Sleepless in Singapore

Singapore.
 The island that is it's own capital, this 697-square-kilometre-large nation was recently the location of our four day holiday. A week before we left, we were all excited, but then we saw this news headline: "Singapore air pollution breaks all records due to Indonesian forest fires." That put a damper on our plans, and we almost cancelled the trip, but luckily for us, it cleared up significantly two days before our departure date. Sadly, the haze that accompanied it was set to last for weeks, so we would just have to live with it.

The morning we left, we got up, had a quick breakfast then caught a taxi to the airport. During the flight, we went through a particularly large patch of turbulence which shunted the plane upwards, then pushed it rapidly downwards for a few seconds, evoking screams from some of the passengers. Good fun! Other than that, we touched down without any difficulty, descending through a very thick layer of cloud or smog. It was raining when we caught a taxi to the backpackers where we were staying, but not so heavily that we weren't left breathless by Singapore's amazing architecture. Massive skyscrapers dominated the skyline, one of which was designed to look as though it had a massive boat running along the top of it. Lower down, we could see the Singapore Flyer (the worlds largest observation wheel) along with several bizarre structures we weren't sure about. The overall impression was of the London shown in the new Star Trek movies.

We were staying in an area of Singapore known as "Little India", an appropriate name as most of the inhabitants and shops there were indeed Indian. Our hostel was close to the outskirts of the area, next to a train station under construction. That was an interesting fact we discovered about Singapore: you can get almost anywhere on the island without ever going outside. The MRT, Mass Rapid Transit system, is a giant network of trains covering the majority of suburbs and prominent malls, which themselves stretch underground for miles.

We settled into our rooms, then headed out to find lunch. As we wandered past what looked like a jungle-based tour agency, a guy dressed in old British safari gear informed us that it was in fact an Indian restaurant: the Jungle Tandoor. We decided to give it a go, so he led us in and showed us to a table. The decor was so over the top, it was out of sight. Stuffed tigers and panthers perched in fake trees with plastic parrots, a giraffe head and half an elephant sticking out of the wall. There was even a near-life-size plastic Tarzan frozen in the act of  swinging down from the trees. Due to the position of the table, his feet were centimetres away from Mum's head for the entire duration of the meal. The food, however, was delicious, and one particular creamy chicken dish stood out as being the best.

Once we'd eaten, we caught the subway to a nearby mall. The trains are a very efficient way of getting around, able to transport a hundred or more at once to various places around the island. The mall we went to, Marina Bay Sands, was over 1 km long and 6 stories high. It was MASSIVE!

Not only that, it had a museum connected to it that was shaped like an enormous lotus flower, towering above us. We had dinner at the food-court in the mall, a very tasty chicken rice with matching soup.

Back at the hostel, we found that our room had no windows and as such was pitch black when the lights were off, so when we got up next morning at 8:00, it felt like it was only 6 (although that may have been partly due to the 1 hour time difference). We had breakfast at the hostel, but we only did so once during the trip as it consisted of cheap cereal, white bread, fruit flavoured jelly with too much sugar (called "jam" by some), and, for mum, some awful coffee. Still, it filled us up for our big day on Sentosa Island, also known as "Asia's favourite playground" Almost all the theme parks and major attractions (with the exceptions of the zoo and the Flyer) are here, but we were only going to visit two of them: S.E.A., home to the world's largest aquarium, and MegaZip Adventure Park.

To get there, we took the cable car, which stretched across the gap between Singapore's mainland and Sentosa. It brought back fond memories of Rotorua, more so because of the luge at the other end (although we didn't go on this one.)

S.E.A. was our first stop, so we worked out on the map where we needed to go, then took the bus to the right place. The entirety of S.E.A. is underground, much like most of Singapore, so we didn't see daylight while we were in there. I am normally unimpressed by things like zoos and aquariums, but even I enjoyed parts of this one. We saw such creatures as jellyfish of all kinds, spider crabs the size of large dogs, manta rays, archer fish and groupers bigger than Amberly (and they're not just tall; groupers are solidly built, making them even more impressive).

I think it was better than Kelly Tarlton's by a long way.

After lunch at McDonald's, our next stop was MegaZip. Lena had really wanted to go to the aquarium; this was top of my list. We signed up to do the ropes course there, as well as the famous zipline itself. The ropes course was fun, but on the third layer we got held up by a group with a very slow climber, making it less fun than it could have been.

Once we were finished there, we went on the 450+ metre long zipline leading to a nearby beach. I would have enjoyed it had my mind not been occupied with trying to relieve the crushing pain caused by the ill-fitting harness. I was surprised I could still talk normally when I reached the bottom. What was more amusing was watching the people who didn't make it all the way to the platform and dangled helplessly before being retrieved by a staff member. Once Mum and the girls caught up, we checked out the shops at the other end of the cable car route before heading home again. For dinner, we ate at a little Indian street shop, not a stall but not really a full-fledged restaurant either. It was a bit too spicy for my liking, but we got ice cream afterwards.

Something else about Singapore is that the Singapore dollar is almost equivalent to the NZ dollar, with less than 5 cents difference between the two. I didn't realise what a difference this would make at first, but being used to thinking in tens of thousands in Vietnam, I found myself thinking "Only $2? That's so cheap for a bottle of water!" However, back in Vietnam, a 5 litre costs less than a dollar fifty. Not so cheap then. In fact, most things are more expensive than in NZ, but I did score a brand new iPod Touch for only $376 NZD Very pleased about that.

