Thursday, January 25, 2007
Bangkok or Bust
I arrived in Bangkok on Tuesday and it's been quite an adventure. I can't make up my mind whether I love or hate this place.
I flew up here with Air Asia, the region's low cost carrier, and it was a good flight. I then got a taxi to Charlie House guesthouse where I'm staying, and so far it seems like the taxi driver who got me here from the airport is the only one in Bangkok who knows where the place is!
Yesterday I wandered around the Grand Palace, which was absolutely beautiful, everywhere you looked was a photo opportunity, although you couldn't take photos of the Emerald Buddha. From there I headed to Khao San Road, that legendary backpacker ghetto... which didn't look too much like a ghetto to me, but there was only about 2 places along the road that I would've stayed at! I had a nice pad thai for lunch and then walked over to the canal and got a boat down it and back up. Back at Khao San Road I had to get back to my hotel... and that was a bit of a nightmare really... Suffice to say I arrived back about an hour later than I should have and had seen more of Bangkok than I had originally intended...!
Today I headed out to the subway to try and find my own way round a bit more, and ended up at Khao San again. I ran into a dude from TAT (the tourist people out here) and it seems that the new government is really putting a big push on tourism out here in light of recent events. I ended up at their offices and before I knew it I was booked on the train up to Chiang Mai next Monday, then going trekking, elephant riding and bamboo rafting around the hill tribes for 3 days/2 nights... omg how scared am i at this... and then heading up into Laos at Hui Xuay (sp?), making my way down the Mekong to Vientiane the capital and flying back to Bangkok in time to start my tour into Cambodia and Vietnam. I also booked a learn to dive course on Ko Tao for an open date in March. This I'm really looking forward to... and gives me a clearer picture of what I'm doing on the way down to Singapore... not sure I'm gonna make it to the Perhentians, which I'm a bit disappointed about, but we'll see. (I think this is gonna be the bust part!)
This evening I got the sky train and MRT back to the hotel now that I knew my way, and stopped off at the night bazaar along the way... and went on this big ferris wheel and got some pretty cool views of Bangkok at night.
Tomorrow I'm moving digs to somewhere a bit cheaper and preparing for the trip up to Chiang Mai. You might say I'm bricking it, having to live without my kitchen sink for a few days...yikes! But I guess there's really no point in coming out this way if you're not gonna leave said sink behind for a while and the trekking is a "must-do". So I"m gonna do it.
For the next couple days I'm gonna see about taking some day tours around and out to the River Kwai and see some tigers and other things.
I flew up here with Air Asia, the region's low cost carrier, and it was a good flight. I then got a taxi to Charlie House guesthouse where I'm staying, and so far it seems like the taxi driver who got me here from the airport is the only one in Bangkok who knows where the place is!
Yesterday I wandered around the Grand Palace, which was absolutely beautiful, everywhere you looked was a photo opportunity, although you couldn't take photos of the Emerald Buddha. From there I headed to Khao San Road, that legendary backpacker ghetto... which didn't look too much like a ghetto to me, but there was only about 2 places along the road that I would've stayed at! I had a nice pad thai for lunch and then walked over to the canal and got a boat down it and back up. Back at Khao San Road I had to get back to my hotel... and that was a bit of a nightmare really... Suffice to say I arrived back about an hour later than I should have and had seen more of Bangkok than I had originally intended...!
Today I headed out to the subway to try and find my own way round a bit more, and ended up at Khao San again. I ran into a dude from TAT (the tourist people out here) and it seems that the new government is really putting a big push on tourism out here in light of recent events. I ended up at their offices and before I knew it I was booked on the train up to Chiang Mai next Monday, then going trekking, elephant riding and bamboo rafting around the hill tribes for 3 days/2 nights... omg how scared am i at this... and then heading up into Laos at Hui Xuay (sp?), making my way down the Mekong to Vientiane the capital and flying back to Bangkok in time to start my tour into Cambodia and Vietnam. I also booked a learn to dive course on Ko Tao for an open date in March. This I'm really looking forward to... and gives me a clearer picture of what I'm doing on the way down to Singapore... not sure I'm gonna make it to the Perhentians, which I'm a bit disappointed about, but we'll see. (I think this is gonna be the bust part!)
This evening I got the sky train and MRT back to the hotel now that I knew my way, and stopped off at the night bazaar along the way... and went on this big ferris wheel and got some pretty cool views of Bangkok at night.
