Aussie Rules

For our last full day in Surfers Paradise, the weather wasn't great, mostly grey and drizzly. This meant no beach action unfortunately but instead we wandered around the many shops, culminating in the evening with a night market on the seafront. We finished the evening off by watching (on TV) our first ever game of Australian Rules Football (AFL). Neither of us really know the rules but it was pretty easy to pick up and get the general idea.

If you have never seen it, I will try to describe it, if you know about AFL, I can only apologise. The only way I can describe it is as a strange cross between Rugby and Football. 18 players on each team try to get the ball through a set of posts at each end of a gigantic pitch. To do this they can run with the ball, but not too far, they can pass the ball, but not by throwing it and they can kick the ball as much as they want. In defence, it seems you can barge people out of the way if they're trying to catch, wipe them out if they're trying to kick and tackle them if they're trying to run. It's pretty fast paced and hectic and I loved it!! I could see myself getting quite into it, mainly because its so manic. I'm definitely looking forward to going and watching a live game some time.

Surfers Paradise

We arrived on Monday in the most southern point of Queensland that we will be visiting. Strange to thing that the whole time we've been in Australia so far, all those miles that we've travelled, we've been in the same state the whole time! We've both agreed that Surfers is one of the best places we've been so far. It is really touristy and on occasions pretty tacky but the combination of the amazing beach and the great weather more than make up for any bad points!

On Tuesday we headed for the beach in the morning, hired a bodyboard on the way and settled in for the day. The weather was perfect for a lazy day on the beach, beautiful blue skies and not a cloud above us. We lotioned up 3 times in the 5 hours we were there and still burnt. This was pretty annoying considering the lotion is meant to last 6 hours for one application, rubbish!! (It seems that it lasts for 6 hours of English sun, not the proper stuff down here!). The waves here are brilliant and nothing like anything I've been in before, they are SO powerful. The water isn't even deep, I was never really out further than just above waist height but the waves came way above everyones heads and were definitely a good few metres high. Even when they came further into the shore they were still really powerful (enough to knock Megan over anyway!) and you could really feel the rip too. A certain highlight of the day was when I was casually swimming along the seabed (as you do) and my hand happened upon something hard so i grabbed it (as you do). Turns out that it was a nice pair of Oakley half jackets!! I had a quick look around and there didn't seem to be anyone looking around desperately for some sunnies so not a bad mornings work for me!!

For the last two days we have been at the theme-parks. These are pretty much the biggest and most popular in Australia and there are 4 or 5 pretty close to each other. We bought a pass allowing us entry to "Dreamworld" and "Whitewater World" over 2 days and transfer between them as much as we wanted. Yesterday we went to "Dreamworld" which was good fun with lots of thrill rides. The day definitely got off to a good start when we didn't have to queue for the first roller coaster and even got in the front two seats! Bonus! It was a really fun day but also really hot which meant that by 2pm we were starting to feel it so called it a day and caught the bus home. Today we had planned to go to "Whitewater World", a water park, and it was lucky we did because it was raining. Since we were going to get wet anyway (and the fact that we're British) we stuck to our plan and went nice and early. Due to the weather the park was pretty much empty so we found 2 dry sunbeds undercover and got on with the fun. There were quite a few rides there and Megan actually enjoyed all of them, which was great! I think the best thing of the day was the "Flowrider" which is a standing wave similar to the one I tried in Wild Wadi, Dubai. The system here was better, instead of queuing for ages for just one go, we bought a $5 ticket and got a 30 minute session on the wave. We both absolutely loved it and got the hang of it pretty quick, getting some great photos (and wipe outs for me) in the process. We lasted a lot longer today and got back at about 5pm.

We're still here for another day and are having $5 all you can eat pizza tonight, chilling out at the beach tomorrow and leaving for Byron Bay (bloody expensive hostels!!) on Saturday.

Brisbane

On Wednesday afternoon we arrived in Brisbane, it was the first time we had been in a city since Singapore and it felt surprisingly good to be back in one! Most of this month has been spent in small towns (by our standards, they are big to Australians!) and as nice as that was, it was good to be back in civilisation with people and buildings and things going on.

