Singapore Zoo & Sydney

I had dragged myself out of bed to do some shopping with Izzy, Jean & Valerie, but the next day it came back with a vengeance. Unfortunately the 20th Feb was the last day we had left to go to the Zoo, so I would have to put up with feeling sick if I wanted to go. It would also be our last chance to catch up with Jean & Valerie before they go back to Thailand for the rest of their travels. I had heard so many good things about the Zoo (it's also number 1 thing to do in Singapore on TripAdvisor!) that I really didn't want to miss out. The 30 minutes on the train and 30 minutes on the bus were torture, but when I got there I wasn't so bad I just had to walk at a snail's pace. Not many good photos either I'm afraid as I was really not in the mood for it.

Just as we walked past the lion enclosure it was 'Snack Time' as they called it. One of the park rangers had a bucket of meat chunks he was throwing in for the lions while another member of staff gave a commentary. We got chatting to the guy (called Mcroy) who was throwing in the meat and he took us aorund of few of the other big cats to tell us some interesting facts (none of which I can remember!). He even fed the jaguars and leopards especially for us to watch. He must have liked us because he said it was not their feeding time, he just wanted to show them jumping into the water to find the big chunks of meat.

We left in the early afternoon as Jean & Valerie had some things to sort out before their morning flight the next day and I wanted to go back to bed as I was feeling worse by the minute. The next morning, at around 4am I woke up with a strange feeling about our flight to Sydney which was meant to be a 7:55pm that following evening. I got up to check the tickets and it turns out the flight was on the 20th Feb not the 21st Feb! We had missed our flight, and in a couple of hours would be about to miss our connecting flight to Cairns. Not sure how I made that mistake but I blame it on me being sick. The company I had booked with had a 24/7 helpline which was busy. I checked the flight prices and it was looking like it was going to cost hundreds. I got straight on the phone to Qantas and told them what had happened, and fair play they got us on a flight within 5 hours and another connecting flight within 24 hours of that... For only £99 each! Outstanding customer service!

We got straight up, packed, checked out and straight on the MRT to the Airport. The plane we were to board turned out to be the new Airbus A380! It was amazing inside, even in economy the seats have a fair amount of leg room and as the seat reclines the lower half slides forward. It was kitted out with fancy carbon fibre seat backs holding 10" (I would guess) touch screens. There was a great feature built into the screens where you could choose a camera mounted on the back of the planes tail facing forward, so you could watch take-off, flight and landing.

We landed in Sydney at about 10pm with nowhere to stay in this unplanned overnight stop. Luckily for us the travel concierge was still open and helped us find a 'cheap' hostel to stay in for the night near the train station so we could easily get back in the morning for our flight to Cairns. I don't think $105 (£65) is that cheap but it is for Sydney. I think when we revisit Sydney it will be a flying visit beacuse it is very expensive. £2 for a small 300ml bottle of water!

Shopping in Singapore & Marina Bay

Well yesterday was a complete write-off. I think I must have caught a bug or something because I was being very ill and couldn't get out of bed. Luckily today I was feeling well enough to to drag myself out of bed and meet up with Jean & Valerie to go to Orchard Road for some shopping. Me and Jean left the girls to the clothes shopping and went to all the camera shops looking for some good deals. Jean wanted a Panasonic and I wanted a new lens for my DSLR. We found one shop that seemed to be quite cheap for these, but while there I was distracted and quite attracted by a Panasonic waterproof camera (my Fuji waterproof broke in the waves in Nha Trang).

I really should have checked the price of this camera in some other shops first, but I just assumed if we are buying a lens and two cameras he will do us a good deal (which he was to some extent - the lens and Jean's camera were the cheapest prices we've found). Jean's camera he was going to have to source from another store so he would have to go back later for it, I didn't have the cash for the lens so I was going to go back later as well for the lens. We made the mistake of going into some more shops and I quickly found out I had been ripped off with other shops offering that camera cheaper without negotiation. In summary, if you go camera shopping in Singapore, don't go to lucky plaza, go to Scotts road (where the better deals are with less negotiation) and go round as many shops as possible before buying because the price can vary massively.

After a quick shout at the man who ripped me off (and no refund as a result) followed by a freshen up we went to Marina Bay to see the light and water show outside the fancy Marina Bay Hotel.

Bit of a short blog post today, but it's gone 2am and I need sleep... busy day tomorrow as we're off to the zoo with Jean & Valerie!

First few days in Singapore

P.P.P.P.P.P. - Prior Preperation Prevents Piss Poor Performance.

I think we had gotten lazy from having such a relaxed time at Fevrier Resort in Ko Lanta. We completely forgot to organise a hotel in Singapore, and our hotel in Phuket didn't have wifi or a computer with internet meaning we didn't even look into the best areas in Singapore to stay. Our hope was that the Airport would have internet or that the Tourist Information would help us. I got my bag back from the luggage claims, only to open it and find a nice cockroach waiting for me... This is the second time I've had a cockroach on this trip!
At Tourist Information they told us to go to the hotel booking desk, who told us to go to the visitors help desk, who eventually told us that the cheap hotels were in either Chinatown or Little India. Our bags are pretty heavy so we wanted to avoid carrying them around for too long. The first hotel was Chinatown Hotel 81, which looked really nice but was expensive... $139 (about £70), the second looked average and was still well over $100. Finally we found a fairly average looking hotel which was still $90! We couldn't be bothered to keep carrying our luggage around any further so took it, with the plan on finding somewhere cheaper for the next night. We got to our room and it was pretty gross, really dirty walls, fag end in the bin and baby cockroaches in the bathroom.

