Crusoe in South East Asia

Woke up after just a couple of hours sleep and headed for Sunway, the deluxe shopping mall with its own distinctive Pyramid and Sphinx. The bus stop for the Aeroline coach is next to an indoor Theme park however this was closed due to a recent accident…

Singapore is known as a fine city to the locals. This is an ironic title however and is a play on words due to the high number (and great expense) of fines in the country. Things you can get fined for include:

• crossing the road in the wrong place (I do this all the time)
• dropping litter (something like $500)
• urinating in lifts
• eating on the metro line
• Also-Chewing gum is banned

All in all this has made Singapore the cleanest place I’ve ever been to in my life. Although it did make me feel very paranoid about accidentally dropping litter.

Coincidently, groups of 5 and over are illegal in Malaysia due to the governments fear of political unrest. However, our group of 3 was well within the law so our illegal government activities went undetected.

The bus journey was pretty luxurious and the free lunch was made by the popular chain Subway. Slept pretty much the whole way as the seats reclined till they were practically horizontal. Sure I could have got a cheaper bus I suppose but was more than happy to take this one especially as the bus stop was 3minutes walk from Terry’s house.

Arrived in Singapore possibly the most clueless I’ve ever been.

Walking up to a cafe, the conversation went like this”

“Where am I?”

They replied with some name I couldn’t clearly hear.

“Is this an airport?” as I’d just seen departure lounges and the place was pretty big.

“No, this is a ferry terminal. Where do you want to go?”

“Ahh…..I don’t know yet”

Eventually managed to work out where I was going.

Turned out the hostel I’d planned to stay at was in Little India. Being in Little India feels like being in India under Chinese rule. When walking down the streets everybody is Indian however shop signs are often in Chinese characters. I ate curry for dinner and breakfast the following morning here (however this was not out of choice).

Turned up to my room and met a crazy Aussie dude but wasn’t as cool as Ty so headed to the common room. After a couple of minutes I met a local girl called Lyn who worked at the 7/11 chain. She offered to show me round China town, as I had nothing better to do I accepted.  We  went to Orchid Road and other famous Singapore places. To be honest…Singapore is cool but think I’d get bored here pretty fast…I definitely preferred KL.

She particularly wanted to go clubbing at a place called St James Powerstation. Sounded like a good idea, however I found out the buses stopped at 12am so in order to get home, staying in the club was necessary….until 5am. Now I thought my flight was at 9.30 am. Thus…clubbing was possible…..if I didn’t sleep….

In the end however Lyn suddenly developed a bout of chronic fatigue and then changed her mind every 10seconds. In the end we ended up drinking outside the hostel till 2am. She was drunk on 1 can…At that point I found she was totally insane.

To be fair she was in a really bad situation. Turned out she’d run away from home and had no where to live and had been living at 24 hour places like internet cafes. Felt pretty bad for her so gave her a tea towel of London I’d bought at Heathrow. Don’t think that really sorted out her problems but hey…what else can I do?

Possibly not the best night of my trip but certainly not boring.

Little did I know what lay in store for me the next night…

Little India Singapore