Our final stop.....Singapore! :)

Singapore is probably the best city we have been too, it's so modern compared to anywhere else I have been including London. We have only been here for 2 nights and have a couple of hours left before our flight leaves the airport back home, although we have the pleasure of changing flights in Saudi Arabia with a 5 hour stop-over in the airport, can't complain considering it was only 220 pound to get home! Let's get started on Singapore.....

Our flight left Indonesia at 7:30am in the morning so it was an early start and Georgia fell asleep as soon as the wheels left the runway but was hard for me to tell as we were seated 10 rows away from each, it allowed me to spend the last of our currency on food for myself lol. We arrived at the airport and made our way to the train station, the station was so clean and was because there is a £250 fine for even eating or drinking on the trains. The country also has a ban of chewing gum which is another explanation on why the streets are spotless.

Our hostel was located in Little India and we was staying in a dorm with 24 other people which was made up of 8 double beds and 8 single beds and seemed to be full the first night! It was strange as the double beds were on the lower bunk and the single beds were above the double beds on the top bunk.

Strange, but it worked!

We have not stayed in too many hostels and when we have we have had a private room because it has been so cheap. The average basic room with a double bed within Singapore is around a 100 pound a night whereas a double bed in a hotel was 20 pound so it only seemed logical to stay in a dorm. The "boutique" hostel that we are staying in is basically a 5-star hostel if that is possible, and has only been open for a few months. The bathrooms are huge and always clean, there is a big breakfast area, a kitchen and even a games/cinema room. I am currently writing this blog in the hostel on a Apple computer with a huge screen so this hostel is definitely not done on the cheap! The rooms are a little small but we have spent so much time trying to cram in as much of Singapore as we can in 2 days, that we haven't really been in it much!

See we did make it to Australia!

After we checked into the hostel we headed to Singapore Zoo as it had good reviews and the orang-utans had free-roaming of the zoo, basically not in any cages which seemed a good idea. We got there at 2 o'clock a little tired from our early start and had 4 hours to explore the zoo before it shut at 6. Immediately after buying our tickets at the counter, it chucked it down for a solid hour flooding the whole place, thunder and lightning constantly until about 3 o clock whilst we was hiding under shelter. When it stopped we only had a couple of hours left to explore the zoo and we had not even started! I'm not a big animal fan, well zoos to be specific but this was good including seeing kangaroos in the "Australian outback" enclosure as they wasn't in cages and the kangaroos were just walking around not bothered by the people surrounding them. Georgia even fed a giraffe, although I didn't get the camera out fast enough to take a picture. We also saw an elephant show and a seal show which was good. In the end the zoo was a good afternoon out although I was so tired after deciding to eat rather than sleep on the plane earlier in the day.

True fact!

We got back to the hostel at 7pm and after resting my eyes for half hour or so and having a shower, it was off out again! After "googling" and speaking to the staff, we headed to Clarke Quay which was on the river full of restaurants and bars, they even had a Hooters! We was having a heart attack on the price of things though, the price of a pint was around 7 pound and a Jagerbomb was 10 pound! Each bar seemed to have a live band and after having a walk around we found a place offering buy one get one free all night with a band playing inside. We only had one drink as we had been up for so long and we headed back to the dorm and feel straight to sleep.

Temple

The next day Georgia wasn't happy as she was woken up early by kids, should kids even be allowed to be stay in a dorm??? Follow her on twitter to get a jist of how angry she was. They didn't wake me up as I was so tired from the day before, I don't even think an earthquake would have woken me. When I finally managed to get myself out of bed, we had unlimited breakfast, nothing too fancy though; fruit, toast and cereal and we headed to Chinatown recommended by a nice woman working at the hostel. Chinatown was very nice and authentic with lots of stalls selling cheap souvenirs to add to the presents we already bought in Indonesia. We tried a bit of street food and went to a hawker centre, which is where there are dozens of stalls under one-roof selling cheap food so we tried some of the chicken and rice but wasn't nothing special to be honest! We also walked down a street in Chinatown where there were 4 places of worship on one street within a few hundred metres of each other including a Mosque, a Temple, a Wat and a Church which gave Georgia an excuse to get her camera out. Singapore seems very keen on religions working in harmony. We were in Chinatown for a couple of hours before we jumped back on the train to Orchard Street which is basically a less crowded larger version of Oxford Street.

When we got our the station we were surrounded by shops such as Louis Vuitton, Prada and Hugo Boss and other shops that was slightly out of a price-range lol. It was nice to just walk around and people-watch until we come to the end of the street and found a shopping mall to find that there was a Marks & Spencer. We went in there on the off-chance they done food and thankfully they did and I went on the hunt for custard creams whilst Georgia looked for some shortbread! There was also a huge supermarket in the mall and we ended up buying meatballs, cheese, pasta and Jamie Oliver's pasta sauce. It was strange because a lot of the food was from Waitrose and was being sold by a different supermarket for a slightly higher price. We also managed to find some cheap beer (rare in Singapore) to go with the meal that Georgia was now cooking for us for dinner. We had the biggest portion of spaghetti and meatballs that I've ever had with a mountain of cheese to go with it. We also watched "Horrible Bosses" in the outdoor cinema room and had the room to ourselves and lounged around on the beanbags.

Singapore at night

That evening, we went to Marina Bay where there was a laser show surrounded by the skyscrapers in the business district. They even had the Singapore flyer which was identical to the London Eye. It was a bit annoying as we missed the laser show but we walked around for a hour or so but by this point our legs were falling off from the amount of walking we had done in the past 2 days so we headed back and passed out in the dorm.

This morning we had yet another walk around the city that we had not not been to, including Arab Street which was different but nothing too amazing. Our hostel was in Little India and it was quite nice compared to the other dirty Little India districts that we had visited in Kuala Lumpur and Georgetown and felt a bit more safer. The Indian men in all the countries that we have been to have an habit of staring, especially at Georgia and haven't got a care in the world that they are doing it!

That's it, we are heading to the airport and running out of time, we don't want to miss out flight now....or do we? lol. I will write a final blog once we are home, and just for your information we have had 1600 views on our blog in the past 16 weeks so thank you for reading!

James and Georgia x