Singapore

The flight from Sydney to Singapore is a long one. It was made more painful by the mad Russian couple who spent the entire time yelling at each other across the Australian woman sitting between them. Punctuating their words by punching the seats in front they loudly expounded their (drunken, heavily accented, gibberish) disgust at everything on the aeroplane and in the vicinity, including the Aussie woman. She had clearly decided that drink was the way to deal with them and herself got hammered and aggressive. When it looked like coming to blows, drunk Aussie woman then switched seats with an equally mad Indian woman who spent the remainder of the flight bullshitting her philosophy on life at volume to everyone within earshot (about 250 people). Contemplated hijacking the plane and plunging us into a mountain face as an act of mercy to all on board. (Did I mention the Russians had raging halitosis?)

We got to Singapore at about 11pm, and spent an hour ringing every hostel in town (I kid you not) to find that every single one was out of rooms. So we found a cheapo chain hotel just outside the red light district (but not far enough, as I would discover while John slept like a baby and I was kept awake to the sound of the ladies plying their trade with enthusiam). The next day we packed up our huge, monstrous rucksacks and staggered onto the train, which is cheapish and quick - a single is about 40p - to find a better place to stay. We headed for little India...okay, because I was navigating and wanted to browse the gold markets and eat curry 24/7, and found every hostel full again, so picked up a cheaper hotel across the road from an amazing Indian food place. I say 'food place' because it has no walls and the 'waiter' is about 9 years old. Not quite a hawker but rustic enough for John to look askance!

The air in Singapore was like warm water, until the monsoon started. Then it was just water. Okay, apparently it rains all the time in Singapore, more so June to November, but this was thumping great floods you couldn't see through that went on for about 3 hours! Then the sun came out and it was 30 degrees in the shade again.

We wandered around looking at tat, temples and eating things (becoming true Singaporeans, since the national pastimes are eating and shopping), getting lost and finding some fabulous streets (see pics!). Last night I decided that we needed to go to Raffles Hotel, hangout of movie stars and such from the 30s and 40s...John warned me it would be expensive and I realise inflation has taken its toll on the place because after one drink we got the bill and I squeaked when I realised we could have got four dinners in Little India for two glasses of Tiger!! Then we went down to Clarke Quay, where ll the bars and clubs are, where beer was slightly less! We found a rock and jazz bar with a decent band playing and spent the evening there among the local yuppies and yuppy ex-pats (ok, I'm unncharitable but the area was pretty sterile and stereotypical City).