Tomorrow I'm moving digs to somewhere a bit cheaper and preparing for the trip up to Chiang Mai. You might say I'm bricking it, having to live without my kitchen sink for a few days...yikes! But I guess there's really no point in coming out this way if you're not gonna leave said sink behind for a while and the trekking is a "must-do". So I"m gonna do it.
For the next couple days I'm gonna see about taking some day tours around and out to the River Kwai and see some tigers and other things.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
More Malaysia
I stayed in Pangkor for a couple more days. On Tuesday I took a boat trip around the nearby islands, with an American couple I'd met at Taman Negara, plus a couple others. The water was pretty clear and there were loads of fish. We knew there was another beach on the other side of the island so decided to snorkel round to it (we knew it was a really small island). On the way, there was a monkey sitting on the rock. We stopped about 30 feet away, while another dude went right up to the rock, about 2 feet away to take pictures... and that monkey went right down to him and was hissing away. The dude was lucky the monkey didn't feel like swimming cos he was ready to bite a piece out of him. We just swam on round to the bay, keeping a decent distance!
On Thursday I headed back to the mainland and took a bus up to Butterworth to catch the ferry to Penang (cost under 2GBP). Penang was unbelieveably hot, the worst I've experienced so far. It's the kind of heat that makes you not want to leave the hotel building cos you're just gonna wilt. I did manage to make a trip on a non-a/c bus round the island to a butterfly farm, which was really neat, about 2,000 butterflies in this enclosure that you walk through, plus scorpions in a tank and other creepy crawlies...
There was other stuff I'd've liked to have done in Penang, but it just wasn't gonna happen. So yesterday I took the ferry upto Langkawi which is where I am now. It's a wee bit cooler than Penang - manageable - just! I went to a seafood restaurant (figuring I'm gonna be eating a lot of fish when I get into Cambodia and Vietnam, and thinking I should get used to it while the consequenes are manageable) and had some sting ray. Afterwards we went to the bar attached to the hostel (run by an english dude who is currently irate cos an irish couple came here a few days ago and wrote up on the booking website that if you're not english you're not welcome here... I think he sent quite a few emails back to them for it!) and watched the football on ESPN. Just as the Spurs-Fulham game came on, they changed the channel to the Newcastle match as a couple Geordies were in the bar... I had to bribe everyone with shots to get to watch about 15 mins of it at the end! So today I was hungover and I don't think the sting ray agreed with me particularly either :-(. It's really beautiful here but things are spaced out a bit and the beach has no shade so I'm not sure what I'm gonna do with the rest of my time here. I've booked a flight up to Bangkok on Tuesday evening so I've got a wee bit of time to play with for now.
Have realised finally that three months is nowhere near long enough to do everything I wanted to do here in South East Asia! I think I should be able to get to Laos for about a week or so, then I start my tour on the 11th Feb and finish on the 9th March, then have to get back down to Singapore within about 3-4 weeks - and I was planning on going back down Vietnam on the Reunification Express, then hanging out on a few Thai islands and learning to dive, plus pull in to the islands on the east coast of Malaysia on the way... We'll see I guess huh?
Enjoy the cold weather back home... I envy you!
Sx
On Thursday I headed back to the mainland and took a bus up to Butterworth to catch the ferry to Penang (cost under 2GBP). Penang was unbelieveably hot, the worst I've experienced so far. It's the kind of heat that makes you not want to leave the hotel building cos you're just gonna wilt. I did manage to make a trip on a non-a/c bus round the island to a butterfly farm, which was really neat, about 2,000 butterflies in this enclosure that you walk through, plus scorpions in a tank and other creepy crawlies...
There was other stuff I'd've liked to have done in Penang, but it just wasn't gonna happen. So yesterday I took the ferry upto Langkawi which is where I am now. It's a wee bit cooler than Penang - manageable - just! I went to a seafood restaurant (figuring I'm gonna be eating a lot of fish when I get into Cambodia and Vietnam, and thinking I should get used to it while the consequenes are manageable) and had some sting ray. Afterwards we went to the bar attached to the hostel (run by an english dude who is currently irate cos an irish couple came here a few days ago and wrote up on the booking website that if you're not english you're not welcome here... I think he sent quite a few emails back to them for it!) and watched the football on ESPN. Just as the Spurs-Fulham game came on, they changed the channel to the Newcastle match as a couple Geordies were in the bar... I had to bribe everyone with shots to get to watch about 15 mins of it at the end! So today I was hungover and I don't think the sting ray agreed with me particularly either :-(. It's really beautiful here but things are spaced out a bit and the beach has no shade so I'm not sure what I'm gonna do with the rest of my time here. I've booked a flight up to Bangkok on Tuesday evening so I've got a wee bit of time to play with for now.
