Two Singapore Slings and a New Pedal, Please
By the time I collected my bags and wandered into the arrivals hall it was
already 10 o’clock on the evening of January 23rd. Being such a late hour
I was more concerned with finding a bed for the night than taking advantage
of all the facilities in Singapore’s airport. As I was tired I pulled out my
trusty(?) LP guide and picked out the first hostel that I came
to. The only trouble was I could not get the public phones to work. After
trying most of the phones in the arrivals hall I decided that it would be
better to ask for some advice.
I wandered over to the information desk
and stood in line behind a couple of girls who were getting the woman behind
the counter to phone hotels for them. After about 10 minutes I was finally
told that there was a number missing from the front of the phone numbers.
After thanking the woman, I wandered back over to the phones. The first
three places I tried were full. Brilliant, I thought. Luckily the next place
had a dorm room available.
When I arrived at the hostel I found a Danish guy, Jakob, checking into the
same dorm as me. We got chatting and agreed to go out sight-seeing together
the next day. I went out to clean my teeth and bumped into the two girls
from the airport. Got chatting and found out that they were from
Sweden and this was their first time backpacking and did I want to go out
for a drink with them? You can probably guess my answer. I went back to the
dorm and shook Jakob awake. “Mate,” I said, “You can either go to sleep now,
or you can come out drinking with me and a couple of young Swedish girls.” He
groaned, rolled over, then said “I’ll just put my shoes on then.”
We stood around for about 20 minutes but then got bored of waiting for the
girls to put their clothes and make-up on so we wandered downstairs to one of
the local cafes and sat drinking tiger beer for a couple of hours.
I awoke with a hangover the next day. We started off with a stroll around
the Pedang, and then passed through the CBD on our way to Chinatown. For
lunch we stopped in at a huge food court. We were both so overwhelmed with
the choice of food that it took half an hour before we finally settled on
something.
After lunch we took a riverboat cruise around Singapore harbour. We then headed back across the river to the famous Raffles Hotel. Both of us were determined to have a Singapore Sling at its birthplace. Neither of us had counted on the cost of this though. 37 Singaporean Dollars for 2 Singapore Slings! “Drink slowly,” I cautioned Jakob, “As I have just spent my beer budget for the day!”
After spending as long as possible in the long bar at Raffles we went for a wander down Orchard Road. The road is famous for its shopping centers, and if I had any interest in buying something I’m sure I would have been in heaven. As it was we just sent a couple of e-mails then went back down to Boat Quay to take
advantage of happy hour at the pubs down there. Happy hour still means prices of about $9 a pint, but the atmosphere was nice.
Once it was dark we set off for the night safari at Singapore Zoo. This was really good, although it did feel a little like a ride at Disneyland. We boarded a tram and had a REALLY enthusiastic guide tell us all about the animals that we could see. After the tram ride there was time for a little walk around the various trails that criss-cross the park.
By the time we got back to the hostel it was well gone midnight, but as this was Jakob’s one and only night in Singapore he wanted to go back down to Boat Quay and see what all the fuss was about (alright, it might not have been entirely his idea). Our first port of call was an Irish pub…where we sat looking at our overpriced beer for a good ten minutes before deciding to taste it. “Don’t worry,” said Jakob, “Irish pubs are always the most expensive place in town.”
The next place cost exactly the same. So we sat drinking our beer slowly whilst watching the MTV Asia Music Awards take place on the other side of the river. By the time we had finished the bar staff had turned off all the lights and were standing around waiting for us to leave. So we decided we should try and crash the MTV party. Suffice to say we were not successful. It wouldn’t have been too hard if it had only been bouncers and a three foot high fence that we where up against. As our plan was simply to walk past the bouncers, go around the corner then jump the fence. This being Singapore the locals wouldn’t dare do anything so outlandish. Or so we thought as we rounded the corner. And came face to face with 15 fully armed riot police. “Umm, I don’t think we would get past them,” I squeaked to Jakob. “Let’s just go home,” he replied.
Back at the hostel we bumped into the Swedish girls. “What happened to you last night?” they asked, wide eyed, “We did knock on your door.”
“Oh,” we said, “we got bored of waiting for you and went out on our own.”
Anyhow we had a short comversation we found out that they had spent the day on the beach at Sentosa. They also asked us to wake them up in the morning so they could come for a bike ride with us.
The next day we set off for the north of the island and a little town called
Changi (without the girls, we thought about waking them up, but decided
that the day would just be more hassle if we had two more people with us). From Changi we caught a ferry across to a little island called Pulau Ubin.
Once on the island we hired some bikes.
“If anything goes wrong with your bike, just bring it back and get a replacement,” the woman said as we took off.
“No worries,” we replied, as after all what can go wrong with a bike?
After cycling around for a while we returned to the port, and only settlement on the island, for some lunch. Next it was off to the north of the island to see some pigs and a beach. We decided that we should take advantage of the bikes and follow some of the little tracks on the island instead of sticking to the tarmac.
“Wait!” shouted Jakob as I changed down a gear and sped down a path. “What about these rocks, we might have to walk it.”
“Don’t be silly,” I replied, “These are mountain bikes, just change down a gear and stand up to get over the bumps.” Idiot, I thought, it’s just a mud track. Five minutes later a pedal fell off my bike.
Back on the mainland we had a short walk around little India before Jakob
had to leave to catch his flight. I wandered back to the hostel and
immediately bumped into the Swedish girls.
“We slept in till 4pm this afternoon,” They chirped in unison.
“Oh, right,”
“Then we went down the beach on Sentosa,” they chirped.
“Right, and tomorrow you will be?”
“I think we will go down the beach again as it is our last day in Singapore,” again chirping in unison.
“Okay, and then you are heading for…?”
“Oh, we are off to Australia for six months!”
I hung my head and headed for my room. There I got chatting to a nice Canadian girl called Ann-Marie (in case you haven’t noticed yet, all Canadians are nice, it just seems to be bred into them). I told her about my day and the case of the two Swedish girls that were only in Singapore for three days and all they were doing was going down the beach.
“Well, that’s understandable,” she said (being nice about it, as all Canadians always are), “They must be on their way home and want to top up their tans.
“Nooo,” I said. “They are heading off to Oz for six months!”
She hung her head and grimaced, “I see.”
Later on that night there was a knocking on our dorm room door. Someone obviously opened the door and I heard a voice call out my name. It was one of the Swedish girls, and she wanted to make sure I was going to go down the beach with them tomorrow. I said yeah, alright, and that I didn’t want to come out drinking now as I was really tired.
The next day I went over to Sentosa Island with the Canadian girl. We both
decided that the two girls were being very stupid and that we really didn’t
want to hang out with them.
“Besides,” I said, “I don’t want to spend the day watching two gorgeous, young Swedish girls play volleyball in their bikinis.”
I then slapped my head.
I must be getting old as I was more interested in site-seeing. We went to Fort Silosa on the island, then spent ages looking for a statue that Ann-Marie had seen in a brochure and was determined to get a picture of. We eventually found it in a garden that had been fenced off for some reason. But with no riot police to get in our way, we jumped the fence and hurriedly took some pictures before security came and chucked us off the island. That afternoon we went to the Zoo, then Ann-Marie went on the night safari and I made my way back to the hostel.
The next morning I wandered down to Lavendar MRT station and caught a bus bound for Mersing in Malaysia.
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