Singapore Slings

So the couple of days in Melbourne came and went in a flash – spent time messing around with Jake, a very small amount of shopping, pretended to be a paramedic for a night and joined an ambo social club outing (nice little cafe and great food in Yarraville … if only I could remember the name … started with O I think … hmm … Sooz?  Dean?  Help?).  Saturday morning dawned cold, wet and shitty – just how we like it when leaving the country – and under protest my body dragged itself out of bed at 6am to get ready to go to the airport.  My brain followed it half an hour later…

So anyway, we caught up with Bec & her parents at the airport … the two of us were jumping up & down with excitement, while everyone else just looked kinda shell-shocked that they were out of bed at all.  Thanks guys!  Check-in and boarding were the usual mixture of fun and excitement (just how many times will I be ‘randomly’ selected for an explosives check and pat down on this trip?  Maybe the guy just liked the look of me – it’s never too early in the morning to cop a feel, apparently.)

Bec managed the first injury of the trip before we even made it to the departure gate due to The Suitcase Incident but a quick foot transplant later, we were on the plane and looking forward to 8 hours of bad food, worse movies and screaming kids.  Disappointingly we had none of those, and it was actually remarkably pleasant all round – although the Orange Peril’s in the seats in front of us made for interesting viewing – two rather large women dressed head to toe in orange velour ensembles.  Not out of place in an episode of Aerobics Oz Style, perhaps, but pretty bloody hideous anywhere else.  Like, say, Singapore Airlines flight 238 from Melbourne.  They were almost as hot, in fact, as the 32 degree heat and 4 billion percent (this may be an approximation) humidity that lay in wait for us on arrival.

I was very pleased that the Changi airport authorities had prepared for my arrival with a special sign pointing the way…

So we managed immigration etc without issue (a pleasant surprise), and after cheerfully short-changing the bus driver we were on our way into the city armed only with our trusty Singapore map and dubious sense of direction.  The people on the bus were incredibly friendly and helpful though, so despite our best efforts we didn’t get even slightly lost and we rocked up to the Y, bags in hand and headed straight for the rooftop pool.  As you do.

Having reduced our body temperatures to something slightly below boiling point, it was time to do what every self respecting backpacker does in Singapore – find the cleanest and least wrinkled set of clothes from your pack and help lower the tone of Raffles Hotel while drinking the obligatory $22 Singapore Sling.  The bar at Raffles is a real taste of British colonialism at its best (worst?) and looks amazing inside.  The cocktails were bloody impressive to say the least … even without the little umbrellas to poke your eye out with.

Following Raffles it was obviously time for food.  Bec spotted the most geriatric tuk-tuk driver in Singapore, so after some hard bargaining we talked him down to a price that was only slightly ludicrous rather than total daylight robbery and set off in search of dinner.  Chinatown beckoned – not that we knew it when we started the journey – and we enjoyed the somewhat surreal experience of crawling along main roads at slightly above walking pace while buses and mopeds whistled past a few inches away.

We made our selection from one of the innumerable roadside stalls and while it was being cooked enjoyed Singapore’s other famous export – a large bottle of Tiger beer.  Damn good it was too.  By the end of all of that it was definitely time for bed … unfortunately bed lay about a 45 minute walk away.  Still, we made it back, with possibly the world’s sorest feet to go with it.  After being up for about 20 hours and enjoying a 20 degree increase in temperature, sleep wasn’t too hard to come by for some reason…

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