Tuesday 30 March 2010

Singapore

The flight to Singapore was uneventful and I landed safely at Changi Airport at 10.30am. On landing the stewardess made the usual announcements and then came out with "Ladies and Gentlemen, this is a serious announcement: drug trafficking is a illegal in Singapore and carries a mandatory death sentence"... Well that's good to know! I got through passport control ok but then got stopped at customs as my razor blade in my wash bag confused the x-ray machine (your bags get x-rayed on the way out of the airport as well as in). Took a while for them to figure out what it was but finally they let me out!

I caught the train (MRT) from Changi to Aljuied where my hostel was. The ticket system was sooo cool (well, it amused me). You pay for the ticket and the price includes a $1 deposit. The ticket is actually a card, like an Oyster card which you swipe to get through the barriers. Once you get to your destination you then put the ticket back in the ticket machine and it gives you a dollar back! Yeah I know, little things please little minds...

Got slightly lost trying to find my hostel before realising it was through an unmarked door into basically a block of flats. They'd converted one flat into a hostel so you had a proper living room and kitchen with some small bedrooms.

In my room I met a Swiss guy called Sven who had also just arrived so the two of us caught the MRT and then a bus to the infamous Changi Prison where the Japanese had kept POWs during World War II. The prison is still in use but has been modernised and the old structues are no longer there. All that's there for tourists to see is a small museum just about life in the prison and Singapore during the Japanese occupation. It was quite interesting but very small and not what I was expecting. From there we caught a bus into the city centre and found somewhere to eat. Then jumped on the tourist "hop-on, hop-off" buses for a tour of the city. It was a really good way to get an overview of Singapore, especially as I only had the afternoon there. We saw the Singapore Eye (5m bigger than the London Eye), the F1 racetrack, Little India, China Town and the old colonial buildings as well as driving down a really posh street full of expensive houses and the famous Orchard Road with all the designer shops and malls. We got off at the super-posh Raffles Hotel which looked like something out of the 1900s colonial era (which is actually was but it was so glamorous!). From there we went to the Bugis indoor market for a nosey around before grabbing a drink. After that I headed back to the hostel to finish packing and get an early night.

Singapore was very bizarre. It's definitely not an 'Asian' city, but nor is it really European or American. I'd definitely say it's unique. I couldn't make up my mind whether I liked it or not. I don't know if more time there would have helped, or if my one afternoon was actually enough. Odd.

Had a panic attack the next morning as I realised I hadn't changed the time on my phone so when I thought it was 6am it was actually 7am and I had to rush out to catch the MRT back to Changi Airport. The train felt like it took forwever and I rushed to the check-in desk only to be told it was ok, I had pleant of time. Panic over, I got through security and then remembered I hadn't found out the address of my hostel in Perth. Luckily they had free internet so I could quickly look it up before boarding my flight to Australia!!!! :D

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