Have realised finally that three months is nowhere near long enough to do everything I wanted to do here in South East Asia! I think I should be able to get to Laos for about a week or so, then I start my tour on the 11th Feb and finish on the 9th March, then have to get back down to Singapore within about 3-4 weeks - and I was planning on going back down Vietnam on the Reunification Express, then hanging out on a few Thai islands and learning to dive, plus pull in to the islands on the east coast of Malaysia on the way... We'll see I guess huh?
Enjoy the cold weather back home... I envy you!
Sx
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Malaysia week one and a bit
For some strange reason I haven't been able to log into the blog for the last week.
I finished up my time in Singapore just mooching around... I spent a day on Sentosa Island - went luging (v tame although the ski lift was a wee bit high!), watched a pink dolphin show, saw some sharks in the Underwater World - and went to the Bukit Timah nature reserve - scaled a 163m high mountain for fun.
Last Saturday I got on the bus up to Kuala Lumpur. That was quite an experience - they've got it down to a fine art. You get driven up to the causeway linking Singapore to Malaysia, at which point you go into the Departures bit, then straight back on the bus, over the causeway and into the Malaysi Arrivals terminal - where I swear they had more passport people available for three coachloads of people than any airport would have for three plane loads! Then it was straight through customs, back on the bus and up to KL, smooth as silk. I arrived in KL at about 3.30 in the afternoon and got a taxi to the place I had booked - "the Haven" - which was really nice and clean, although the walls were a bit thin! It was actually only a 5 minute walk away from the bus station but it was at the start of a really long road and I hadn't known beforehand just how far up it would be.
I spent Sunday chilling out mainly, then on Monday I took a tour around the city on the new hop on hop off bus which had only just started about a week before and they were still ironing out teething problems - like knowing when to cue the recorded commentary... But it was really good to give me a better idea of the layout of the city and where areas were. I stopped off at the Petronas Twin Towers - highest twin towers in the world now, around 88 floors. Unfortunately the bridge between the two towers was closed on Monday so I had to go back on Tuesday to get my ticket. I got there at around 10.45am and the earliest I could get on the bridge would be 3.15pm. They only let about 20 people on it at a time for 10 minutes. The bridge is around 45 floors, or 170m up from street level, and you get a pretty good view of the city. Unfortunately the PC I'm at wont let me hook up my camera so I can't show photos at this stage.
On Wednesday I took a trip outside KL, up to Taman Negara - Malaysia's premier national park. I stayed in a wee village called Kuala Tahan. This is a three and a half hour bus ride and a three hour boat ride from KL. The boat trip was pretty cool, the boats were sampans which meant I was sitting at the water level, and felt a bit precarious at times. The village itself is a bit primitive. For a kitchen sink girl like me, not having hot water was, while not unexpected, a bit of a pain - it wasn't quite warm enough to be able to wash my hair in the cold water!
On the Wednesday evening I went out on a 4wd jungle safari. The truck was a toyota with two benches on the back, but Billy, one of the guides, invited me to sit up on top of the cab with him. It was a bit daunting, but was definitely the way to go. Unfortunately, as it is a rainforest, it had been raining and the ground was pretty muddy. So muddy that the truck got stuck. They spent about half an hour trying to get it out, but it had slid backwards and sideways into a ditch and was at what felt, from the top of the cab, rather precarious! So I got down pretty quickly! It was clear that we weren't gonna get the truck out after half an hour of pushing so we took a wee vote and decided that the guides were gonna walk up to the road for help, and I decided to go with them - I would have gone mad sat in the truck waiting. As it turned out, the road was only about a 10 minute walk away and we flagged down a bike straight away and the other guide went back to the village with him for help. Billy also called his cousin. Billy and I sat and waited on a bench by the road, and watched for barn owls. About 20 mins later the cousin arrived and went down to try to help get the truck unstuck. About an hour after that, the other guide arrived with another 4wd truck and Billy and I climbed in and went back to the others. Turns out they had just got the truck unstuck. So we headed back to the village, stopping along the way for water as the engine was in danger of overheating, and arrived back at about 1.30am rather than the 11pm we had been told! By the way, I was well prepared for this scenario... I had decent shoes, water, a torch, a penknife and an umbrella and a cell phone. I will always carry the kitchen sink with me!
The next day, Thursday, I went for a walk into the jungle and walked along the canopy walkway, which is the longest tree top walkway in the world at around 500m. This was pretty cool, but really high up - it was even freaking me out!
