Antibes. "Uh I leave out of Nice," I said. So it turned out that there wasbn't enough time to get to Nice, so we went inside and asked an attendant if I could board tyhere in Antibes. It took a while, but he said that I had to go to Cannes and get the train there. No, problem, Great! It was sorted. Then it turns out that the Cannes train was running late, so I could get the train at Antibes afterall.
The train ride, was not so bad, I slept most of the way, waking momentarily at times to look at eh French countryside. When I got off at Paris, Mattieu was waiting for me. He informed that I was 50 minutes late. I felt really bad, b/c he had come all the way to get me and had to wait for almost an hour. It was already 10:30 so we just headed to a bar not far from teh station. We had a few drinksa nd did some catching up. My tails of OZ land were trumped tenfold by his recent job in Uganda and South Africa schmoozing with diplomats. We headed back to his house and had a couple glasses of wine and he showed pictures from his trip to Nepal (where I MUST GO). It was 4am when I finally went to sleep, and it was 7:15 when I dragged myself out of bed.
I caught the train fine and got to the airport in plenty of time, which was good since United failed to notify Singapore Airlines that I changed my ticket. After about an hour it was all taken care of. The secrity line was HUGE, and I was sure i'd miss my flight, but the woman who had helped told me I could go to the front, where I was just in time for last call for boarding. 14 hours later (which is 2 hours longer than the flight from Sydney to LA) I was in Singapore.
I'd have to say I wasn't really that impressed with Singapore. It was just another big city, and a very western one at that. I will say that it is rediculously clean. I mean spotless. I took a tinkle at the airport, and a woman went in after me to tidy up . I thought that it was a bit of an insult at first, she should be so lucky as to have a bit of my precious urine on her toilet seat, but then i realized that she did it after everyone.
I had about 8 hours to kill, which would have been nice, if it weren't pissing down rain and I wasn't running on no sleep. But, I had no other options, so I left my luggage at the airport adn walked around for hours ans hours. I went into a couple of temples, the first one was nice, b/c it was mostly outdoors. I i took off my shoes and walked in. Tourists were only allowed to go a few places, but it was still interesting. Seeing business men slip off their leather shoes and kneel in prayer in front of one of the many statues.
I also viisted the famous Merlion (half fish, half lion...a statue by the way) and went to the Asions Civilazations Museum. It was hard, b/c I was exhausted.
The best by far was the Buddha Toothe Temple, where you can view, in addition to several very impressive Buddhas, a relic that holds the toothe of Buddha. Long story short the first Buddha was divided into a million pieces that are housed in locations all over the world. And right there in front of my face was one of them. I couldn't actually see the tooth (thank god) but to know it was there inside the ornate little relic was amazing.
I lost track of time and got to the airport with 45 minutes until my flight. I ranand grabbed my bag and then looked to see which kiosk was Tiger Airways. Turns out i had to go down two levels and take a bus. Shit! I was going to miss my flight. So I waddled with my 13kilo bag to the bus and got to the Tiger airways desk with 25 minutes left before the flight was due to take off. But when I got to the gate it was another 35 minutes before we boarded.
At 8:15 I a rrived in bagkok. I recevied my first scam when a lady kindly offered me her cell phone when the pay phone didn't work and then told me I had to take her taxi or pay her 20 baht. I pad the money and took a bust to Khoa San Rd. My hostel was nice. It was a small single room and cost me about 7AUD. I put my stuff down and went out for a lovely dinner of glass noodle pad thai and two small beers (total 8AUD). I went home realizing how exhausted I was. In the past 2 days I had been in 3 countries, done aboout 7 hours of walking and had only about 5 hours of sleep. So off to bed I went
