Singapore in two words: “TOO HOT.”

Never the less, we managed to escape the air conditioned goodness of the hotel and shopping malls for a few hours at a time. Long enough to hit the streets of Chinatown and Little India, and eat anything that looked good.

Well, the truth is, Singapore’s heat is actually quite manageable. Most of the underground rail stations link directly up with a shopping mall, and many malls are interconnected, so navigating the central areas of the city is just a case of moving between air conditioned havens. Unfortunately you have to go outside sometimes, it’s unavoidable. Move slowly lest you drown in your own sweat.

I could get used to this. I really could.

Finally it was time to leave Malaysia. We hopped on a bus for a 4.5 hour ride over the border.

I sat there listening to gangsta rap and watching the palm trees zoom by, thinking how strange it is that Australia is such a white country, when it feels so much like it should be part of the Asian continent proper. It sounds strange trying to describe it now, but if you replaced the palm plantations with sugar cane, the trip could’ve been through Queensland. Penang’s botanic gardens provoked Lili into joking, “Uh, sorry but this is just like Australia..”

Whatever.

We made it to Singapore and into 5 Star Luxury Accommodation in our ocean view suite. Awwwl right.

Yeah. Vietnam -> Singapore -> Malaysia.

Johor Bahru was an exciting first taste of the foodie goods soon to become our 5+ daily meals. Also an introduction to Malaysia’s overly friendly hotel staff. What a tiring day.

We don’t have time for cultureshock you know, we only have four weeks away and we’ll be making the most of as much as possible.

After an almost feverish night of dry aircon hate and jetlagged body clock confusion, the sky lightened on the cityscape view from our window and we got up.

Lili found something promising in the guidebook about a plane that served coffee and somethingsomething. Coffee? I’m game. I took some non-exiting cold and flu medication as a rather ritualistic bid for good luck and we set off back to the local MRT station where we learned that you have to take your single/return journey tickets and get a refund on your deposit - all via machine. Having done that we bought proper tickets which you just swipe any time you go in or out of a station to automatically pay for your trip. Clever right? They have a similar thing in Hong Kong, but after throwing several large amounts of money at the problem, MY home city couldn’t even agree to how something like that should work. Idiots. Anyway, at least I get to enjoy living in the future when I travel.

SO we made it to this place and there was indeed coffee, which was very reasonable, and there was food, which I enjoyed far more than I think was reasonable. I hate french toast with very salty butter and kaya(?) - coconut jam stuff - which I smeared liberally onto the toast.

I dunno, it seemed sort of weird, but then.. it just tasted good, and I ordered a second serve.

Breakfast done we made our way to Little India, taking our time and shooting a bunch of photos along the way.

Little India was cramped - the streets were lined with shops, which as the day wore on expanded their wares out onto the footpaths until it was basically impossible to not walk on the roads most of the time. That was okay too, the traffic here is a-okay. I only nearly got run over once. Go me.

We happened across a huge mall specalising in Comptuer & Electronics Equipment, or something. I got jeered by one shopkeeper for not having a filter on my lens - quite a reasonable thing to call me out on, but still, fuck off. Finally I found a card reader for the now practically niche Compact Flash cards my camera takes, which was reasonably priced. We ate a light lunch in little India and came back to the hotel to rest a bit and figure out a plan for dinner.

Dinner was in the CBD. We tried to eat the national chicken rice dish but failed, because apparently nobody makes it on the weekends. In fact, dinner was lame, but at least we saw some more of the city. Icecreams for desert and preparations for leaving tomorrow. Finally internet, and now- sleep.

We decided on the plan that we’d make our own way to the hotel. After all, it would me mid afternoon, plenty of time to figure it all out.

We checked over our travel documents and figured out where the cheap hotel we’d booked is located and then, after getting our bags and negotiating customs, made our way to the MRT light rail station and hopped aboard.

Somehow, despite buying our ticket to the wrong station, we managed to get off at the right one and the turnstiles opened for us at the swipe of a card/ticket/thing..

Then we walked, backpacks on, for the ten minutes or so it takes to get to Lorang 6 in Geylang and found our lovely little hotel. We checked into our room, and tried to find room for our bags around the bed which takes up something like 95% of the floorspace. We managed to head out again and found a fairly inoffensive looking Chinese restaurant and ate some reassuringly familiar dishes before navigating the oh-so-seedy streets back to the hotel for sleep.

I think I’m getting sick and 8 hours of airplane airconditioning followed by a night of dusty hotel + more bad aircon left no doubt, but I’m pretty sure I’ll bounce back when we get to Hanoi’s more hospitable climes.