After leaving our bags in the room we went for another walk further south to see what we could find. It was the same situation, they were all still out of our price range. We did find a really nice looking place that was only a touch more expensive, but gave us free wifi. So we have booked that for tonight. Next, we took a train a bit further east out of town to Geylang (red light district) to find a really budget hotel for our last few nights, but still no luck. One hotel we went into had more expensive prices at the weekends because they allowed prostitutes into the premises. It was proving difficult to find somewhere that's good value without the internet, and wifi is hard to come across too! The government control it, so you have to have a Singapore telephone number and register online to get a username and password. Sounds simple, but to buy a phone/sim card you have to have your passport, and then have to find an internet cafe to register. Eventually we got this sorted so went to Mcdonalds for breakfast to use the (government's) wifi.

Today we went to Vivo City Shopping Centre, which is only one stop away on the train. It was pretty large, with maybe 200 shops or so. I didn't buy anything, but Izzy bought a few things. I want to see if I can get a good deal on a Nikon 18-200mm lens while I'm here, so I can have the Vibration Reduction, and the extra zoom. Most of the shops want to know what price you have been quoted before they give you theirs, it really is that competitive here!

After having got internet access, we have found a few backpackers hostels near us so this evening went to check them out. The first one, Beary Nice Hostel was really nice and clean with friendly staff (and hundreds of cuddly toys everywhere) although they are full for the next five days. The guy on the reception there helped us by ringing and recommended some other local hostels, but when we got to them they only had female and male seperate shared dorms which didn't really suit us. Well, I will let you know how that goes but looks like it will be an expensive few days!

A building was on fire near our hotel!

Our last few days in Ko Lanta

Knowing we only had one full day left, on the 14th we took the 'Four Islands' tour. It was a trip on an awesome speedboat (that had three 225hp Honda engines!) around four islands just south of Ko Lanta, giving us two snorkelling stops, a beach/lunch stop and the Emerald Cave. The first snorkelling stop was great, the water was really clear so we got to see plenty of fish and coral, although most of the fish were quite small and a lot of the coral was quite bleached. I was even more gutted at this point that my Fuji underwater digital camera had broken in Vietnam because I could have got some great shots, so I had put up with taking ones from the boat.

Next stop was for some more snorkelling, this time there were even more and even bigger fish. The few guys running the trip started chucking in pieces of banana into the water, which I know you're not really supposed to do, but it meant that hundreds of brightly coloured fish swam right in front of our faces. I grabbed hold of a piece of banana, and the fish were swarming around my hand nibbling at the fruit and my hand.

Lunch time! We parked up on a beach on Koh Hai and had a couple of hours to chill out on the beach and eat the food provided. Chicken, rice, veg with some fresh fruit, all washed down with a Coke. The last stop was to see the Emerald Cave. The boat pulled up near a small cave enterance, and one of the guys jumped in the water armed with a torch and told us to follow him. We all jumped in the water, and starting swimming into the pitch black cave. At one point you could not see the enterance we had just came in through or the exit at the other end, it was just total darkness (apart from the pathetic light coming from the tour guide's torch up ahead). Luckily this wasn't for long and I could soon see the exit and swam towards it. As I swam out of the cave, it opened onto a small beach and the Emerald Cave. It is almost like being inside a volcano, you are completely surrounded by rock, with the cave being the only way to get in and out. They did offer to take my camera in a waterproof case through, but I didn't want to risk it so I've added a photo I found on Panoramio.com.

Emerald Cave enterance

Taken from Panoramio.com

15th Feb would be our last morning in Ko Lanta, so as we had a bit of time before heading to Phuket we went to say goodbye to some of the people we had gotten to know. First we went to the Welfare centre to take Pepsi and Lanta out for one last walk down to the beach and say goodbye to all the staff there. Pepsi came in the sea this time for a swim! This was becoming a pretty sad morning!

Then we went to Blue Moon to say goodbye to Gang and his eagle. He gave us our last drinks on the house which was nice! So we're going to get some prints of the photos we had taken there and post them to him, he said he is going to start a new photo album and put them in it! The eagle, who was rescued by Gang, can't fly yet because its feathers were too damaged but on our last day it decided to try so was jumping around on the ground right in front of us and gave himself a bath. Lek was nice enought to give us some little presents on check-out and drive us to the bus station. Lek is really creative and makes miniture models out of clay, so she made me a tiny monkey and made Isabella a bracelet.

The five hour coach drive to Phuket was pretty horrible. The first part we were on the back row which has an annoying hard bar underneath the whole back bench, but after being on the road for a couple of hours some of the other travellers got off, so we moved into some more comfortable seats. We were going to spend one night in Phuket because our flight was quite early in the morning, Lek offered to call a hotel we had found the details of online, although they were full and recommended another place. There was a slight lack of communication, and Lek thought the next place she had called was 'Nai Yang Beach Resort', so we got a taxi from the bus drop off point to it. Unfortunately, the place we were staying in was called Nai Yang Cottage! So after some confusing discussions with the staff at the wrong hotel we realised what had happened, and they kindly called Nai Yang Cottages for us who promptly came to collect us.

Clearly we were in luck with all the nice people we had been meeting and helping us because the guy at Nai Yang Cottages, Kitty, was also extremely helpful and friendly. He didn't want any money for collecting us in his own car. A bit later on when we had got back from dinner he offered us some food he had just cooked with what I assume was his family (his house was only across the road!) but we were full so had to decline. He then took us to the airport in the morning at around 7am, in time for our 09:50 flight to Singapore.