Matt and Kylie

Singapore photos…

There are quite a few photos, so I have broken them up.  These are from the glorious Singapore Zoo; the animals and the striking flora and fauna.

Also, we have finally(!) finished the blog and photos from Thailand in January/February, posted below the Singapore posts.

Singapore round and about…

Here are a few of the photos I took round the city, including the Fountain of Wealth (the world’s largest fountain), the Esplanade Theatres on the Bay and the Singapore Flyer.

Singapore Bird Park…

Anyone for an apricot flamingo?

Here we go again… Singapore!!

Ok so we are finally getting around to starting up the blog again… not sure if anyone even still bothers to check it… but oh well…

I (Matt) had a bloody fantastic time in Europe… its was all a bit of a blur in some spots (possibly related to alcohol consumption) and will in time probably get around to posting some photos of the seven weeks I was on the road… but right now I figure we better get everyone up to speed with where we are currently at… otherwise we will never catch up!

We managed to meet up with each other at Singapore airport without a hitch… I arrived just 20 minutes before Kylie’s plane so I camped out in front of the baggage carousel Kylie’s plane was coming in on and waited to see if she had made it in one piece… I finally spotted her and tried to catch her attention from afar but Kylie was more fixated on her bag which was winning the race back into the loading bay… she got there in time though and we were finally reunited.

After successfully navigating the Singapore MRT we managed to get to our hostel called Footprints in the Little India part of town and it turned out to be a pretty decent place. We were hoping to meet up with Sam that night but he had obviously already ducked off to bed so we had to wait until morning to finally catch up with him. The three of us set off for a bit of an explore, although after talking to Sam it seemed as though he had pretty much done every activity we had planned the day before which was pretty funny. We decided to just walk into the centre and check it out, but it wasn’t long before we were seeking out a mall for the comforts of its air conditioning… holy shit its hot here!

We tracked down a nice cheap lunch in some random mall’s food court before heading off again towards the Singapore flyer area via the Theatres on the bay, we saw the Merlion from a far but before we managed to make it to the Flyer I some how managed to spill 500ml of pure orange juice in my back pack… with a laptop inside it… oh bugger! After tipping out the entire contents of my bag on to the foot path it was decided that my laptop was pretty much fucked as when I tipped it on its side Juice poured out of the joints like a waterfall… I quickly removed the battery and tried to dry it as best as possible and we turned back for the hostel to go and sort my mess out.

I pretty much put everything in the washing machine and left the laptop out to dry for 24 hours and then we headed out to meet some guy called Jim whom Sam had been put in contact with via his girlfriends cousins dog-walkers sons stepdads ex-wives mother-in-law or something… Jim turned out to be a good sort, a British guy who was living and working in Singapore, we meet up with him and a couple of his friends Richard and Katie down at a pretty lively ex pat place called Harry’s on Boat Quay. After some good conversation and far too many Rugby club special rate San Miguel’s (S$5 down from S$12 or something – yes alcohol is that ridiculously expensive in Singapore: S$1=NZ$0.80) we called it a night and went home via the very conveniently located MacDonald’s.

The next day we decided to head to the bird park, zoo and night safari, Sam had already done the zoo and safari but decided that he wanted to do it again… which was weird… but good for us… so we set off on the metro once again heading for the Bird park, we stopped off along the way after seeing some mention of a Chinese and Japanese garden on the map – they turned out to be only mildly interesting so we spent about 20 minutes there before finally jumping back on the train, transferring to a bus and making it to the Bird park where we jumped straight into Bongo Burger and ordered 3 hotdogs haha.

Once finished we headed to a bird show aimed at the little kids but it wasn’t actually too bad, they had some pretty talented and smart birds and one that could talk and sing pretty well. It kept us entertained for the whole 20-30 minutes anyway, and then we were off around the park. Most of it was the standard birds in cages type stuff which I really wasn’t too interested in but they did have 2 huge open Aviaries which were really cool. The first one had hundreds of Rainbow lorikets which was the same as Kylie’s old bird Willy. Willy had a really annoying high pitched screech on him but luckily these fella’s didn’t seem to have the same problems so they were much more pleasant to be around… maybe Willy was just retarded? Thankfully he has since been deported to Stokes Valley, probably to an insane Asylum for birds. The only other real highlights of the place were the massive birds of prey which were unfortunately in smaller cages and the huge groups of pink flamingos. By this stage it was getting a little late in the day and we were wondering if we would be able to make the zoo in time to be able to see it all… we decided to grab a cab and make a dash for it.

We actually arrived at the zoo with plenty of time to spare in the end and set about getting around it. I was amazed at how seemingly free the monkeys were to roam around in the tree’s above, but Sam pointed out the way they kept them in the right areas, by electrifying the trunks… a pretty good idea and much more like the real world I guess, well not the electrified part, but the roaming freely in the tree tops part. Singapore Zoo is definitely the best zoo I have been to in terms of animal habitats, but there wasn’t really too much I had not already seen in some other place, still it was a good couple of hours.

Next was the night safari, this was actually kind of a disappointment for me… well not really a disappointment but more just a bit boring as it was essentially exactly the same as the one we saw in Chaing Mai, which no doubt completely copied Singapore. The one difference was the pre show with some animals, it was pretty good but a bit short… I think it had the highlight of the day though in a couple of recycling otters, one of them dunked his paper in the bin in record time but the other little guy on can duty was more interested in juggling the cans than putting them in the bin and needed a bit of persuasion from the trainers to finally get the job done – it was pretty funny. After that it was time to head home again tired from a rather long day.

For our final day in town we decided to head down and check out Orchard road – mall central – we of course had no intention of buying any Prada handbags but once again it was the lure of air con that called us in doors. We got slightly distracted along the way by an electronics market – 10 stories of laptops and gadgets but in the end it wasn’t me or Sam who bought something, but Kylie. She managed to get a wide angle lens adapter for her camera for S$50 down from S$325! Back on the road to town we decided to hit up the movies and went and saw Angels and Demons, which I thought was ok and better than The Da Vinci code… but that is probably only because I can’t remember the book so well and wouldn’t have noticed where they butchered it. After that we decided to have another go at getting to the Singapore Flyer, this time we made it only to decide that it probably was a bit too expensive and we had already spent way too much so we didn’t even go on it haha. On the way home we stopped in to see the show at the fountain of wealth, supposedly the biggest fountain in the world – WHAT A DISAPPOINTMENT!!! We spent 15 minutes watching something that we were sure was just a warm up because it was so boring only to realise that it was the actual show and that it was over. A bit of a crappy way to end our day but I was over it in about 4 seconds… and then we set off home to get a good night’s rest before the train to Malacca in Malaysia the next day.

Oh yeah and I also forgot to mention that after letting it dry out for 24 hours my laptop miraculously still works! What a tank… it took half a litre of Juice and is still ticking… well I should mention that the mouse buttons are a bit stuffed – i.e. sticky with juice but that’s better than it not working at all, and there is still the possibility of juice rust/corrosion…. but for now it’s a TANK!