The next morning, we slept in until 10:00 a.m. (except Dad, who sent Mum a message at 10am asking what we'd had for breakfast. Wish I could have seen his face as Mum said we were still in bed.) Again, this was probably due to the complete absence of light in our room, as it still felt like it was early (Lena and Amberly's responses when I told them the time were those of general disbelief). We caught the train to a mall for breakfast (Trains were how we got around for day-to-day travel), but missed the breakfast meals as we arrived at 11:30. Mum and the girls got McDonald's and sushi, and I left them thinking I would get something else and meet them back where they were, but there were just so many choices... By the time the three of them finished and came looking for me half an hour later, I still hadn't chosen. Another 10 minutes later, I finally settled on KFC, with a smoothie from McD's. One other thing: there appeared to be no such thing as real bacon on Singapore! We saw beef bacon and turkey bacon (neither of which tasted as good as the real thing), but it looked like in order to appease those who wouldn't eat pork (I didn't see any of that either), the President had outlawed the stuff in any form!

Once I was done, we went for a walk to a spa that boasted a unique service: feet-eating fish! Also known as "doctor fish", once we lowered our feet into a tub full of them, they swarmed around nibbling at any dead skin within their reach. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they swarmed around my feet, and at any one time I had twice as many on my feet as did Mum, Lena or Amberly.

The sensation was that of many tiny jets of water hitting the skin, and I was even occasionally surprised when I looked down and found the surface of the water to be still. At the end of 30 minutes there was no visible difference, but our feet were no longer sore from all the walking, and they felt fine for the rest of the day (Mum said she could still feel her feet tingling though). After a rest stop at home, we went to our last and most anticipated activity of the day: Singapore's Night Safari.

Connecting to the Singapore zoo but at the same time independent, the Night Safari contains all the nocturnal animals that are asleep during the day. Several exhibits in the zoo allow the animals to roam free within large mesh environments with the condition that no-one touches them. As such, I came within inches of bats and flying squirrels, an incredible experience. The cutest animal award would have to go to the Clouded Leopards, one of which only had three legs. Unfortunately, we were not permitted to use flash photography, so we only managed to take a couple of photos of the more well-lit enclosures.

Above is a normal leopard, below is one of the clouded leopards.

They had almost mournful looks on their faces, and the one with three legs put his paw on the glass like he wanted to play with us. I thought I would never say this of an animal, but they were adorable. We saw an Animals of the Night show, featuring several nocturnal animals, but sadly we had to rush the last part of the trip in order to catch the last bus back. We arrived home at about 1:00 in the morning, but we would only get about 5 hours sleep, as we had to get up again at 6:30 to go to the regular zoo.

We did, and we were bone tired as we walked through the gates, not to mention hungry. Luckily, there was plenty of food as we had signed up for the Jungle Breakfast, a large buffet next to the orangutans, who came over to a specially built part of their enclosure so we could have photos taken with them. There was also a small snake, but significantly fewer people wanted their photo taken with him. We had no such inhibitions though, and enjoyed the chance to hold a Bald Python.

Later, during an animal show, I had my photo taken with a much larger boa constrictor which draped around my shoulders, but the shot was from too far away to see. We saw many different animals not found in the Auckland Zoo, such as white tigers, a 6-7 metre long croc, capuchin monkeys, hyenas and sloths. We finally got home again around 6:00 (that's close to 11 hours looking at animals!).

Again, I was more impressed than I expected. For dinner, Mum, Amberly and I ate out at a nice-looking place that turned out to be vegetarian! I had a large compilation or various sauces and small portions of different things along with naan bread, poppadums and rice. I had no idea what went with what, so I just tried different things with each other in the hope I was doing it right. Some were very spicy, some weren't at all and some were sweet, so I had plenty of combinations to try.

We were very tired when we got back, but still only got to bed at 10:00 (although this time it was our fault for watching Despicable Me when we should have been sleeping. Once the movie finished though, everyone dropped straight off to sleep except me. I dropped my pillow. When I looked over the side (I had a top bunk), it seemed close, so I leaned over and reached for it. I couldn't reach, so I leaned a little further. Still no success. Eventually, I reached it, but by that point I was hanging by my knees from the rail. I threw the pillow back onto the bed, then realised I couldn't pull back up. Not wanting to have to drop onto the floor and climb the ladder again, I twisted round and climbed back around the rail again. I was making a lot of noise as I did this, and I kept waiting for someone to wake up and ask "what on earth are you doing?", but everyone was out like a light, so I settled down again and finally drifted off.

Again, we only slept until 8:00, but it was worth it to get to McD's in time for the breakfast combos. They have better options here; KFC does blueberry pancakes, waffles or honey biscuits and McD's does a combo unavailable in NZ: pancakes with heaps or butter, maple syrup and jam and the components of a breakfast muffin (eggs, a sausage pattie and two half-muffins). Delicious. Once we'd eaten, we'd used up all our activities so we just browsed malls for a while, and I picked up an iPod touch for under $400.
Eventually, we picked up our bags, caught the train for the last time, then headed back to Ho Chi Minh.