Singapore 27-29.7

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. 

Perhentian Islands 20-24.7

We had heard from many that Perhentian Islands, Besar and Kecil, are a paradise on earth. Early on when planning our time there we chose to go to Kecil, the smaller and more backpacker friendly island. With Anna and Riku we arrived in Kuala Besut, the coastal town where the boats leave for the Perhentians, early in the morning after an overnight bus ride from KL. Freezing as hell from the aircon in the bus we climbed out only to hear that a boat to Perhentians leaves in 5 min. So we ran to the harbour and hopped on to the speedboat just in time. When on the boat it suddenly came to our mind that we didn't have any cash and there were no ATMs on islan. We had planned to get some cash in Kuala Besut but forgot to do it when hurrying to the boat... Luckily Anna and Riku had plenty of cash and were nice enough to lend some to us. 

We hadn't reserved any accomodation on Kecil beforehand because none of the places could be reserved from the internet and many of them didn't answer to our emails. We arrived to Coral Bay which is the smaller beach on Kecil. It seemed nice with lots of small shops and restaurants and the water was quite clear. 

Immediately we started looking for accomodation. We got chalets from Senja resort outlooking the sea. The rooms were very expensive compared to the condition they were in. It seemed like all the places were overpriced on the island and definitely not in backpacker friendly price ranges...Anyway we took the rooms for one night and decided to look for cheaper accomodation for the nights to come after having breakfast.

Hungry as wolfes we ate breakfast sets in one of the restaurants on the beach. This "breakfast set" was also a thing on the island, every restaurant had several with different combinations of eggs, toast, beans and such. Prices ranged from 3-4 €, not bad at all. With our beach gear with us we headed to the other side of the island, to Long beach. On our way we had a look at several resorts and chalets, but didn't find anything in our price range and in reasonable condition. Also almost all hostels and resorts had very rude service and they didn't seem to want any guest. At Panorama Chalets we were even laughed at when we asked to see some rooms. We gave up and surrendered to the sun. 

We had our lunch at D'Rock resort, which was one of the lousiest lunches in a while. We also had a look at some of their rooms but they were so dirty and also overpriced that we decided to continue our search for a little while longer.

In the afternoon, on our way back to Coral Bay, we finally found a nice, clean and modern room from Tropicana Inn, a funny hostel run by Indian fellows. The room was a family room with one double bed and two single beds, which suited us just fine. Later on we noticed that there was one more fellow staying in the room with us... :)

We returned back to Coral bay and stayed on the beach for a while before heading back to our chalets in Senja resort for a nap before dinner. That evening we watched the sunset from our balcony and had grilled food for dinner on Coral Bay. The beach looked so cute with all the lights and the tables spread out up to the waterfront. And the best of all, the food was really tasty! 

Next day after breakfast we moved our stuff to Tropicana Inn and went for a snorkeling trip arranged by the hostel. Our boat was a small one with a young guy as our captain. A Chinese family was on the same boat, the father was seasick the whole way and only the mom did some snorkeling (the boy couldn't swim). Not such a great success for them. Rosanna was happy not to get seasick, as the last time on a snorkeling trip on Nusa Lembongan she had fed the fish with her vomit :D We stopped at five spots to snorkel. The first ones before luch were shark, coral and turtle bay. We saw one big shark and a couple smaller ones at shark bay. The water wasn't that clear and we could only see acouple metres in front of us. The coral was also mostly dead, which was a huge disappointment. The fish were cute though. At turtle bay we were lucky to spot a big Green turtle munching away seaweed on the bottom. Some people dove to touch the turtle, which felt so wrong to us. 

After the first three spots we drove to Fisherman's village for lunch. Our captain bought us Akok pastries, the traditional Malai deserts, which were delicious. 

After lunch we continued snorkeling at Lighthouse spot and Romantic beach. The current was a bit too strong at Lighthouse but there was some live coral and we saw Clown fish, which was nice :) Romantic beach was wonderful, the best beach on Kecil! So clear water and white sand. We could have stayed there the whole day but after half an hour or so we headed back to Coral Bay. The trip was a success and we were very happy with it! It only cost each of us 9€, which felt really cheap to us.

In the evening we headed to Long beach for dinner. But first we had to wait for a thunderstorm to pass over. Thunderstorms always seem to be so much more intense hear than back home! Anyway, we had read from Lonely Planet that Panorama chalets&restaurant had the best pizza in eastern Asia. So it was an easy choice for us to choose where to eat our dinner at. Of course with our luck they didn't have pizza that night. Disappointed we left and found another pizza place right around the corner called Oh La La. Their pizzas were delicious and they even served good cocktails! We had couple more drinks at a beach bar after dinner while watching a bonfire :)

Next morning we had a sleep in had breakfast at Coral bay. After breakfast we rented kayaks and paddled back to Romantic beach, which we'd visited on our snorkeling trip. The weather wasn't as good as it was the day before but we still stayed there for couple hours reading books and swimming in the clear water. 

After returning to Coral bay we ate lunch at Ewan's place, which was rated as the best restaurant on the island. The food wasn't that special. With our stomachs full we headed back to the beach for an afternoon nap. That evening we decided to give Panorama's pizzas another try and headed there for a dinner. That meal ended up being a total disaster! We ordered four pizzas, from which Anna's and Rosanna's came in a decent amount of time but the boy's pizzas where nowhere to be seen. We asked from our waiter where were the two pizzas after waiting 45 min for them. After that three waiters came to ask us what was missing and none of them gave us any kind of apologies. After waiting another 30 min the boy's finally got their pizzas. Funny thing was also that pepperoni pizzas had bacon in them, not pepperoni :D Well after this long wait and the fact that they clearly forgot half of our food, we were expecting to get some kind of compensation. Instead the waiter laughed at us and told us that if we ate the pizzas we had to pay for them. After a long fight they decided to give us compensation worth of around 2 euros. We left the place boiling with frustration and decided to write four very bad reviews about Panorama on Tripadvisor :D

On our last day on Kecil we decided to try out sup boarding, which is a hit thing in Finland at the moment. It was so much fun! And surprisingly hard :D

That evening we packed our stuff and got ready to leave the Perhentians. The next morning we took a speedboat to Kuala Besut (of course we had time to take one acrobatics picture before leaving) and a taxi from there to Jerteh, where we bought tickets for a nightbus to Mersing. The next stop on our itinerary was Tioman Island and Mersing is the town where the ferrys leave to get to the island. Unluckily there were very little seats left on the night busses so we had to split into two pairs and take different busses to Mersing. After a five hour wait in Jerteh we hopped onto our night busses and hoped to meet each other again in Mersing :D