Our journey to Singapore was supposed to be easy and convenient but in the end it wasn't that at all. We had bought our direct bus tickets to Singapore when we arrived to Mersing couple days before. When our bus was supposed to depart we were told that it had broken down and that we needed to get into another bus instead. The bus took us to Johor Bahru a city on the border where we had to change busses and walk through a passport control first to get out of Malaysia and then in to Singapore. Our luggage was also x-rayed before entering Singapore. They didn't take our chewing gum away, yey! All this hassling around cost a lot of time and our journey to Singapore took five hours instead of the three hours it should have taken with the direct bus that had broken down... We were exhausted when we got to our hostel around 6 pm. We had left from Tioman island at 5.30 am and had not eaten anything after breakfast. After leaving our luggage to the hostel we ran to McDonald's. Cheeseburgers had never tasted so good! Our hostel Rucksack Inn Temple Street was located in Chinatown, right next to the metro station. We stayed in a tiny room with six other people but still liked the place because it was so clean and the staff were really friendly.
After consuming some carbohydrates we had the energy to head to Orchard Road to see the several malls and shops it had to offer. After wandering around a bit we took the metro back to Chinatown and ate dinner there in a Korean restaurant and from the stalls of the Food Street.
We only had one full day to spend in Singapore so we had to choose from the many sights the city has to offer. First we chose to visit the Singapore Zoo since we had heard so many good things about it. We saw a LOT of animals but were a bit annoyed about the noise that people were making around the animals; children and their parents screaming when they saw an animal and children banging on the glass of the enclosures... It was still nice to see some animals we had never seen before, like a polar bear and a hippo.
In the afternoon, after our zoo expedition, we continued our sightseeing with the help of Costa's lattes. First we headed for a Singapore Sling at the famous Raffles hotel. The Sling was one hell of an expensive drink but quite tasty!
Next we ventured to Marina Bay to see the skyscrapers and the Merlion statue. While walking in Marina Bay it was easy to see that Singapore is quite a rich country.
We decided to go and eat in Little India, which was a success since our food was delicious. Little India itself wasn't anything special (we didn't even take any pictures there) and it felt dirtier and poorer than other areas of Singapore. Later we returned to Chinatown to do some last minute souvenir shopping. We also had drinks at a really nice rooftop bar. We left for the airport by taxi at around 11 pm to wait for our flight that departed at 6 am. It ended up being a long wait as we couldn't drop of our bags until 4.30 and couldn't get to the good sleeping area that we'd heard of situated in the area after the security check. We had to sleep on the hard benches of the departure hall. At least we saved some money!
All in all we really liked Singapore because of its European vibe and smooth transportation system. The city is also very clean and there are a lot of things to do and see, at least for a couple of days visit. We actually kind of wished that we had skipped the Tioman island and went straight from Perhentians to Singapore. Oh well, what is done is done and we got to see all that we had though to be worth of checking out in Singapore so no complaints here.
