And then there was Singapore!

(Or maybe we should call it Singaxpensive?)

Right before my arrival I noticed one of my friends was in Singapore. I contacted Fai and we found out that we were going to be in the airport on the same day! Only she was leaving and I was arriving. So we met and it was a lot of fun. I got to know Fai in 2008, during her exchange in Belgium. She became a real lady, wow!

Besides Fai, I also met my cousin in Singapore. What a coincidence, right? He and one of his friends are traveling to Australia and they were making a short stop in Singapore. It was great to meet you Bram and Pieter!

So, I was going to stay in Singapore for 7 days. Fai gave me a lot of tips, thanks Fai!

YOU: Djeez, Mel, 7 days. Singapore isn’t that big, you know? What are you going to do there?

MEL: Yeah, I know. But the cheapest flight-tickets were 7 days after my arrival, so I’ll figure something out :-)

Let’s not take this blog post day by day, because I can’t remember exactly what I did on which day. I’ll write in topics for this one.

As I just mentioned, I figured out rather quickly that Singapore wasn’t going to be cheap. Just to give you an idea; (in average) one day of food in Singapore cost me 15,86€/day, where as Hong Kong cost me 13,3€/day. (I have an Excel-file of all my expenses, that’s how I know this). I didn’t really change my eating habits. As a matter of fact in Singapore my breakfast was included in my hostel and in Hong Kong it wasn’t! I decided pretty fast that I wasn’t going to go to Universal Studio’s (74SGD/48€) or let’s say watch the latest movie in the cinema (40SGD/28€) … without popcorn or drinks!

If you want to do some shopping, than Singapore is really one of those places you have to go to. It isn’t going to be cheap, even H&M (I checked) is more expensive in Singapore than in Belgium. Example: Basic t-shirt in Belgium = 5€, same t-shirt in Singapore 8€.

Besides the expensive-fact you can find just anything you need in Singapore! Computers, clothing, shoes, make-up… They even have my special shampoo (which I usually only find in the pharmacy in Belgium) in the grocery stores!

Did you know that Decathlon existed outside of Europe? I didn’t :-). I knew about Ikea and Carrefour, but not Decathlon.

It was very tempting… walking in shopping-Walhalla for 7 days and not being able to buy anything (limited luggage). I bought one pair of shorts though.

Singapore is also known for having people of so many different cultures and religions living together. Honestly, I was very shocked when arriving in Singapore. My hostel was located right above what they call” little India”. I have never been in India and I had never seen this many Indian people before. I felt like I was the stranger there. Well… I was. There were many Indian people (probably why they call it Little India ;-)), many Muslim Asians and here and there a Caucasian.

I liked the mix of cultures and religions. It was very interesting to see! Belgium is nowhere near this stage of tolerance.

But I didn’t feel at ease. In the neighborhood of my hostel, I could feel a lot of eyes staring at me. In Singapore as well I tried not to dress as a tourist and to blend in as much as possible. I’m pretty sure the reason for the staring was the fact that I’m Caucasian, not my religion or my way of dressing. I just thought to myself: Don’t draw any attention. Blend in, blend in :-).

Besides little India, there’s also “Chinatown”. It looks like Chinatown in Antwerp, only way bigger. It’s what you’d expect from any Chinatown, really.

When my cousin, Pieter (his friend) and I were visiting Chinatown, we were handed a bunch of papers describing traditional Chinese medicine. The funny thing is that Pieter and my cousin (Bram) are both studying pharmacy. Have a quick look at some of the recommendations.

One of the last days I was checking my mails on my computer and listening to Studio Brussel, haha, in my bed, when all of the sudden in the corner of my eye I saw something white going up and down. When I looked closer I realized it was one of the girls praying. I was impressed and even more impressed when she woke up at 6:30AM to pray again. I think you need some real perseverance to wake up that early for praying. It wouldn’t be something for me as I’m not really a morning person.

The room in my hostel was pretty small. Only one small hand luggage fitted in the locker beneath my bed. So I had to take all the stuff I needed for that week out of the big luggage and try to store it somewhere.

