Hello Singapore!

“To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the most pleasant sensations in the world. You are surrounded by adventure. You have no idea of what is in store for you, but you will, if you are wise and know the art of travel, let yourself go on the stream of the unknown.”
Freya Stark

The Singapore Airlines flight was not everything I dreamed of. The meals were of course (what did I expect?!) typical airline food – grey chicken, fake potatoes, overcooked beans. Economy leg room seems to be the same no matter what airline you fly. The personalised entertainment system, although the monitor was approximately much smaller than I had envisaged, was quite impressive and did a good job of keeping me entertained through a mostly sleepless flight. After fiddling around with the plethora of games available, I was entertained by Antonio Banderas trying to teach a bunch of inner city delinquents how to dance the tango and then got halfway through ‘Failure to Launch’.

Once we landed in Singapore, and took the 2km trek to get to the arrivals area, everything ran very smoothly… customs took seconds to go through and once we arrived on the other side we had someone meet us and guide us to his van to transfer us to the hotel we were staying at.

I know it sounds like the biggest cliché, but there really is no other way to put it… walking out of the airport and into the Singapore was just like walking into a sauna… it was about 28 degrees and drizzling… is this really what the tropics are like?

Twenty minutes after leaving the airport we arrived in Chinatown and were dropped at our hotel, the Furama City Centre – not bad. We are on the seventh floor and have a nice view towards the harbour… I can’t say whether or not it is a Singapore thing, having not visited here before, but the beds are the hardest I’ve ever encountered – there is no coosh, no bounce, nothing.

Even though neither of us had much sleep on the plane, we decided that the best way of getting adjusted to the new time zone was to stay awake. So after a quick shower and change, at around 8.30am, we went exploring.

We decided to knock something off the top ten list so headed further into Chinatown to visit the Chinatown Heritage Centre. After a little confusion on my part trying to decipher the map, we finally found Pagoda Street – a little pedestrian street in the middle of Chinatown. The Heritage Centre had not yet opened so we explored the street a little, apparently at night it is a big market street – we will have to investigate later in the week. At one end is the Sri Mariamman Temple, originally built in 1823, it is the oldest Hindu temple in Singapore. I have never seen anything quite like it. The entire temple is covered in intricate, rainbow-coloured detail.

The Heritage Centre itself was a really great place to visit to get a feel for the history of the Chinese in Singapore. The centre really concentrates on the mass immigration of the working classes during the 19th century. It is housed in three buildings that were originally shop-houses of this area it was pretty incredible to see what went on. They have recreated the original quarters in part of the centre to see what living conditions were like in the early 20th century. It is mind blowing to see these 2m by 2m little rooms that up to 6 people would share and then think that there would be 10 to 12 of these on a floor and all these people would have to share kitchen and bathroom facilities.

Once we’d finished in Chinatown we headed towards the infamous Orchard road. Fort Canning Park is on the way and we decided to check out the centre that we would be doing the cooking course tomorrow. It was a bit of a hike, but a good walk to get oriented (kind-of).

We didn’t stay on Orchard road but caught the MRT to Raffles Place which is near the waterfront. We left the underground and arrived at ground level to be surrounded by skyscrapers 360 degrees around us.

Crossing Singapore river we happened across another of the top ten – the Asian Civilisations Museum. The outside of the building seemed to be very colonial style architecture. We went inside and spent about an hour wandering around the museum. It had been divided up into the different regions of Asia. We got through South East Asia before having museum overload and leaving (I know – a bit early in the trip to have museum overload!). The exhibits were fantastic, but I think that perhaps two museums on the first day was a bit ambitious!!

We walked to the building the locals call the ‘Durian’ – the Esplanade complex at the waterfront. We didn’t go inside, but had a cold bottle of water outside and admired the architecture.

After crossing back to the other side of Singapore river, we stumbled across the Merlion, which we later found out is Singapore’s top tourist spot. We took a couple of pictures and then made a higgledy-piggledy journey across the CBD and back to our hotel.