Fake Plastic Trees

I rolled into Singapore late in the evening with no clue as to where to stay. I was lucky enough to have met a couple of guys from Canada and Australia studying in town. They recommended some places to stay and gave me a good idea of what I could expect from the areas.
I took the MRT to Chinatown. The MRT is like the London Underground, except Clean, Punctual and generally a pleasure to use.

As I arose from the stations depths, a plethora of bright colours hit me. Chiense New Year is a massive thing in Singapore; although maybe more due to its potential to earn local business more money than from an age national tradition. I found the 'Dragon Hotel', stumbled in with my 22kgs of luggage strapped on my back before hitting the streets in search of a phone box - showered (and a lovely hot one too!).

The following morning, the city was still sleeping while the festivities dragged on another day. With very little open; not even an internet cafe, I put on my tourist head and went to visited the Singapore Science Centre. It had been advertised with a Star Wars expo which was the main draw for me. However, I went for a walk around the Science exhibits first and learned some pretty cool stuff before watching a demo of a Tesla Coil. 3,500,000 volts pumped out of a small antenna to cause purple lightening to spread through the air above our heads.

Then, in an expo room (not so) far, far away.. Star Wars. It was an opportunity to look at the history of each film with areas dedicated to the various chapters. Lots of original costumes, props, sets and interactive exhibits.

On my trip around the complex, I had seen an ad for a local snowdome - could it beI could cheat my hot travels and actually go riding for just an hour or two?

Sadly, the building was quite underwhelming. I estimated the slope around 40m long, and when I saw the condition of the slope, figured no point in the probable broken hip caused by a hard stack to the icy surface. Nearby, was a cinema with a few films with English subtitles, I chose to give Jet Li's "Fearless" a crack. The film was okay, but it was cooler to see the reactions of an Eastern crowd watching a film of this nature (Martial Arts).

Before getting some sleep, I managed to track down a cheap "traditional" eatery where I got to sample some good Singapore food with a bottle of Becks! On my way there I also spotted something I hadn't seen in months... a nice car!

My last day in Singapore finally allowed me to do as I pleased as the sleepy locals returned from their holiday slumbers.

Singapore is easily the most modern country of any I'd visited on this trip (Europe excluded). It was quite surpirsing how few internet places there were; I found myself clicking in the middle of Top Man on Orchard Road!

Until mid afternoon, I walked the pristine roads along with the shopping malls. Ralph, Yves, Hugo, Giorgio & Prada all present - and usually in several places too. There had been one CD I had really missed not being able to get from the UK - Richard Ashcrofts new one. I found an HMV and a copy of the special edition for what worked out as 8.18 (UK). Grinning I set about copying it to my iPod... only to discover that it has copy protection on it!!

This had been my 2nd visit to Singapore and also to the Orchard Road shopping district. I wanted to check out Sentosa again too, to see if it had changed much in 12years. So I hopped on the lofty cable car and set foot on what is essentially an entire man made island offering the tourist the chance to lay on a beach, visit a 4d cinema, walk underwater with the fishes, take a monorail journey or watch a show with the stars being dancing water jets. Having done several of these before, I paid my $10 for a trip up the Sky tower. Just my luck that the 10mins of rain that fell that day would be while I was trying to get a good view of the city! (It would later transpire that my memory card would die on me and my photo's from this day be lost anyhow, hence a lack of pictures on this posting.)

After this I took a walk to the beach which offered some marvellous views of distant oil refineries. I opted to read until the sun went down on my final day in South East Asia.

My flight to Western Australia departed at 1.25am, I was, actually quite anxious to get away from Singapore, though I had time to reflect on 3½months away from home so far.

** ** ** ** **

From London, to Frankfurt, to Vienna, to Kathmandu, to Bangkok, to Vientienne, to Ho Chi Minh City, to Phnom Penn, to Kuala Lumpa, to Singapore - I've done what seems like a lifetimes worth of travelling in an incredibly short time frame. I've met some of the most amazing people of my life - some of which live in a a far poorer quality of life than myself - and probably most people reading this. It always amazed me to hear some Westerners complaining about how these places were developing and distancing themselves from how things were "10years ago when I first went travelling".

For me, I thought it was cool to see development in places where it really needed to happen - and more over; I was just happy and grateful to be there, in an amazing part of the world, with an amazing people to match.