Unfortunately our first day there was marred by bad weather, we went for a walk around town and through the Southbank Parklands across the river from our hostel. This was really nice, the riverfront is very well designed on the south of the city with parks, gardens, walks and even an artificial beach (Brisbane is a river city, not a beach one). This is just about where we managed to get to before it started raining so we spent the rest of the day seeing Brisbane from the inside of a coffee shop!

On Friday we went off to Australia Zoo, something we've been looking forward to for quite a while and it didn't disappoint! It is quite a way outside of Brisbane so we had to get up early for the hour and a half journey there. As soon as we arrived demonstrations and talks were going on with elephant feedings and giant tortoise feedings amongst other things. We had a little time to wander round and see some crocs before the main show of the day started at 11am. This involved snakes and birds which were good but were nothing compared to the main attraction of the Crocodile Show! This was presented (to our surprise) by Terri Irwin, wife of the late, great Steve Irwin, The Crocodile Hunter. It was a brilliant show and we got to see how a croc would attack from the edge and how it would jump upwards out of the water too. We even saw a demo of a "death roll" when it gets hold of its food. The other highlight of the day was to be able to walk through the kangaroo park and sit with and stroke the kangaroos. They were all so calm and incredibly soft, a brilliant experience!!

Saturday and Sunday saw us meet up with my friend Ash again, also his girlfriend, Lauren, his parents and a friend of his from England, Mo. Meeting up with Ash always leads to a few drinks but generally leads to a good time as well. On Sunday morning (Easter Sunday) we were meant to go to his apartment for a barbie but we were delayed due to the fact that we had a bedbug issue at the "Palace Backpackers" hostel we were staying at. I was waking up every morning with more bites culminating is over 80 by the time we left. This meant we had to change room and wash every single item of clothing and spray all our shoes and bags. This definitely wasn't our first choice for things to do on Easter Sunday!! The afternoon, happily, went a lot smoother with a barbie, beers and footie on TV before heading on to the biggest nightclub in Brisbane, Normanbys.

We both enjoyed Brisbane, it is a really nice city but there isn't actually a lot to DO there. We are now in Surfers Paradise, today was awesome weather and it looks like this is an awesome town. The next 5 days should be pretty good with the sun, surf and theme parks!!

Turtle Power!!

We were picked up by our tour guide at our hostel at 6.15pm and were taken along with 7 others on the 20 min drive to the Mon Repos Conservation Park. The 'park' consists of one beach about a mile long, the dunes behind it and a very small visitor centre. Not quite what I expected from the most important Loggerhead Turtle site in the world. All around the area the lighting is kept to an absolute minimum resulting in a kind of eerie glow which just added to the excitement we were feeling. The reason for the low lighting is that the turtles use the cover of darkness as protection from their predators and the hatchlings use the moonlight to guide them out to sea.

On arrival, all visitors are put into groups and each group is taken down to the beach separately when there is something to see. The bonus of being on a tour was that we were automatically put into group 1 so would be the first lot to see anything that evening. We passed the time whilst waiting by watching a few videos on turtles and showing ourselves around the visitors centre until the big moment came at 8.30pm. A ranger had found what looked like a nest and had realised that there were lots of hatchlings about to appear. As soon as we got down to the beach the tiniest little turtles started to emerge, poking their little heads through the sand and then flapping with all their might to get out. They came slowly at first as some were still sleepy with the warmth but after a little while they came more rapidly until eventually there was just a mass of little green and brown things in the hole flapping, squirming and clambering all over each other to get out. It was so amazing to see them all, something I'll never forget.

As they came out, the ranger was putting them all into a little pen so she could keep an eye on them all until they ran for the sea. Just before she let them go she brought one around to show everyone and let us have a feel of how tough their shells are and how grippy their little fins are.

When they were all out of the nest we stood back as she let them go and they were off towards the sea. It was brilliant to see these little things only a few days old scuttling down the beach for all their life is worth to make it to the sea where they will stay for 30 years if they are a female, when they will mature and come back to the same place to lay their young. If any of our turtles were male then we watched them as they left land forever. They will live, feed, mate and eventually die at sea.

There were over a hundred of our little turtle babies and they all made it to the sea, some by the more unconventional way of via my flip-flops! It was an amazing evening and even if we had done nothing else here it would have made our trip to Bundaberg worth it. Unfortunately we couldn't take any photos but the conservationists saying sums it up: "We leave only footprints and take only memories".

