We ate and pub crawled with the family. Was home before midnight like an old lady, but woke up at dawn with the birds, dogs and local singers. Cold here today, the plan is to eat Com, buy a travel guide and tickets to Ho Chi Minh City. Coffee and croissants. Lime and fish sauce. Reading and drawing. Taxi rides and vietpop. Expensive, western coffee for free internet. holidays, holidays.
After easy, efficient and organised Singapore (though I do wish that their in flight entertainment would work for me), Hanoi is a shock.
We wait for our bags, multiple international flights crowded around the one baggage carousel, for what seems like an eternity. Then the money changing, then the buying of water. Finally we are in a taxi, our driver seems to have a death wish, but we know better. The ride to near the Sheraton (’not the Sheraton, NEAR the Sheraton‘) is smooth.
We arrive at the sheraton, our bags get carried in and we meet Mum. Then we bag up, turn around and walk down the winding narrow alleys to her home.
Normally it takes me a long while to get the hang of travelling, not this time. Maybe it is because time is so limited on this trip, or because we landed in Singapore a city which seems both easy and familiar. Everything is English, but there is also much Chinese. The streets are calm, the traffic lights work.
Our first morning saw us explore extensively, ending in Little India, before many shops opened.
Singapore is hot and more multicultural than expected. Some things are wonderfully cheap, others unexpectedly expensive. The transport works and the streets are clean.
A stop in an electronics department store. We could have been in Hong Kong, Beijing or Sydney.
A light lunch, a visit from a bird, and then back to the hotel to rest. I’m still on Sydney time.
After a breakfast of Kaya at Killiney Kopitiam (read all about it here). We wandered around Somerset.
You hear these stories of Singapore being a police state, can’t chew gum and on and on, so when the loudspeaker on the train told me not eat or drink in the car or platform, I was worried that if I broke those rules an enormous mechatronic hand would come down from above and pull my limbs off one by one until I had learned my lesson. God forbid if I spilt anything, or imported any drugs (lucky escape, there).
So imagine my surprise when the train station opened out onto a particularly well sign-posted, graffiti covered skate park.
I am actually in Vietnam now (made it safely!), but there will be more from Singapore soon.
We arrived in Singapore mid afternoon. After piles of bland special nut-free plane meals, and an in-flight entertainment system that didn’t work, I was itching for some real food, some real experiences.
From the airport we jumped on a train to the red-light district in search of our hotel. Booked cheap and at the last minute I was expecting a windowless hot sticky box, but instead got frigid air-conditioning and an amazing view.
Food was found in a familiar feeling Chinese eatery, where asking for rice didn’t get a response, but ‘mǐ fàn!’ worked a treat.
Tomorrow we will explore some more.