So I decided to make an organized mess of my bed. Really, mammy, I decided it, it didn’t just happen like it usually happens.

I decided to make a mess because:

The room was way too small and everything I needed didn’t fit in the small locker.
I figured that if somebody tried to steal anything; they had to find their way in my mess first.

Singapore was hot. Probably as hot as Hong Kong, but it didn’t bother me as much. It wasn’t that humid. So on the day that I ran out of skirts and shorts, due to my limited packing gear, I wasn’t that angry about wearing jeans again. Besides, there are so many shopping malls with airco, haha.

Another thing that caught my eye were the amount of queuing lines. Not for restaurants, as I saw in Japan, but for ATM’s!

ATM = that machine that “gives” money

Many times I saw people queuing for those machines. When I tried to get some money myself, I noticed that the machine was very slow. Perhaps that was the reason.

The longest line I saw was for the bus. Watch this!

Even though Singapore is much more crowded than Belgium, It felt more spacious than Hong Kong :-). The only time that I really had to puzzle my way trough the crowd was when the Singapore street race was happening. The amount of police officers at those days was crazy. I think every police officer of the whole wide country was present at this event. Again this was an expensive happening, so no pictures on this topic. I tried, tough, but it wasn’t really appreciated by all those police officers. For a little moment I thought I was getting a fine.

You remember my disappointment from the lightshow in Hong Kong? Well, Singapore made up for that! There were 3(!) lightshows and all of them were better than the one in Hong Kong, really.

If you ever visit Singapore you should checks these out:

Every day, 8pm, Merlion Park. This one is “OK”.
Every day, 8pm, Marina bay, this one is good! You’ll love it :-)
Every day, 8pm, Sentosa right next to Universal studios (so you don’t need a ticket for universal studios) there’s a lightshow with dancing cranes. I loved it!

I saw all of these shows in this order and it was just getting better and better, haha.

I also visited the botanic gardens. There are very interesting and extremely weird looking plants. I don’t know much about plants and flowers but it was nice to see.

I can recommend bringing some mosquito-spray. They loved me long time…

If you’re into fountains, than in Singapore you’ll find what you’re looking for. The nicest one I saw there was “the fountain of wealth”. Not because of the name, even though Wikipedia mentioned that from time to time visitors are welcome to pick up the coins, but because this fountain is huge and impressive. In 1998 this fountain was listed in the Guinness book of Records as the biggest.

Speaking English in Singapore was easier than in Hong Kong. People tend to speak something called “Singlish”. It sounds like English but I had to ask many times what they were trying to say.

ME, ordering food: One chicken curry and a cola zero please.

CASHIER: XXXXX or XXXXX?

ME: Sorry? CASHIER: Take XXXX or XXXXX?

ME: Excuse me?

CASHIER, rolling with eyes: Take XXXXX or XXX here?

ME: Ow, I’ll have it here, thank you.

CASHIER: That’s XXXX.

ME trying to guess a reasonable amount and just handing over the money. CASHIER: 15 dollaa ME: I’m sorry? CASHIER: You give me 15 dollaa (Singapore dollar) CASHIER: I give you 2,5 dollaa back.

It’s funny how they always said out loud how much I gave them. It’s a good thing to prevent misunderstandings and to learn a little Singlish.

Food is probably the most interesting topic here. People like to have their food with cold green tea or cold any other tea. One day I had the usual conversation as mentioned above and I ended up with a white cold drink. I think I never had this drink before.

The English guy sitting next to me clearly had more experience on this topic so I asked him what it was. He said it’s “Barley water”. It tastes like sweet soymilk with rice. It wasn’t good, it wasn’t bad. I don’t know what to think of it. Another thing which you have to try yourself and make up your own mind about.

My lunch at “Face to Face” was definitely the best of all. Sadly this wasn’t Singaporean food, it was Malaysian. I loved it. The noodles came with chopsticks. No problem there, I practiced many times. (In Japan people were always watching me with these eyes: "How is the foreigner going to handle, haha".) So noodles with chopsticks is OK for me but eating chicken wings with chopsticks, that’s another level! I still need to practice on that, haha. It is really impressive how Asian people juggle with these chicken wings and chop sticks and make it look like “a piece of cake”.

