Goodbye Southeast Asia

There were still a couple of things we wanted to see in Singapore and there was still some time to do that. My flight was going to leave at midnight and I planned to leave the hostel around 9 pm to get to the airport.

We wanted to visit the Gardens By The Sea Park which is an area on the coast with lots of tropical trees. It also (being Singapore) has Supertrees, which are steel constructions that acted like trees, including regulating the climate with oxidation and cooling the environment. Basically man made trees. There is also an enormous Winter garden hosting even more tropical trees and plants then the one's outside.

As it should be in a rain forest (even if it is in the middle of Singapore) it started to rain (pretty strong, including a thunderstorm). We found shelter under an umbrella and met Nicole from Bolivia who was working at the French Embassy in Kuala Lumpur. She convinced Basti to also visit Bolivia when he passes through South America.It is pretty amazing what kind of peole you meet on these travels.

When the rain stopped, or rather reduced, we needed to move on to meet Hayk (a Armenian guy Basti met in Nepal) at the Microsoft building. It wasn't a far ride on the MRT and we arrived right on time. Unfortunately the convention Hayk was attending stretched on and on, so that we went to a cafe to wait for him.

After some time Hayk suggested, we should not waste any more time and continue our sight seeing tour. The two outstanding items on the list were right next to each other and we could walk there. The Marina Bay Sands Shopping Mall and the Marina Bay Sands Hotel.

The biggest attraction of the Mall was the free Wifi and maybe the small gondola ride within the mall. Other wise this was a temple of really unnecessary consumption. The mall nearly solely consists of Louis Viton, Prada, Mont Blanc, Chanel and the like shops. All of which are not as you know it from home 30 Square meters in size, no over here there are more than 200 square meters and in some cases one shop of a certain brand might not even be enough, so that there are two or three Armani shops in this mall.

The prices for things that did display prices were outside of any morally acceptable margin, and there were plenty of things that did not display any prices. I mean I understand that people spend 300 000 € on a sports car if they can but where is the quality or value if you spend the same amount on a pen?

Especially considering we arrived from Indonesia the day before I really did not enjoy the mall very much.The other decadent expirience of the Marina Bay Sands hotel however was worth the time.

The Marina Bay Sands hotel is built of three 200m towers that make up hotel and function rooms and are connected on top with a platform that spans all three buildings.

It is free to go on top and have a look, which of course we did. On top of the building there is also a 150m long infinity pool, which of course can only be used by the guests of the hotel.

Anyhow, the free visit and a couple of snapshots from the top were great.

Meanwhile we had also heard back from Hayk, who wanted to meet us. As it was already 7 and I had to pick up my stuff at the hostel, I decided to not join. So it was good by at the Metro Station to Basti. It has been a great time to join him on his adventure for two weeks. I'm sure he enjoyed it as well and will now meet up with his brother in Australia.

Back at the Hostel I got my bags, charged the phone and laptop to the brink and left the hostel at precisely 9pm (once again German punctuality).

After check-in and passport control I was wandering around the Airport and found a Duty free shop in which I arranged my own quality Whiskey tasting (for free). None of the whiskies I tried was younger than 18 years.

In the end I decided to go for a bottle of Laphroaig Quarter Cask that was once (at a Whiskey Tasting in Ireland) suggested to me by the Master Distiller of Laphroaig personally.

Another security check and then it was onto the big plane again.

It all went very quick, boarding, sit down, a tomato juice, some dinner, one film and off to sleep.

In this case I watched Planes (the third part of the Pixar movie Cars) which was much more entertaining than Pacific Rim. Especially on a plane :-).

Welcome back

The night was dominated by a very intense thunderstorm and I was wondering if it ever stopped before we had to go to the ferry. In the end I did get a couple of hours of sleep and even woke up 15 min before the Alarm went off.

After another posh breakfast we got our bags and since we still had the Rupees we didn't spent on the Indian food yesterday we thought we might take a taxi, although it was only 1.5 km.

When we asked the concierge at the hotel we learned it would cost 50000 Rupees to get us there. That was half of what we paid from the airport to the hotel which was at least 15 km.
 
We decided to walk. We had done this way plenty of times by now and knew we had enough time. This way we also were able to keep a bit of the funny money.

 Emigration from Indonesia was no problem and now we were waiting for the ferry.

The last view of Indonesia was a township (as I imagine them down in Johannesburg or Capetown) that lay across the bay. Next to the tin huts on poles was an impressive but rotten oil tanker laying half tilted on shore. A real view of property. The most memorizing thing within this scenario was that the people in the huts could see the Skyline of Singapore across the bay.

I have never seen such a huge difference in quality of living and culture in so close proximity only divided by a few kilometers of water and a 45 minute boat ride.

The ride on our air conditioned Fast ferry was very pleasant and the huge amounts of boats and ships and enormous vessels on the left and right made sure we didn't get bored. It seems that all of the East-West shipping lanes pass through the Singapore straight.

Closer to the Singaporean Coast we even got boarded by the Coast guard who did a quick inspection and satisfied that we did not try to smuggle any chewing gum (which is not openly available in Singapore) they let us go our way.

And again when pulling into Singapore harbour (the ferry dock is right behind Sentosa Island) it all looked so artificial and clean. Very much like Disney World. But to be honest after not even a week in Indonesia it was nice to walk on a pavement without the fear of falling into some gaping holes.

Suddenly there were also hundreds of foreigners again and no one looked at us or said "Hi Mister" any more. It is really such a big difference between these two places that are so close together.

Immigration took a bit of time as multiple ferries arrived all at the same time. Next stop was the Green Kiwi Backpackers Hostel again.

After checking in and dropping off our bags we went to a small skate board shop that was specialized on Long boards, of which Basti wanted to buy one. Apparently these are much cheaper here. So, we got a board and rode around a bit. One of the plans was to ride down the Henderson Waves Bridge that we have visited before.It stretches from one peak to another and is made from smooth wood.

We started off with only a tiny slope in the beginning and realized that this board becomes very quick very fast.

So we decided to only roll up the Bridge rather than down.

We continued our walk around the Park and then headed back to the Hostel to drop off the board.

In the evening we wanted to meet up with Antonio again. He suggested a great little Noodle place in a food court where the noodles are being made by hand on site. It was really cool who the guy was stretching the dough and folding it and stretching it until he had several strings that all were the same length and width.

For all three of us this was the first food (except breakfast and an Ice cream) of the day, which meant we ate loads of noodles and Dim Sum dumplings and were stuffed.

Afterwards we took a stroll along the Orchard road which hosts all the major malls in Singapore (it really is mall next to mall, next to mall, here) and they just started to put up the extremely tacky Christmas decoration which really felt quite strange as we were walking around in shorts and t-shirts at night. Anyhow, there were reindeers and pine trees and even artificial snow.

In a quite side street with colonial houses and palm trees, just 50 m away from the Christmas craze we had a beer and then headed to Antonio's place for swim in his (well it belongs to the apartment block)50 m open air pool on the 7th floor.

After our swim we went up to the 31st floor to relax a little with a view over the city.

The evening was then completed with a few episodes of "injustice" which is a UK crime drama, but unfortunately we were so tired at this point that we could only watch 4 of the 5 episodes. I guess to see what happens I will have to find them somewhere in Ireland.