Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Happy Valentines Day to you all!
Our last few days in Darwin were spent lazing the time away in Aarons flat, the weather was really wet and windy, with some magnificent storms - typical Monsoon season weather!!
Anyway we flew in to Singapore on Tuesday evening, the airport here is huge and so clean and very English, almost like a city in itself! After finally finding our way to the MRT station we went straight to our hostel, which is in the Geyland area, apparently the red light district but we have not seen any action yet!. We popped out over the road for a quick beer and to plan the next couple of days before going to bed.
Wednesday we were up early and headed out to the Little India neighborhood. We had decided to do a walk in a tourist brochure, which actually turned out to be quite good! We did start off by getting lost in the Tekka food market but after that it was all good! We walked around some roads with loads of history including Serangoon Road, one of Singapore's oldest. Little India was full of colour and aromas and full of character.
We had lunch in one of the hawker centres, Sarah had pineapple fried rice which was beautiful and actually came served in a pineapple!I had a Mee Goreng which was pretty hot, blew Sarah's head off when she tried some - here's to the next 16 weeks of rice and noodles!!
After lunch we went temple spotting, firstly we went to a mosque, Masjid Abdul Gafoor. It is the only mosque in the world with a sundial at the entrance, it was built in 1907 and the architecture was pretty cool. Next was the Sri Veeramakaliamman Temple which is covered in crazy statues all over the outside and was very busy inside with people praying, celebrating and so on.We finished off by checking out a couple of Buddhist Temples including the Sakya Muni Buddha Gaya Temple otherwise known as the Temple of 1000 lights!Inside there was a 15m tall Buddha surrounded by hundreds of electric lights!
Early afternoon we went to Orchard Road, famed for its shops and there were loads of them. Since money doesn't grow on trees we had a quick look round some malls, did a bit of window shopping, before heading off pretty quickly.
Next we treated ourselves to the most expensive round of drinks of the year in the Long Bar in the Raffles Hotel where we had 2 of their famous Singapore Slings. It was great, really colonial and full of eccentricities like throwing monkey nut shells on the floor and the Heath-Robinson esq fans on the ceilings!! Of course it was full tourists and extremely expensive (only one drink each and we couldn't really afford that!) but still very enjoyable.
We went to the Night Safari in the evening, the only zoo I have ever heard of to only be open during the evening.They put on an 'animals of the night' show, you can then ride around the park in a tram to see the animals and how they behave in their habitats at night.It was an excellent zoo, the enclosures were some of the best we have ever seen and you could get really close to the animals, definitely worth it.We completely collapsed into bed after such a hectic day looking forward to being more chilled out tomorrow!
Thursday we spent the morning walking around the 'digital mall' full of shops selling all kinds of electronic goods - I was in heaven!It was very strange though, because the shops stay open very late into the night they don't open till 11.00am!We then went for a stroll around the Botanical Gardens which were nice and relaxing, although it was very humid so it didn't take much to feel very hot and sweaty!
Tonight we headed to Chinatown to wander around, check out the night markets and sample lots of the great food. Big news - Sarah actually managed to eat a whole meal with chopsticks, a big achievement for her!!!
Singapore is certainly as clean and safe as everyone says it is.It is a beautiful city that really seems to be going places, there are certainly a lot of people with lots of money around!It is so easy to get around on the MRT train/underground system and everyone speaks English, we can see why lots of English people move over here!
Tomorrow we catch a bus over the border into Malaysia heading for Kuala Lumpur.We have only had a short time in Singapore (2 days / 3 nights) but we certainly have made the most of it!
Take Care
Andrew and Sarah xxx
- comments