Singapore

2nd of October 2006 - 3rd of October 2006

When I left the wonderful Perhentians, I hadn't really made up my mind about where to go next. Not even on the day I was supposed to leave the island. All I knew was that I was going to try the jungle train, and probably go to either the Taman Negara jungle or back to K.L. But then I met a polish couple outside the reception, who were going to Singapore. Turned out it was only about a 14 hour train ride to Singapore, not that much longer than K.L., especially not on a night train. So I spontaneously decided to go to Singapore and check it out. When I left the island, a huge storm was on it's way causing massive waves. The boat ride back to the mainland was the most bumpy (and in some ways, scary) I have ever tried on water - took us one hour and five minutes go get back on the mainland, though it normally only takes about 45 minutes. But we survived :) Back on the mainland, the polish couple i was walking together with had some transportation to the train station, which was about an hour away, sorted out. Or rather, it was meant to be sorted out. The guys at their travel agency didn't speak a lot of English, and it was all very confusing. Eventually, a very nice married Muslim couple took us in their two private cars to an office about 20 minutes our of town. Sitting in the back by myself, I wondered why the hell I decided to go with the polish people instead of just finding my own way to the train station, felt kind of bad for wasting these people's time, but they didn't seem to mind at all. Anyway, when we got to the office, a very nice lady sorted us out with a minibus for a very small amount of money, which took us to the train station, though loads of funny little farmer villages, very interesting actually :) At the train station, only a couple of kilometres from the Thai border, we bought ourselves tickets to the train. Sadly all the sleepers were taken, but we got tickets for normal seats, for a dirt cheap price as well (I love Malaysia).

Next morning, after a pretty crappy sleep on a train seat, I woke up at the border between Malaysia and Singapore. After going through customs and immigration and a short train ride, we were in the center of Singapore. We had quite a bit of trouble finding the way to the hostel we wanted to stay at, especially because of the polish couple who were arguing constantly about which direction to go (I'm never gonna get married :-P). Even though I was a bit frustrated that I couldn't find my way around, I was quite cheerful, because loads of people on the street randomly asked us if we needed help. Singaporeans seems to be really nice people :) I did have problems though, as none of the ATM's i walked by would take my card. As I had no Singapore dollars, no US dollars, travellers checks or anything, I was kinda f*cked. When the people at the ticket counter for the underground weren't willing to help me out, I decided to go to a bank to see if I had any luck there, so I left the polish couple behind and went back up on the street. After waiting for ONE HOUR in the bank, it was finally my turn. Turned out it was a complete waste of time - all the incompetent lady behind the desk was able to say was "try again". Well, thank you very much... Grrrr!

Then I had a bright idea. Went to a money exchanger, and exchanged 10 Ringgit I had found in my pocket, which gave me the enormous sum of four dollars, which was enough to buy a ticket for the underground to Little India, the area where my hostel was. After having my bags inspected (Singapore have very high safety precautions because of some bombings), I went downstairs to jump on the train. Funny enough, The underground looked exactly like the one we have in Copenhagen. When I got of in Little India and found my hostel, I had to find a way to get some money, to be able to pay for my hostel and get something to eat. Therefore I decided to call the Danish credit card service. Had one problem though - I had absolutely no money to buy a phone card. Luckily, a very nice Indian guy lent me his phone card so I could get a hold of PBS, the firm who deals with all Danish card transactions. Turned out that every single Danish card, debit card, credit card, Visa, Mastercard, whatever, wasn't working due to technical difficulties - either in Denmark or in the rest of the world. Crap!! Explained my situation, and they made a temporary solution so I could get about 200 dollars out of my Visa card. To do this, I had to ask my receptionist to call the local Visa authorities, which I did, but they didn't seem to be able to work out at all. Craaaaaaaaap. Therefore I went to the nearest bank, who managed to get $200 dollars of my account. Success! I actually only asked for a hundred, but I didn't mind. I was just relieved that I finally had money in my pocket, so I could get something to eat.

Back at the hostel, I had a chat with some of my roommates, and we tried to find something to see and do. This is when I realized what a shit hole Singapore is - there is nothing interesting to see, really. All the sights are artificial, man-made things, like the worlds biggest man-made waterfall, a zoo etc. Pretty much all you can do in Singapore is go shopping. On top of that, it's a very expensive country - food cost about three or four times the prices I paid for the same in Malaysia. I had already decided to go back to Malaysia the next day.

We did find something to do though. Quite a bunch of people from the hostel went on a night safari in a park connected to Singapore Zoo. Compared to other zoos, animal parks etc. I've been to, this was actually quite good. We went on a tram ride though the park, with a female guide who sounded just like Count Dracula, according to Morgan, a Canadian girl from my room. No kidding. The park had some quite cool animals, among them flying foxes in a big inclosure you could walk though. At first we weren't able to spot any of them, until one of them zoomed right past us and hit me and the Indian guy :-D Quite cool. Other than that, they had all sorts of big cats, hyenas, bears etc. etc. I'm still not very fond of zoos though - despite this park being quite spacious, I still saw some animals who really behaved like living in captivity had drove them nuts - e.g. one of the hyenas which kept walking around in a circle for at least 20 minutes. Sad :(

Next morning, I went to the big and famous Sim Lim Square shopping mall, which is meant to be one of the cheapest places in the world to buy electronics. I didn't find it to be that cheap though, compared to some of the places back in K.L. Neither did it have the same big range of products. Enough - time to leave. Just like me and pretty much everyone else, Morgan, the Canadian girl had decided to leave as well. Since she was going to K.L. like I was, we booked ourselves on the same bus. Morgan turned out to be the highlight of my trip to Singapore. After a couple of hours of casual chit chat, I found out she was a huge Top Gear fan like myself. So we spent the next couple of hours on the bus watching Top Gear on my laptop, laughing our asses of, probably annoying all the other passengers... Wicked!

Anyway - Singapore is definitely just a big city meant for businessmen and other people wearing suits. Though I usually have a very positive attitude towards the places I visit, and always try to make the best of it, it is very possibly the most boring place I have ever been to.