For the afternoon, I just chilled out as I didn't want to tempt fate and have anything else go wrong... such as getting stuck upstream or having a boat go kaput on me!
On Friday, we got the boat back down the river, this time only taking 2 hours, and then the bus back to KL.
Saturday, I went back to the Twin Towers as I had to take something back to M&S there. I also went to Times Square (where there are around 10 floors of shops - ridiculous! and no good shoes!) and went to the indoor theme park there. It cost about 3.50GBP to get in, and some of the rides were a bit scary! Check out http://www.timessquarekl.com/themepark.html. The roller coaster wasn't in action, but I did go on the Spinning Orbit and the Space Attack - the latter really scary as you come out of your seat when you're upside down - you're left praying that the overhead securing thingy doesn't come unstuck cos that's all that's holding you there!
Today, Sunday, I took a bus up to Lumut, about halfway up the west coast of Malaysia, to get a ferry to Pulau Pangkor where I am now. I'm staying at a place called the Seagull Beach Resort which isn't on the beach, and I wouldn't call a resort, but I have my own room with a bathroom and air con for about 5.75GBP a night. It's still ridiculously humid here, sweat just drips off you. Tomorrow I'm thinking of going on a snorkelling trip to a couple of nearby islands, otherwise I'll just spend my time here on the beach as I need to get my legs tanned. The beach here is really lovely so it's no hardship.
I'm not sure how long I'm gonna stay here, it depends on whether I decided to go to Langkawi or not. I need to get up to Bangkok in about 10 days max and I can fly from either Penang (where I'm headed next) or Langkawi for about 15GBP one way!
Will keep you posted. Hope everyone's having fun wherever you are, and are enjoying the winter.
Sx
I finished up my time in Singapore just mooching around... I spent a day on Sentosa Island - went luging (v tame although the ski lift was a wee bit high!), watched a pink dolphin show, saw some sharks in the Underwater World - and went to the Bukit Timah nature reserve - scaled a 163m high mountain for fun.
Last Saturday I got on the bus up to Kuala Lumpur. That was quite an experience - they've got it down to a fine art. You get driven up to the causeway linking Singapore to Malaysia, at which point you go into the Departures bit, then straight back on the bus, over the causeway and into the Malaysi Arrivals terminal - where I swear they had more passport people available for three coachloads of people than any airport would have for three plane loads! Then it was straight through customs, back on the bus and up to KL, smooth as silk. I arrived in KL at about 3.30 in the afternoon and got a taxi to the place I had booked - "the Haven" - which was really nice and clean, although the walls were a bit thin! It was actually only a 5 minute walk away from the bus station but it was at the start of a really long road and I hadn't known beforehand just how far up it would be.
I spent Sunday chilling out mainly, then on Monday I took a tour around the city on the new hop on hop off bus which had only just started about a week before and they were still ironing out teething problems - like knowing when to cue the recorded commentary... But it was really good to give me a better idea of the layout of the city and where areas were. I stopped off at the Petronas Twin Towers - highest twin towers in the world now, around 88 floors. Unfortunately the bridge between the two towers was closed on Monday so I had to go back on Tuesday to get my ticket. I got there at around 10.45am and the earliest I could get on the bridge would be 3.15pm. They only let about 20 people on it at a time for 10 minutes. The bridge is around 45 floors, or 170m up from street level, and you get a pretty good view of the city. Unfortunately the PC I'm at wont let me hook up my camera so I can't show photos at this stage.
On Wednesday I took a trip outside KL, up to Taman Negara - Malaysia's premier national park. I stayed in a wee village called Kuala Tahan. This is a three and a half hour bus ride and a three hour boat ride from KL. The boat trip was pretty cool, the boats were sampans which meant I was sitting at the water level, and felt a bit precarious at times. The village itself is a bit primitive. For a kitchen sink girl like me, not having hot water was, while not unexpected, a bit of a pain - it wasn't quite warm enough to be able to wash my hair in the cold water!
