Singapore

What a place! I was exhausted from 2 weeks of classroom training and running around Malaysia. The last thing I wanted to do was more walking, but I sucked it up (because, well, there’s not too many times you get a flight to another country paid for) so I needed to take advantage. I landed about dinner time Friday night and was exhausted and hungry.

First things first though, I needed to drop my luggage to the hostel. With zero clue as to where I was or how to tell the taxi driver how to get to where I needed to go, I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. After what felt like an hour, weaving around the dark but busy city, we finally arrived on the street where the hostel was supposed to be located. The driver slowed down to a crawl, trying to spot the building numbers. Thankfully he spoke English and could understand that we were looking for a Hostel. He eventually gave the ‘ah-ha!’ and pulled up to the curb in front of a red door, tucked away in a dark alcove. Kindly, after I paid him and was pulling my luggage out of the back seat, he threw in casually (and quickly lost ALL thankfulness that he spoke English), “Oh, you’re staying right by the dead bodies!” Absolutely appalled by the statement, I frantically scanned my surroundings, trying not to panic, and that’s when I spotted what he was talking about. Indeed, my hostel was located directly next to the cities’ largest mortuary! I pushed the thought deep into suppression and made my way to ring the doorbell and then up the steep, narrow staircase to a rooftop terrace. In front of me, at the top of the stairs, were two large desks pushed together to create an ‘L’ shape. A man in his late 20’s sat behind the desk, scrambling back and forth between paperwork and the computer, clearly frantic to find the booking of the 20-something year old couple sitting on the other side of the desk from him. He politely looked up and told me to have a seat by a row of computers on the adjacent wall, that he would be with me in a minute. 30 minutes later, he finally escorted the couple to their room, folded some towels and after taking them back down to the couple, Finally came back to the ‘lobby.’

Logging onto one of the computers along the wall I was sitting by, he quickly found my reservation and informed me I had been upgraded to a ‘module’ bed. Didn’t have a clue what that was, but at that stage didn’t care – just wanted to put down my things and go in search for some food. I followed him down a staircase leading down the back to a courtyard, home to the washing machines and bathroom. We came to a doorway and he motioned me to take off my shoes before entering into the ‘bed hall.’ Turning the corner after a row of bunk beds, the concept of a module bed because extremely apparent. It was literally a wall of square, container shaped holes large enough to fit a single bed mattress. A lamp was drilled into the top corner and there were ladders leading to the upper containers. He brought me to the last bunk on the bottom right (happy to not have to climb up into my bed for the next two nights) and then he handed me a towel/sheet/tapestry(?). I’m still not too sure if I was meant to use the large sheet of woven fabric as my sheet that night, but I first used it to hang across the opening of the bunk so I could leave a few of my bags on the bed, concealed (there was a compartment under the bunk with a door to store my other two large bags).

Freshening up a tad, I left in search of some much needed food – but of course having no clue as to the layout of the city, let alone where or what to eat, I impulsively jumped in a taxi and asked him to take me to the harbour. Right, so the harbour (which I discovered after getting out of the taxi in essentially the middle of the road outside the Marina Bay Sands hotel) is mostly made up of the hotel and all its affiliate businesses (Casino, shopping mall, botanical gardens). The Helix Bridge connects one side of the harbour and has been on several of those ‘ top sites to see lists’ – and for good reason! The design, structure and lights make it look almost like a strand of DNA. Across the street from that was the parking deck for the hotel  - now usually a parking garage is not something to rave about, but the outside walls were fitted with metal plates hanging on steel cords, strung from the top to bottom of the garage. When the wind blew, the plates would begin to move, creating a ripple effect down the side of the building , and it sounded like waves rolling across the ocean. I was so in awe and impressed by the installation – that I had to stand there and watch it for a few minutes.

