Day 62 - Singapore

Friday 16th November 2007

Waking up on the train at 8am as we pull in to Singapore we breeze through passport control and grab an overpriced cab to the hostel. We are greeted with what I consider to be our first proper back packer hostel this trip with rooms coming off a central lunge with a big TV and a selection of dodgy DVDs, a kitchen to the side and shared loos and showers. It was cheap, it was clean and it did the job perfectly, we have a day and a night here before flying to Jakarta in Indonesia tomorrow morning.

So what do you do for a day in Singapore? We began by getting the MTR into town and wandering the streets in search o the sights; we found the famous Raffles Hotel and had a nose around, saw a huge Christmas tree reminding us all that despite the warm weather Christmas is still on its way, and enjoyed this smartly presented city.

To continue our tour we signed for an amphibious bus/boat tour. Half an hour on the river, half an hour on land, we saw the Singapore Lion, a hotel that apparently looks like and elephant but I could not see it myself and much more then it was back to the hotel to plan our next move.

Now for the evening there was a definite split in what to do so we did the obvious thing, split. Half went off to enjoy the night life and a Singapore Sling at Raffles and the other half, which included me, went to the Singapore Night Safari. Now many of you geography buffs may be thinking that this sounds a bit strange as the Singapore is not big enough to have a safari and you would be right. The Night Safari is a very well put together night time zoo where you can see nocturnal animals that are hard to see in the wild. We say tigers, leopards, rhinos, fling squirrels and much more. We even fitted in a quick Singapore Sling in the Zebra bar.

After a fun filled night we got back to the hostel, confirmed our accommodation in Jakarta and headed to bed, ready to head to Indonesia tomorrow where we would arrive well ahead of the group and plan our next steps.