This post is mainly to please Astrid, who is adamant that I should be blogging about my recent travels. Bonjour ma petite amie!
So I recently went to Singapore. I knew little about it and have previously had no real desire to go, but due to me possibly (hopefully....all smiles at the immigration people and whatnot) staying in Australia, I found myself with a non-refundable return flight to London to get rid of. Seeing as I didn't have enough time to make a trip home worthwhile, and I already had a stopover in Singapore booked, I decided to extend that stopover a little, travel up through Malaysia and fly home (back to Sydney) from there (via Melbourne). Hooray!
And so it was that I found myself wandering round Singapore at midnight totally lost, with a half-empty rucksack (I travel light) and a new camera around my neck. I'd been wanting to replace my lame Coolpix for ages and as the boy and I came across a cheapish old D70s we finally went for it and I ran off to Asia with it immediately. This was excellent but it did make me look like an impish tourist ripe for theft. Thankfully, Singapore has all but blotted out crime (including the heinous acts of jaywalking and chewing gum) with a massive list of fines to hand out and a heavy-handed approach.
This has also made the place ridiculously clean and gorgeous looking, in that sort of faceless, big-city-done-good type way. What makes it different to somewhere like Bilbao though, despite the fact that they've embraced consumerism with both hands, is that there is so much Asian greenery everywhere that the nightlights of the districts have this eerily beautiful look to them; so, having missed the last train from the airport, missed my stop on the bus and been kicked off at the last possible point, I was wandering around taking moody shots of the city streets rather than concentrating on finding my hostel.
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| A quiet spot in the Botanical Gardens |
I did find it, eventually, and the next day satiated my Singaporean wanderlust to an almost retarded extent. I walked round the city for 12 solid hours, taking in everything that the hypnotizing, fairy-tale Botanical Gardens had to offer - which was, by the way, pure awesomeness. I ate some amazing bready stuff that I can probably never ever recreate properly in English words, but one was a rice loaf type flat thing with pasta and pine nuts inside (!) and one was a literal cube of amazingness with strawberry cream cheese in it. I had a foot massage, and a Singapore sling (best morning ever, by the way), I clicked away, oblivious to how much I must have looked like a total douche, and had the most wonderful time.
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| It has a crown because it's totally boss |
I ate dinner with a very inquisitive and sweet Indian man who had mistaken me for a professional photographer and wanted to chat about cameras, then I headed down to the Harbourfront, picking up some durian ice cream on the way. The ice cream peddlers sell from a little cart, and cut a slab of your selected flavour to either go between two slices of white bread or two wafers. I got my balls out of my purse and went for durian as I was sure you wouldn't be able to smell it and I was feeling a bit devil-may-care - and god, it was totally delicious. Even worth the stares as I was getting as I was mentally pegged as the stupid white tourist who was dripping ice cream all over her camera and her face. The massive ugly casino thing they've plonked in the middle of the waterfront didn't appeal to me beyond looking at the outside in a bewildered manner, so off to the Red Dot Design Museum I trotted, through the steaming, gorgeous-smelling night markets (how do they manage to not make a mess on the streets, I wonder?).
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| In the Design Museum |
The museum was heaps cool, but even better was the traditional Chinese tea place that I stumbled on (and for stumbled on, read "found in the Rough Guide and sought out with the aid of a very precise map"). I hate using the word "quaint" but it was totally worth the usage, and while my guy explained to me the intricate and strange manner in which the Chinese tortured themselves by drinking tea I stared with the sort of open mouthed, bug-eyed glee only exhibited by kids watching magicians or OAPs watching Countdown. I am so in for this sort of shit, and I sat there pouring the water into the teapot, letting it brew, pouring into the pouring pot, into the smelling pot, into the sipping cup, again and again, and slowly but surely getting through my elicit-looking packet of oolong while taking in the soothing words of my Simone de Beauvoir book (She Came To Stay, if you're asking) before dragging myself back to the hostel where I collapsed into bed and finally realised how much my feet were actually killing me, and probably had been for the last 6 hours.
I was having a very pleasant time on my own in Singapore.
The thing is, I had places to be and money to not spend (Singapore is fairly expensive). I had shafted myself financially and had to rely on not losing my hostel key overnight - which sounds easy, but I've done stupider things - so that I could use the deposit to buy the next morning's bus ticket on to Johor Bahru and out of this teeny tiny, clean and slightly anal country once and for all.
