Boxing Day, after an awesome sleep-in and swim at my luxury hotel (it
doesn’t happen to me very often so I loved it!), I headed to the
airport and jumped on a plane to Singapore. I was meeting my Aunt and
Uncle and couple of cousins, Sam and Carl, who were there on their
annual Boxing Day holiday. So I went and joined them at their hotel, the
Raffles Plaza, another luxury hotel – awesome pool area, nice big
brekkies, close to everything… unfortunately I wasn’t able to bunk down
in one of their rooms as planned, as they were too small.
However,
I did manage the next best thing: pretending I was staying there. Let’s
just say I spent a fair chunk of my time eating their buffet breakfast
and lying by the pool, cocktail in hand! Spent some time with my family
members on their shopping entourages, nice (expensive) restaurant
dinners and city walks. Not my usual sort of holiday, but nice to
experience and good to have some family company around Christmas.
My
hostel was located in Little India, about 20 minutes walk from the
hotel, which was perfect. It was located in a busier, less sanitary part
of town, which I like a lot more than the high-rise glitz of the
upmarket CBD. Great markets filled to the gills with Indian trinkets and
carvings, awesome local Indian restaurants and little cafes. I loved
it.
We spent a day cruising around Sentosa Island,
Singapore’s recreational playground. We took the cable car over to the
island and then the theme parks are there for the taking! Not really my
cup of tea, in fact totally the opposite: too over-the-top-touristy for
me. Instead of doing all the parks, we just went to the island and
cruised around on the free buses. It was interesting to have a look, but
we really just did it for the cable car! The views were pretty cool.
But then we got stuck at the other end of the cable at the
randomly-named Jewel Box building (not even sure what it is or what the
name is supposed to signify!) – there was an hour long line-up to get
back down to the city and we couldn’t be bothered waiting, so a taxi it
had to be. Boo! Shouldn’t have got off there…
I also
spent a bit of time on Orchard Road, king of amazing designer shops. I
found it all a bit in-your-face but I actually enjoyed strolling down
the beautiful tree-lined wide boulevard and taking in all the amazing
Christmas decorations that adorn the entire road. In fact I actually
liked Singapore a lot more than I expected: once you get past the big,
brash, clean, efficient façade of designer shopping malls, efficient MRT
system and expensive hotels and restaurants, the city has a really
interesting ethnic mix, great museums, a nice river boulevard and
bustling Chinese, Indian and Islamic centres. It’s clean and easy to get
around on foot. The Quay area is rejuvenated and modern and the
restaurants lining the river are great. I actually liked eating at the
Hawker Centres most – so much cheap yummy food!
My
mates from uni, Shannon and Mark, fortuitously had a holiday in
Singapore after Xmas as well, which was wicked! We hung out for Tiger
beers and local Indian food, and cruised to the Night Safari. Talk about
the most overrated tourist attraction EVER. It’s the “first and best
Night Safari” apparently, but it is just so popular (well our timing was
lousy; Christmas and school holidays, but regardless, it was packed).
We got there really early, but still spent about 75% of our time in
line-ups. Line-ups for the ‘Creatures of the Night’ animal show
(disappointing display of not so exciting animals doing tricks at the
call of their trainers), line-ups for the tram to shuttle you around
past all the animals that look like stunned mullets in their ‘habitats’
under the spotlights (so much for seeing nocturnal animals; most of them
wanted to sleep!), and line-ups for more line-ups. I think the best
part was when we got off the tram and did a night mangrove walk, where
we went into a cage of kamikaze bats. The yelps and screams of Shannon
and Mark (and everyone else) as they got swooped had me laughing the
whole way through! In summary: not worth going to. Too much lining up!
At least we had awesome laksa at a nearby hawker centre at 11pm that
night, after the ordeal was over J
On New Years Eve,
all of us went out for dinner at Clark Quay. It was cool having some
family members and good mates all in the same place! After a yummy
dinner, a few drinks and a stroll around the quay, Shan and Mark left
early due to a possible dodgy dinner, and so I decided to join the boys
in that well-known establishment: Ministry of Sound. After lining up for
about 30 mins, paying too much and waiting too long for my free drink,
it was 11:45pm … too close to midnight for my liking, particularly as I
couldn’t find Sam and Carl anywhere! It is a cavern of a place, a
gigantic club with a massive rotating dancefloor and great upstairs with
a bunch of little rooms playing all sorts of music. After wandering
around the whole thing looking for the boys, not finding them and seeing
in the New Years with random strangers, I decided I would spend the
next 4 ½ hours with more of them – and boogied all night with people I
didn’t know. It was awesome! It was pumping, the music was great and
while the bar staff were pricks and didn’t give out water to thirsty
patrons, I managed to scam some from some friendly Aussies who worked in
Singapore. Unfortunately they got too friendly at the end, and after
enduring a bit too much arse-grabbing, decided my time in MoS was done,
and I was outta there. A nice 30 minute walk home, complete with a free
lime juice from a friendly New Years reveller finished the night off
nicely (and allowed me to cool off!). A great night all round.
The
next day I found out the boys piked it early at 2am; probably why I
couldn’t find them! Actually it was more because the place was so
massive. Hehe…
So I spent my last night hanging out
with the Fergusons. We had a delicious dinner at a local Hawker Centre –
and they’re probably still talking about how cheap and good the food
was! And that I’m a bit weird for eating tofu and trying the ‘deep fried
carrot cake’! but who cares - before cruising to my next destination:
Melaka, Malaysia.
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