Sing Song Singapore

We arrived in Singapore after many flights through Australia. Firstly we flew from Sydney to Cairns, where we had originally planned to stay a couple of days although we got our flight dates wrong so ended up only having a couple of hours instead in the airport! From Cairns we flew to Darwin, and there we had 5 hours until our flight to Singapore, so decided to venture out of the airport...it was very hot and humid in Darwin and for them few hours it was almost felt like we was back in Kenya!

Singapore skyline by dusk

We was nearly prohibited from boarding our flight to Singapore as we was told we had to have proof of our onward journey to Malaysia from Singapore which we hadn’t got round to booking yet. Luckily after much worry, and only half an hour to get through security we was allowed to check in as the staff figured our flight back to London Heathrow from Bangkok in Thailand would prove that we wouldn’t be sticking around in Singapore forever!

A Singapore special- Fish head anyone?

Whilst in Singapore we stayed in a querky little hostel in the little india town, surrounded by great hawker markets, Indian cafes and cool little shops selling everything from Indian fabrics and jewerelly to tacky souvenirs and fake watches!

 

A very colourful building in little India

Sampling some spicy Indian cuisine!

We decided to spend a sunny afternoon at Singapores very own botanical garden! It was very big, and had lots of different areas to visit within such as a rainforest and a healing garden. It was nice, and extremely green with lots of different types of plants and trees from around the world and it didn’t feel like you was actually in the middle of a big, bustling city! A nice place to escape from the crowds and relax with a icecream sandwich!

Ice cream sanie!

The botanical gardens of Singapore!

The healing garden...a garden to be healed within!

We came across the fountain of wealth one evening, and it was like a disco surrounding a spraying fountain. Lots of loud  chart music, flashing a strobe lighting, but without the people dancing. We then thought we may aswell go and get a close up look, seems as we was in Singapore and it was in the Guinness world book of records! So the rules were that you had to walk around 3 times with your right hand in the fountain, and make a wish and it should come true...hmmm, we shall see about that one!

A group of people touching the lucky fountain of wealth

We also investigated one of Singapores suburbs, Queenstown. Here we discovered they had an the Singaporean equivalent of NTU (Nottingham trent university), except not sure what their NTU stood for...

Rows and rows and flats in Queenstown

China town was fun and very busy! I guess it almost felt as though you was in China? It was nice to visit, with some beautiful Chinese inspired buildings and temples. The main part of it was mostly full of stalls and souvenir shops, but there was some great spring rolls to be had and it was here that we purchased our first of many chopsticks!

Chinatown!

Singapore certainly had it’s fare share of random cuisine! You was never bored for choice, which is probably due to the diversity of the inhabitants in Singapore! It was common to see pig trotters or pig organ soup on the menu, alongside some crispy chicken feet fried rice or some warm frog porridge...I certainly did not try the latter (or any of the others for that fact)! Although we, well more so Max, thought it would be fun to try the Pig organ soup. It smelt like pig organs. It tasted like pig organs. Never again...BLEEUURGH!

Pig organ dishes...oh the choices

Braised pig trotters!

And then there was the odd building which looked like it had a big boat! We later found this was Marina bay sands resort, which is a hotel and casino (The world 2nd most expensive casino!) with a huge pool on the top (150 metres!).

The funny building- Marina bay sands resort

What happens if you cross a mermaid with a lion? Well, you get a Merlion, just like the merlion by the esplanade which attracts lots of tourists visiting Singapore! It’s quite random really...

The famous Singapore Merlion!

One of the coolest things about Singapore was probably the public trains! We have never seen public transport, and stations, so shiny and clean and modern lookin! The stations just seemed very modern in comparison to what you would see in Europe! Most of the train stations were also built underneath shopping centres, which is a plus...if you like to shop!

Squeeky clean train station platform...

Our last night in Singapore we visited the Arab town, which didn’t feel to Arabic apart from a few overpriced Turkish and arab  cafes and restaurants. So we opted for a Malaysian cafe, where we tried the Nasi Goreng and some deadly (but yum!) spicy dish....In preparation for Malaysia :-)