(Goodbye Oz!) Well hellooooo Singapore!
Trip Start
Dec 09, 2008
1
Trip End
Ongoing
Singapore, Singapore
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
I delighted the everso patient Alistair with my late arrival, and with that came my scum of a backpack and ripped linen trousers. He sure was impressed! What I noticed instantly was the efficiency of systems and not to mention the warm humid sticky air (hmmm, air....if you can call it that!). I felt as though I was on a holiday in Hong Kong..being amongst plenty of Asians you see. I soon realised I wasn't, after having noticed how calm and mixed the population is. It is clearly far more slow-paced / and customer service wise too as opposed to Hong Kong.
Anyhow, from that point onwards, I was welcomed to Singapore with a comfy couch in a serviced apartment on Orchard Road (by Somerset MRT Station) - an idyllic location for all you wacky shopaholics out there. And simultaneously intro-d to a whole lotta food. I think Sting-Ray was first at the outdoor humid Newton Hawker Centre with the accustomed rice. Clearly, I felt....at home :)
Hawker Centres (food courts as well call them) are obviously apparent in ol' Singapore. In the early 1900
s when Singapore was thriving, many locals were set out to start their own business - entrepreuneurs! And here we have it, a multitude of cuisines available - left right and centre, up and down, north east south east... blah de blah. So the cuisines I have been engulfed in are: Singaporean, Malay, Chinese, Indian, Thai......mainly..........
What have I been up to in Singapore since my arrival?
- Hung out with the local ex-pats and locals, courtesy of Mr A. Northway
- Visited Demsey - and enthralled into a huge cuisine of Black Peppered Crab and Bamboo Clams. All fresh of course! Ultra tasty or what!
- Met with Graeme - a friend I made in New Zealand travels - he's now working out there!
- Met up with Kent - a friend from uni (year above). Hadn't realised he was working out in Singapore?!
- Guided around Singapore with my dear Lisa Wong (whom i met in Melbourne salsa dance classes)- who very very kindly chauffered me around Singapore - Vivo Centre, Hawker Centres, Faber Hill and to her home, just to see what local life is like and to dig into a national dish Haianese Chicken rice! de-lish.
- Sentosa Island - only at night. My timing was spot on. I was in time for a good ol' annual party/boogy/rave (minus the hard stuff - laws are seriously strict) on Sentosa Beach on 13th December. Here, DJ's from all over the world (namely Europe) were centralised and frazzled their tunes on three main stages. A decent night it was, I was as sober and tired as can be...being in this state, I noticed the effects of Singaporean laws and how tame the crowd was. Comparing this to Europe in particular....