Realising my hunger, I re-focused my attention to find some sort of restaurant, but there didn’t appear to be much. I discovered the mall and thought there had to be some sort of restaurant or food court - and I was right. The entire basement level of the mall was a massive food court, much like the one I ate at in Malaysia. I wandered for a good 10 minutes attempting to scope out the menus at each of the stalls, when I spotted a guy carrying a large plate of fried rice – and that was it. My mouth starting watering and I had to find the place where he got it. Heading in the direction he had come from, I finally found a stall with the rice and some Chinese broccoli in oyster sauce (which is essentially soy/teriyaki sauce. Got my order and the set off with my tray to find a seat and that’s when I became extremely irritable. I walked with my tray of food for what felt to be about 15 minutes. Every table I walked up to that had an empty seat (there were table of 4 and large community round and rectangle tables), I would ask if I could sit and I was refused every single time! Usually an easy-going person, my hunger pains and my patience got the best of me so as soon as I noticed someone getting up, I swooped in and took their seat without asking and starting shovelling the rice in my mouth as quickly as I could. When my plate was nearly empty, I was interrupted by the loud coughing of a middle aged white man sitting across from me. Usually this wouldn’t make me blink an eye, but the fact that he was clearly another North American in a sea of Asians made the two of us stand out – and of course made me a target for him to strike up completely unnecessary conversation. He obviously had starting coughing to catch my attention, but as soon as I looked up he smiled at me and broke out into conversation, asking all the typical questions – where are you from, why are you here, etc. I was polite and answered with short, one word or sentence replies or nods of the head. Only when he mentioned he was staying at the Marina Bay Sands did it peak my interest – ONLY because guests have special access to parts of the roof that normal tourists aren’t allowed to visit. He asked if I wanted to see – and I jumped on the chance. Now no worries, I had my guard up and I had an exit strategy (because, let’s be honest – it was a bit dodgy and I didn’t want him getting any wrong ideas.) I used him to get to the roof and then I ditched! But I got to see the lights and fireworks show across the bay from up there, got to see the infinity pool that goes to the edge of the building, spanning the entire middle section of the roof, and I got to see the restaurant/bar that’s raved about. I was exhausted for my travels so went back to the hostel after that to try to sleep (leaving my woven cloth as my ‘door’ to the container, wrapping myself instead in my fleece.)

The next morning a different man was sitting at the front desk and he was extremely nice and helpful with places to see. I walked the opposite direction I had gone the night before and spent the rest of the day wandering the streets through Hindu temples, Little India (where I got lost and a bit panicked because it actually felt like the dirty/smelly streets of Bangalore with creepy men staring – but I did locate a highly recommended curry restaurant where I had a delicious chick-pea curry and naan bread served on a large banana leaf), China Town (hundreds of stalls of everything fake/cheap you could think of), all the quays along the river (lined with bars, restaurants and shops), and back down to the bay (to see it during the day.) There was a music festival on while I was there, so I stopped to listen to one of the bands playing at an amphitheatre over the water. While that was going on, there was simultaneously a tribute to the Singapore military happening in a separate amphitheatre a bit further around the bay. It proved to be an afternoon of entertainment of music, boat shows (military boats and dragon boats lit up on the water once the sun went down) and fireworks. Having to get up at 4:30 the next morning to make it to the airport, I decided to head back to bed – but happy with all the things I was able to see in just one day.

Catching a taxi which the driver was still on his rounds from the night before, I made it to the airport in plenty of time. Once landing back in Malaysia (I had to catch my flight back to Aus from KL) – I had about 3 hours to get to my next gate. Leaving customs to go back to departures, I just couldn’t seem to locate Air Asia’s ticket terminals. I finally asked one of the help desks and she informed me that they were in a whole separate terminal all together. My heart started to race a tad – so I left that building in search for where I was meant to be. I asked a taxi man if he could drive me to the Air Asia terminal and he told me I had to buy a ticket. What?! He pointed towards a building with booths for transportation tickets. The lady behind that counter said it was $35 ringgits for a taxi and it was about a 30 minute trip. AHHHH! I had just waisted about 25 minutes just to figure this information out – and not it was another 30 minutes to the terminal – and $35?! Stubborn me asked if there was another way and just pointed back outside to a bus lane that had a shuttle running and was only $2. Done.

I had ‘plenty of time’ still and the bus couldn’t take that long. Wrong. I waited another 30 minutes in that bus lane, asking every driver who pulled in if that was the shuttle to Air Asia. Finally the 10^th bus that pulled in was the correct one. I paid my money, sat down and started panicking that I would actually miss my flight at this stage and be stranded in Malaysia. 10 minutes later we took off down the road and about ½ way through the journey, the driver pulled off to the side of the road, unannounced. What could he possibly be doing – but to my surprise, a large group of people appeared out of nowhere and started piling onto the bus, each one having to pay there $2 to board – which ate up another 15 minutes of my time! The driver pulled onto the road (counting the money he had just collected, while operating the vehicle!!) and about 15 minutes later, we had finally arrived. I was one of the first to exit and had to take 5, yes 5! separate escalators to make it to the departure floor of this terminal. Rounding the corner, I spotted the Air Asia line, only to see a sign that all Air Asia departures had been moved further down to one area – and when I looked, the line was about 150 people long. By this time I only had about 1 hour left before my flight was meant to depart, I had been up since about 4 that morning and I was starving. I was not in a good mood and I was too anxious and antsy to stand still. The line moved, slowly but surely and I soon had my bags checked and RAN towards my departure gate. Thankfully the gates were quite close together and I made it in time to grab a bit to eat, buy some water and send a couple of post cards to my family.

I slumped into a chair at the gate and could finally relax. The plane left on time, the flight was fairly uneventful and Dave was waiting at the airport to collect me when I arrived. I was more than delighted to be back, but was nonetheless happy to have been able to see two countries that were so vastly different than a life I had grown up being used to.