Bundaberg

The Tilt Train has its bonuses (big seats, TVs etc) but there was one downside on this trip. Strange to say, but it was annoying that it was faster! We ended up arriving in Bundaberg at 7.30am instead of 9.10am which meant we had to wait around for ages before we could check in at 9.30am!

Bundaberg is a fairly big town and the main reason for backpackers coming here is to work. There are lots of fields around and a lot of fruit to pick so most people at our hostel are up at 5am to go off to work! This hostel isn't great but its only $46 pn, we're only here for three nights and its clean so we can't complain really. Whilst waiting to check in I went to tourist information to find out the best things to do in 3 days. Turns out that there isn't much but one thing that was recommended and only "a short walk away" was the Botanic Gardens. We started off to go there on Sunday just after lunch but it was an immense walk and not even very good gardens, I wasn't happy! After a long walk back we managed to cheer ourselves up by finding a backpacker bar showing the Melbourne Grand Prix, 1st race of the season. Watching Lewis Hamilton win took up most of the afternoon and definitely cheered us up!

The main reason that an Australian (and maybe even a Brit) would know of Bundaberg is because it produces some of the finest rum. It was this rum that we focused on on Monday. We booked a distillery tour and this was actually really interesting. We got to see (and smell) the gigantic vats that they keep the rum in to mature. Each one holds around 65,000 litres of rum, the equivalent of $3 million worth and they have over 290 of these vats, that's a lot of money! We also got to see the bottling plant which is quite cool to see all the machines go from an empty bottle to a full one complete with lids and labels in exactly the right places, being put into boxes and then onto palettes, all automatically. At the end of the tour we also got 2 free drinks, bonus!

To complete our Bundaberg drinks day out we took a wander to what is know as the Bundaberg Barrel, the home of Bundaberg Soft Drinks company where they brew ginger beer among other things. I wanted to go mainly to see the building which is designed as a barrel, very clever. This was quite good but nowhere near as good as the rum distillery (and not just because of the lack of alcohol!).

Tonight we have booked on a tour recommended by reception which could be absolutely amazing but could also be a massive disappointment. We're booked to go to 'Mon Repos' one of the worlds largest and most important hatching grounds for Loggerhead Turtles. Here's hoping we see something!!

Trains

So there we were, minding our own business at Proserpine Station waiting for our "Sunlander" train to come along when what happens? Our old friend the Cairns Tilt Train turns up instead, we have no idea why but we're now currently sitting in business class again! I love this country!!

Airlie Beach

After two more relaxing days at Townsville we made our way to the train station to catch the Thursday "Sunlander" for our short and somewhat leisurely (in Australian terms anyway!) 4 hour journey to Proserpine where we could then get a transfer to Airlie Beach. This is one of the shortest journeys we will be doing in Australia, I mean I've taken train journeys in England that are longer, and that's not going to happen too often!!

We arrived at about 9pm and checked into our hostel, "Magnums" which is by far the biggest and liveliest hostel we've been to. There is a big outside bar area with big TVs, pool tables, cafés and restaurants. It also has its own nightclub, so we had a feeling that there might be a better atmosphere here than some other places (Magnetic Island springs to mind for some reason....) and we weren't wrong. The rooms are definitely the best we've had so far, spacious and modern with silent a/c, a fridge and lots of power points for once! It was $52 pn which is cheaper than most other places so good value all round.

Friday held a surprise for me, as we were just checking out a little jewellery stand I was jumped on and hugged from behind by my friend Ash from school! He lives in Brisbane and we were planning to meet up with him there in about a week but to see him early was a great surprise! Obviously we had a few drinks to celebrate but being only 2pm we didn't want to get too carried away so spent the remainder of the afternoon relaxing at the lagoon which is in a really beautiful setting. Another surprise at a place called Airlie Beach is that there is no proper beach here. That's not a bad thing though as the lagoon that has been built is excellent (and floodlit for a bit of nightswimming too!).