On the Wednesday evening I went out on a 4wd jungle safari. The truck was a toyota with two benches on the back, but Billy, one of the guides, invited me to sit up on top of the cab with him. It was a bit daunting, but was definitely the way to go. Unfortunately, as it is a rainforest, it had been raining and the ground was pretty muddy. So muddy that the truck got stuck. They spent about half an hour trying to get it out, but it had slid backwards and sideways into a ditch and was at what felt, from the top of the cab, rather precarious! So I got down pretty quickly! It was clear that we weren't gonna get the truck out after half an hour of pushing so we took a wee vote and decided that the guides were gonna walk up to the road for help, and I decided to go with them - I would have gone mad sat in the truck waiting. As it turned out, the road was only about a 10 minute walk away and we flagged down a bike straight away and the other guide went back to the village with him for help. Billy also called his cousin. Billy and I sat and waited on a bench by the road, and watched for barn owls. About 20 mins later the cousin arrived and went down to try to help get the truck unstuck. About an hour after that, the other guide arrived with another 4wd truck and Billy and I climbed in and went back to the others. Turns out they had just got the truck unstuck. So we headed back to the village, stopping along the way for water as the engine was in danger of overheating, and arrived back at about 1.30am rather than the 11pm we had been told! By the way, I was well prepared for this scenario... I had decent shoes, water, a torch, a penknife and an umbrella and a cell phone. I will always carry the kitchen sink with me!
The next day, Thursday, I went for a walk into the jungle and walked along the canopy walkway, which is the longest tree top walkway in the world at around 500m. This was pretty cool, but really high up - it was even freaking me out!
For the afternoon, I just chilled out as I didn't want to tempt fate and have anything else go wrong... such as getting stuck upstream or having a boat go kaput on me!
On Friday, we got the boat back down the river, this time only taking 2 hours, and then the bus back to KL.
Saturday, I went back to the Twin Towers as I had to take something back to M&S there. I also went to Times Square (where there are around 10 floors of shops - ridiculous! and no good shoes!) and went to the indoor theme park there. It cost about 3.50GBP to get in, and some of the rides were a bit scary! Check out http://www.timessquarekl.com/themepark.html. The roller coaster wasn't in action, but I did go on the Spinning Orbit and the Space Attack - the latter really scary as you come out of your seat when you're upside down - you're left praying that the overhead securing thingy doesn't come unstuck cos that's all that's holding you there!
Today, Sunday, I took a bus up to Lumut, about halfway up the west coast of Malaysia, to get a ferry to Pulau Pangkor where I am now. I'm staying at a place called the Seagull Beach Resort which isn't on the beach, and I wouldn't call a resort, but I have my own room with a bathroom and air con for about 5.75GBP a night. It's still ridiculously humid here, sweat just drips off you. Tomorrow I'm thinking of going on a snorkelling trip to a couple of nearby islands, otherwise I'll just spend my time here on the beach as I need to get my legs tanned. The beach here is really lovely so it's no hardship.
I'm not sure how long I'm gonna stay here, it depends on whether I decided to go to Langkawi or not. I need to get up to Bangkok in about 10 days max and I can fly from either Penang (where I'm headed next) or Langkawi for about 15GBP one way!
Will keep you posted. Hope everyone's having fun wherever you are, and are enjoying the winter.
Sx
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
River Cruise and Night Safari
Yesterday (Tuesday) I headed out on a one minute walk to the Singapore River where I paid $12.60 to go for a cruise up and down the river on a bumboat. These are the old boats that they used to bring cargo in on back in the day, but thanks to technology are no longer needed. Now they serve as tourist boats. 
This is the Merlion, which it is hoped will become as iconic as the Sydney Opera House. No, seriously.In the evening I headed out to the Night Safari which is attached to the zoo here on the island. It took a while to get there - I needed to take a ride on the MRT and then a 40 minute bus ride to get there. But I got lucky as when I came out of the MRT station there was a dude offering a free ride out to the Night Safari! So I hopped on and got there in 20 minutes instead!
There are three main things to do at the Night Safari: there are walking trails, a tram ride and a Creatures of the Night show. If anyone comes out this way, check out the website www.nightsafari.com.sg for their suggested itineraries, and follow them (in fact, check it out anyway, as flash photography was not allowed, and whilst I finally discovered that I had a night function on my camera, you have to hold it incredibly still for about 10 seconds to take a picture, so needless to say, I didn't get that may decent photos)! I got a bit confused and elected to go on one of the walking trails first so I could go to the show at 8pm, but when I got to the gate at 8pm, it was full, and their advice was to arrive half an hour early to get in.
The walking trail (the Fishing Cat trail) was really good. There were really cute little Mousedeer, which are tiny little deer, the adults were probably only about knee high, and they have these tiny pencil-thin legs that literally look like little sticks propping them up. Next were the fishing cats. These are very cute, and pet sized (can I have one???). 
