Living it up in Singapore

We are off to Bali this evening so thought we'd finish our tales of Singapore.

Overall a very cool city, clean, easy to get around, MRT very nifty and lovely clean public toilets, yes this has been an issue for me, you'd know what I mean if you've been round Malaysia!


Chinatown

We have visited Little India, Chinatown, The waterfront, the city centre, the zoo, the science centre (have to admit we spent 5 hours there, then left due to them closing) and of course the famous Raffles Hotel for a Singapore Sling. Yes darlings we spent an evening sipping our delicious Singapore Slings whilst nibbling on peanuts and throwing the shells on the Long Bar floor (the thing to do) then followed by a Vodka Martini on the 71st floor of the Swisshotel at Stamford in the New Asia Bar, how very swanky! This was actually very cool as we could see all over Singapore.


Enjoying a vodka martini in New Asia Bar


Sipping our cocktails in Raffles

Our hostel has been like a self contained apartment, helping ourselves to tea and toast and chilling out watching a bit of tele, a bit like home but a lot hotter, and of course the odd random stranger drifting by.

So after a city full of designer malls we are now on our way to Beautiful Bali where fake designer clothes can be bought for $1 Yippee!


How does that work?

Singapore Slings

Still in Singapore. When we tell other people we're here for the week, they all seem stunned that anyone could possibly spend more than 24 hours in the place. Quite odd. Still, there's loads of stuff to do so its all good fun, unless you get stuck in somewhere due to tropical rainstorms - happened a few times now. It's a crazy city, with a lot of crazy rules. They've only just started selling chewing gum again (was previously banned) and you can't eat on the tube ($fine), or take 'durians' on it, which is a smelly fruit ($fine). Also not allowed to cross roads apart from at crossings, otherwise... you guessed it, you get fined. Doesn't seem to stop anyone though, or the 'no spitting in public' rule. Charming.

Lots of the stuff we've been doing has involved trying to get our flights changed, otherwise we overstay our visa, which would either result in beheading, imprisonment, or more likely a fine. It's not been easy, but we managed in the end after a lot of Walking. Yesterday, instead of trapsing around town all day, we went to the zoo! It's a really good one, with a lot of really good animals! Can only post a few pics, but check this out...


They have something called "Cows!" (Dangerous)

Ok, not dangerous, but they had a lot of animals there that were. Lions and Tigers and Bears! Also they have more monkeys than anyone else in the world. Surely that's just monkey one-up-man-ship!? Was actually a good zoo, with lots of space for animals (unlike prisonesque spanish zoos) and industrial strength torrential rainstorms.


Jodie and Elephant (jodie on left, ahaha, sigh)


Us on the Night Safari.
"Safari... so goody" as Nathan always told me.

So that was us. Today we went shopping a bit, then got all you can eat sushi, and in a mo we're going to have a quick nap because we're going to the Ministry of Sound tonight with Judge Jules!!! Then tomorrow I think we're going to some Diving Expo. Cool Bananas.

Perhentian Islands

I should probably explain about the 'Steamboat' we were eating in the last update. A steamboat meal is basically like a pick 'n mix of stuff like seafood and veggies and so on, which are all delivered to the table raw and you pop them into a big pan in the middle, like a steamy version of CharBar. Our choices included safe options such as crab balls (didn't know they had them?) king prawns and clams; then more interesting options like seeweed parcels and..... wait for it.... Fish Heads! Yes! Really! Heads of Fish! Wow. We're well ahead on Scary Food Trumps now. Beat that. It was all very nice, and we went on for a few more drinks. Rooney had to travel on, so we bid him farewell and sent him on his way to Cambodia.

For the last week we've been at the Perhentian Islands, North West Malaysia. Its very, very beachy. We started out on Big Island (besar), then defected to the smaller island (cesil) after playing card games a certain amount of times and reading everything - not a lot going on at Besar.