If you eve go to Singapore, than try to taste "Kaya". It's something sweet that looks like Nutella, to put on your bread. It contains coconut but you don't really taste the coconut in there.

When hanging out with my cousin in a food court, I saw a weird Ice cream and I thought "this is my moment". Let’s try it. It’s difficult to describe. It looked like little bits of chopped white ice. It kinda had no flavor. I know, it looks like it tastes like vanilla but really it didn’t have much taste. Maybe it was just ice and not ice cream.

In Asia in general there are a lot of green things. Green tea, green ice cream (most likely matcha flavored), … Still I was really surprised to get green crème brûlée. I usually don’t order crème brûlée but I was in a huge hotel/restaurent visiting the top floor trying to get some nice pictures of the skyline and I kind of felt obliged to have something to eat or drink there. Good excuse, I know. So, to my surprise the crème brûlée was green. I asked the lady in the restaurant why this piece of heaven (it was ridiculously delicious) was green. She explained it was made of “pandan leaves”.

YOU: What? Panda leaves?

ME: No, no. PandaN leaves.

They use some kind of technique to get the flavor out of the leaves. It makes your food sweet. It’s good you should try it.

So when you go to Singapore, you have to go to Marina Bay. It’s a lovely park and great to see all the lights. If you don’t like tourists, than don’t go there :-).

Seeing the Merlion is another of those touristy things to do. There are actually two of those big statues. One is big (center of Singapore); the other one is huge (Sentosa Island). The merlion is half fish half lion. It’s a symbol for Singapore.

Sentosa is a nice Island, it’s part of Singapore and you can go there by metro or walk on the bridge. It’s really close to the mainland.

In Sentosa you can go to the beach, universal studios, see the amazing crane show (see above), … It also has more fountains. These fountains reminded me of Park Güell in Barcelona. It is a nice thing to see. It would have been refreshing if people were allowed to walk in it.

Health and safety, haha:

Singapore is overloaded with sign of things you are not allowed to do. In the tourist shops they even make fun of it. Everywhere you look, there must be some kind of sign or something which you are not allowed to do. They say Singapore is very clean, but I’ve seen neighborhoods were things could improve. Seemingly you can get very high fines for throwing trash on the street.

Singaporeans also don’t like people stealing from their tourist shop. I wasn’t aware that it was such a common thing, but seeing that many pictures, it must be common I presume.

On my last day, on the way to the airport a Korean guy started speaking to me. It was hard from time to time to understand him but he made it very clear that he was very to happy to have found his first European friend. If anybody want’s to make his/her first Korean friend, than let me know. I’m sure he’d love to have more European friends ;-)

Airplanes. My first flight to Hong Kong was with China Southern airlines, I never heard of them before and I didn’t really know what to expect. I can only say that if I have the possibility to fly with them again, than I will. It was a good experience. The seats are comfortable and I had a touch screen to watch movies.

My second flight was with Tigerair. Let’s say “the Ryanair of Asia”. Well, that experience was less good. The seats are really close to each other; I had a weird feeling in my eyes because the seat in front of me was so close. I could barely fit and I’m not that tall…

My third flight was with Air Asia. I used their services a few times before, mainly to fly between two places in Thailand. My dad had a really bad experience with that airline. So I was prepared and I made sure that my luggage would fit. You have to pay extra to bring checked luggage. It’s not that expensive if you “buy” it online before checking in. So I did. I even upgraded it a few days before leaving, just to make sure that they wouldn’t make any problem at the airport. Everything went smooth, no problems :-).

My arrival in Bali, that’s something else! I thought I was going to die but I’ll have to keep you waiting for that story in my next blog. Sorry, haha.

Ah, In my first blog post I promised to tell you all my secrets to keep things cheap. In Singapore that was a challenge. But try Googling “free things to do in Singapore” or “budget traveling Singapore”… I got a list of 50 free things to do! Fountains included ;-). One thing what helps saving your budget is walking, obviously.