Next up were the otters, and these guys are really playful. As soon as anyone comes along, they all congregate in front of you and start screaming at you. It's a pretty awful sound. You can just about see them in this photo (it's one of the ones that didn't come out blurred) but you might have to click on it and enlarge it to see properly.
Next up were the otters, and these guys are really playful. As soon as anyone comes along, they all congregate in front of you and start screaming at you. It's a pretty awful sound. You can just about see them in this photo (it's one of the ones that didn't come out blurred) but you might have to click on it and enlarge it to see properly.
After that there were some Barking Deer (who didn't bark), some Flying Foxes, and soem Indian Gharial (fish eating crocodiles). After heading back to try to get to the show (denied) I went on a tram ride around the park. This was very informative, and the animals are very good as they are always within view so were always there for us to see (apart from the zebra). My favourite was probably the tiger, although after going on the tram ride, I missed the next show and went on a walk instead, and saw another tiger from behind a glass screen, and the dude was just pacing round in circles which I didn't like to see.
After that, I *finally* got into the show, and it was definitely worth it (although I thought I was gonna melt when we were queueing to get in - it was so humid there, not necessarily as hot as during the day time, but definitely sweltering). The hostess was dead funny, and the show was very interactive, but the animals definitely knew it was their last show of the night and were playing up a bit. The best was the cat which can jump up to 15 feet into the air to catch birds.
The show ended at 10.30 and although the place stays open until midnight, the dude who had given us the free ride out from the MRT station had offered to take us back to our hotels for $4, which although is more than the combined bus and MRT ride would cost, would certainly save time, and judging by the queues for the bus, stress too.
So I got back to the hostel at about 11.10pm, had a quick shower (finally got hot water!) and hit the sack.
As a final note, I just have to post this picture, as I didn't think anybody (especially Nat and Austen) would believe that I had a cat on me. Poor little Tempest does look ready to jump, but it was his idea to climb on me, not mine!Monday, January 01, 2007
First day in Singapore
Well wouldn't ya know it, I had the New Year in New Zealand after all! My flight didn't take off until about 10 past midnight so we had a countdown on the plane.
I've finally made it to Singapore, and geez it's muggy here, I didn't realise how it would be. It's 30 degrees and it's raining.
They've given me a visa to stay here for 30 days, but I'm definitely not gonna need that long. After clearing immigration I got stopped by customs - I think because of my backpack - and my bag got x-rayed - I must've looked dodgy. From there I headed down into the MRT system - kinda like the London Underground, only nicer, and got the train out to chinatown where I'm staying at a hostel called the Summer Tavern. So far so good. And they didn't charge me for last night since I'm still saying for the number of days I said I would.
After that, I went down to the Harbour Centre and headed for the cable cars. I took a car up to Mount Faber and had an expensive beer and chicken satay. Then I had to queue for the cable car over to Sentosa Island. I think I queued for about 45 minutes (geez there were a lot of people) and finally twigged that if I paid a little bit extra for a glass bottomed cable car I could get straight on and not queue. Great idea. Except when you come out and you're up really high and you can see through the floor. And except when it stops halfway over the water! It was totally worth it to avoid the queue but was slightly disconcerting!
Anyways, I'm back at the hostel now and have been wearing these clothes for two days and I must reek so I'm off to have a shower and sleep. I'm shattered, as I predicted.
More soon.
Sue x
I've finally made it to Singapore, and geez it's muggy here, I didn't realise how it would be. It's 30 degrees and it's raining.
They've given me a visa to stay here for 30 days, but I'm definitely not gonna need that long. After clearing immigration I got stopped by customs - I think because of my backpack - and my bag got x-rayed - I must've looked dodgy. From there I headed down into the MRT system - kinda like the London Underground, only nicer, and got the train out to chinatown where I'm staying at a hostel called the Summer Tavern. So far so good. And they didn't charge me for last night since I'm still saying for the number of days I said I would.
After that, I went down to the Harbour Centre and headed for the cable cars. I took a car up to Mount Faber and had an expensive beer and chicken satay. Then I had to queue for the cable car over to Sentosa Island. I think I queued for about 45 minutes (geez there were a lot of people) and finally twigged that if I paid a little bit extra for a glass bottomed cable car I could get straight on and not queue. Great idea. Except when you come out and you're up really high and you can see through the floor. And except when it stops halfway over the water! It was totally worth it to avoid the queue but was slightly disconcerting!
Anyways, I'm back at the hostel now and have been wearing these clothes for two days and I must reek so I'm off to have a shower and sleep. I'm shattered, as I predicted.
More soon.
Sue x
