I just noticed that I have not blogged since Wednesday so it is high time to update you on what's been happening. On Thursday, Alisha and I went out to Changkat Buhkit Bintang (a street of pubs/clubs with lots of travellers and expats). Unfortunatly, it was raining so it was not as busy as it usually is. We had a great night with the locals.
Terrence gave me Friday off because I would only be at the office for 3 hours because of our early bus departure time. I slept in, packed, changed some money and at 4:30, we (my 3 female roomates and I) were seated in the Coach bus to Singapore. The bus was really comfortable and the seats went down a lot so that we could sleep, it was dark out any ways and there were only palm trees to see on the side of the road. We got a bottle of water and a snack for the ride. We also stopped twice on the way- one bathroom break and one supper break. When we got to the end of Malaysia, we had to get out of the bus, go into customs and they stamped our passports to say that we are leaving Malaysia. This was a pretty fast and easy process. Then we got on the bus again, drove across the bridge and arrived in Singapore. Here we had to get off the bus again with our luggage and go through the Singaporean Customs. We had to fill in a card and go through a security check. The security girls were very nice and I had a friendly conversation with them. They didn't really check our bags at the security check because we had lots of liquids, foods, and other things with us that would otherwise cause us to have to open our bags. Everyone was allowed to stay in Singapore for 30 days but I get to stay for 90 because I am a Dutch Citizen, haha! We got back on the bus again, drove for a couple more minutes to our drop off location and the journey was over. Then we had to find our way to the Hostel we booked. This sounds easier than it was. After waiting for over 30 minutes for a taxi (it was rush hour at 10pm!), we started walking. We had one set of directions but no wifi so we didn't really know where we were going. After flagging a taxi down on a highway, we made it to the hostel. At this point, everyone was tired and grumpy and all we wanted to do was shower and go to bed. The four of us are in a 6-bed shared room. There was one other guy with us from India. That was our first night in Singapore.
On Saturday (today), we woke up and had a free breakfast at the hotel. They had toast, eggs, drinks and banana's- all I needed was there! It was raining a lot in the morning so we had to come up with a plan in case the rain did not stop. Thankfully, it did and we were good to go! We hopped in a taxi and went to "Orchard Road". This is like the New York of Singapore. The street was lined with exclusive stores and malls. We had our hands on our wallets and just window shopped. It was also nice to see a lot of white people and not as many religious ones with their head coverings. The weather is 99% humidity and very hot so I had to drink a lot of water to balance out the amount of sweat that poured out of me.
When we had seen enough here, we got another Taxi to the Singapore Botanical Garden. This was absolutely beautiful. They also house the largest collection of orchids in the world. We walked around the gardens, saw some interesting flowers and animals, and even walked through a jungle! It was very cool. Then we got into another Taxi (we are getting the hang of flagging taxi's down and they are very reasonably priced because everything is located pretty close together in Singapore) and went to see the Raffels Hotel. This is another Singaporean trademark. It is a very exclusive hotel but doesn't actually have any rooms, it only has executive suites, about 100 of them.
After we saw this, we walked along the road some more and noticed the "hop on, hop off" busses. We decided to go on one to get a guided tour of the city. While inquiring about this, we actually got tickets to go one a bus/boat duck tour. The bus drove around the city and our guide told us many interesting facts about what we were seeing. This bus also went into the water and we saw the city from the other side. It was very educational and we all enjoyed ourselves. By this time, it was late in the afternoon. We walked to the Coach office where we will take a bus back to Kuala Lumpur tomorrow to see if we could leave our bags there for the day so we wouldn't have to drag them around the city with us all day. Unfortunately, this was not possible. Then we got another taxi back to the hostel to freshen up and have some down time. Tonight we are going on a night safari!
This is a really long post but I want to be able to remember everything so I have to write it down. Singapore is a beautiful city and I am so glad that I decided to spend the weekend here!
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