At the small island we were able to do much more. Watched films in the evening and they had proper drinks and Snickers-Shakes and everything! It's a snickers bar, in a milkshake, genius. Sat on the beach a lot. Went diving quite a few times. The best of these was the Sugar Wreck, an easily accessible 3500-ton sugar hauler which sank a while back and was quite scary to go into the dingyness and float about it. It was massive. It was a really good dive. We saw quite a lot of underwater life down there - some Lion Fish (dangerous), Scorpion Fish (very dangerous), and what definately seemed to be a Stone Fish (very very very dangerous) but I wasn't going any closer to make sure. Also this big Porcupine Fish drifted towards me with massive eyes, just checking out what was going on. I think they're only dangerous if you eat them. All very cool.

Right now, we've just arrived in Singapore. It was an overnight train and there weren't any beds on it, so we've just completed 14 hours on a chair. We've got a hostel sorted but we're just waiting for them to clear the room, and internet's free so am able to do a quick update. I'll post some pics when I can. We'll also have some diving ones hopefully! Woo hoo, did you see me diving....

Oh, and I added a big Skypee thing on the top right side of the page, so if you've got Skype you can leave us some amusing or abusive answerphone messages. That's very cool.

And a quick note of brilliance regarding the current form of Pompey. It's ace. I'm keeping to my end of the deal by not watching the live coverage and jixing the whole thing. Jodie's very happy about all that.

Kuala Lumpur AKA KL

After swiftly moving on from Penang we caught ourselves a night train and headed south to the great capital of KL. After realising Lonely Planet is not as helpful as it claims to be we delved into the world of hostels on the internet and found ourselves a cozy lodge with all the mod cons and is painted bright green! It's very cool.

We have spent 3 days exploring KL and 3 whole days trying to find a Tourist Info office that is a) actually there or b) open! We still haven't found one but in the meantime walked all over town and seen the sights anyway.

It is so humid here, and you can bet-your-bottom-dollar that at 4pm it absolutely pours down with rain, so we always have to time our days round the rainfall, handy I suppose that it is the same time every day.

We managed to go up the Petronas Twin Towers,(Yes Mum and Dad we actually got there this time!) which also has the biggest shopping mall ever!!! Then we went to the KL Tower and looked over Kuala Lumpur from 421m above, at the time we were having our daily thunder storm so watching the lightening was very cool.


We have met up with Rooney, our Norwegian friend we met back in Thailand, and have made good use of catching up with our travel stories and spending time exploring KL.



Enjoying a few beers


Rooney having drunk far too many beers


Darren and Rooney on the moon!


Darren decides we won't be going to the Cameron Highlands


Boys will be boys

Well we have booked an internal flight for Monday back up to the Perhentian Islands in Malaysia (beats the bumpy bus plus flights are super cheap) so back off to the beach for a couple of weeks then off to the jungle after. Not too sure how set up they are with Internet up there so if this blog doesn't get updated soon you know why.

Off for a steamboat now - explain later...

Oh yes forgot to say, we watched the Pompey match against Blackburn. I told Darren we wouldn't win if he watched it due to Pompey winning every game since Darren has not watched a game. We were 2-1 down and looking like we weren't going to get any other goals, until that is when Darren went to the loo and we scored and drew 2 all. That is it, I am banning him from watching anymore more Pompey matches for the sake of the team, he's only allowed to join me in the pub whilst a game is on but he has to not be watching the screen that's the deal ha ha!

Panang

Nothing really to report. We've travelled from Langkawi to George Town in Penang (dissapointingly not full of people called George), which is closed as we always turn up to these new places on Sundays dammit. Also the #1 choice of hotel in Lonely Planet doesn't exist anymore. Sigh... Rest of the place seems ok though, we're here for about 2 or 3 days then moving onto Kuala Lumpa.

We've just stopped into an internet cafe to (a) get a beer, its very hot here, (b) call our mates on Skype, and (c) check on the Pompey scores....

WOOHOO! Another Pompey win! We've not got any pictures of upload right now, so here's a lovely picture of a different kind for you.


Gary O'Neil, Football Genius!

"Sloppy Wayne Bridge defending let in O'Neil to score in the first minute" BBC Sports. What do you expect.... Ha ha ha (edited out reference to Wayne Bridges ex-club)