Sizzlin' Singapore!

I have decided... that flying is not my favourite pastime. All that waiting at airports is bad enough, but the planes are absolutely horrendous. From the food to the space. Argh. Ah well, only one more flight to go 'till June. It's the one to Sydney - that means I am in Singapore now.

Singapore is, except for very, very hot, a highly regulated place. Signs forbidding this or that activity are posted everywhere, with their fines added. You can't smoke, you can't eat/drink, you can't litter, you can't this, you can't that... after a while one asks 'so what can you do?' But you get used to it - just don't make a fuss and don't cause a scene. Also a sign of tight control is housing and cars. There are strict rules on who can get one and it's administrative hell trying to obtain. Only 10% of Singaporeans have a car! Granted, they're very nice cars (new Lexuses are quite common here), but still. Does make for relatively quiet streets, though.

So, we arrived yesterday, after a gruelling 20+-hour flight. Our hotel was huge and very luxurious, especially when you've got the backpacker's type of accommodation in mind. I wonder how much a room normally is - don't even think I want to know! Our tour guide Eliza ('like Doolittle' gave us a quick, but very detailed overview of the city before we were allowed to go out on our own. In Little India (neighbourhood in Singapore, no prizes for guessing why), a couple of us grabbed some food. In my case, it was chicken somethingsomething. With yellow rice, that's all I know right now. But it was good. And cheap. That's another Singaporean feature - a full meal for under five euros! It's insanity, but really good value. If I had forgotten anything, I could've picked it up here, especially since we were situated near Mustafa, an enormous shopping centre with a lot of everything you could ever want to buy. Wonderful. We toured Little India and Mustafa before going to bed. Jetlag is a bitch. Woke up at around five - just like the other two blokes in my room. Like I said: jetlag is a bitch. But we made it in the end and after breakfast we went to China Town. Complete culture shock after Little India! Lots more colours, decorations and such - probably 'cause today is the last day of the lunar new year.

In the afternoon we went on a bus tour of the city. This included a gem factory (not my favourite type of thing to visit), the botanical gardens (pretty, but that's all), a boat tour of the city with complementary over-enthousiastic American voice-over and something else which I've now forgotten but I know I liked (isn't that funny - the things you like most about a tour tend not to stick). We had a good view of the city. That brings me to a third feature of Singapore: an interesting mixture of low-level, older buildings and ultra-modern high-rises. I mean, we have a high-riser in Enschede now, but this is insanity. you have little, 'authentic' (as far as I can tell) shops and places to eat ('our favourite pastime is eating' - Eliza) in front of huge glass bank buildings. It's a weird sight and I do think it says a lot about the city - a combo of the old and the new.

So now we're all waiting for our plane, which leaves in three hours or so. And tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow I will reach the final destination: Australia. Very excited and although jetlag has taken away a little of that, I really am looking forward to tomorrow!

I'll post again a.s.a.p. Till then, take care in the cold wet Nl.