As evening fell we had plenty more drinks and told lots of stories as we had plenty to catch up on whilst watching the first game of the new NRL season (Rugby League) on TV. We moved on and were lucky enough to have live music everywhere we went which was great to dance the night away. Today we're feeling a little tired and slightly under the weather, but that's the price you pay! We've spent the day just pottering around town and generally not doing a lot. We're looking forward to our 13 hr overnight train journey from here to Bundaberg this evening. We arrive at 9am tomorrow morning (after leaving at 8pm!).

P.S. Forgot to mention that when in Townsville I treated myself to a typical Australian leather hat. Think Crocodile Dundee or Indiana Jones and you've got the general idea. It's awesome!!!

Townsville and Magnetic Island

After arriving at Townsville Station mid afternoon on Saturday we checked into our new hostel, the Reef Lodge and rushed off to the supermarket before it closed otherwise we'd actually have to pay good money for dinner rather than cooking it on the cheap for ourselves! We didn't do much else on Saturday evening as we were pretty tired from travelling all day, we just continued our "Yahtzee" championship!

On Sunday we decided to head out after an early lunch to see a bit of what Townsville had to offer. Conveniently there was a market in the main shopping area which was nice to browse and we also saw/heard a man playing a traditional didgeridoo. It's fantastic the noises that some people can make as these seem pretty hard to play.

We spent the rest of the afternoon on "The Strand" which is the seafront and runs the length of the town, a good kilometre or two. It was a really nice walk and we stopped and lazed on the beach occasionally. We also cooled off in the sea, albeit within a "stinger net" which is a big enclosure to keep stingers (jellyfish) out. We walked the entire length of the strand and at the end there is an artificial "Rock Pool" which is just another swimming lagoon surrounded by grassy banks and overlooking the ocean and Magnetic Island, where we were heading next.

After checking out on Monday morning, we headed straight for the ferry that would take us over to Magnetic Island. To say that our hostel, the "Travellers Hideaway" (self proclaimed "No 1 resort on Magnetic Island") was unexpected and disappointing would be a massive understatement. However, to say our room felt like a prison cell would actually be quite accurate. My friend Dan had already been to Magnetic Island and recommended "Base Backpackers" but we thought it was a little expensive........how I wish I'd paid a little extra now! At our hostel there seemed to be maybe 4 other people, 2 of them long term. Luckily the other two were really friendly and had actually been in Megan's dive group back in Cairns. Michael was from Ireland and Alexis was from America and luckily they were just as disappointed with the hostel as us, which was at least a great starting point for conversation!!

Aside from the hostel, Magnetic Island really is a beautiful place, a real tropical paradise. There is not a lot there and really can really feel like you are in the middle of nowhere. The four of us went off on a "Fort Walk" that afternoon through the wildlife up to some WWII ruins. There were a couple of gun points just in case anyone tried to attack Townsville as it was a busy port back then. It turns out though that the guns were never fired in anger, however, they were once fired in "mild surprise" when a US ship turned up un-announced but that was the most action they saw! The main reason for going on this walk was actually to try and spot Koalas as all the literature said this was the best place and time. Unfortunately we didn't see any at all but we weren't surprised. If I was a koala I wouldn't live right next to a path with loads of gawping humans either! We did see some other wildlife including the 9th poisonous snake in the world (so I'm told), the aptly named Death Adder. Mainly because of his name we turned back when we came across him, didn't fancy being bitten at the highest point in a heavily forested and mostly deserted island! We finished our walk at Horseshoe Bay, the opposite end of the island to where we were staying (Picnic Bay). We had dinner, any reason to sit down, and then got the bus back home.

After much deliberation we decided that even though we had paid for 3 nights we couldn't stick them out, the place was that horrible (cockroaches, massive grasshoppers and other unknown bugs in the grubby bathrooms and kitchens). We decided the first night would also be our last.

This morning, before leaving we decided to go to "Koala Village". This is a small but well organised wildlife sanctuary with 2 hour guided tours by park rangers. This was an excellent way to spend 2 hours. It was much better than a zoo because the ranger gave so much information and made it all so interesting, even though we didn't see that many animals. Their idea is that they want you to hold or touch everything that you see. The first thing that we saw was a crocodile and after an introduction and some info we both held one called Barbie who was just under a metre long. Their skin is really soft and smooth and you can tell why people want clothes and accessories made from it. Next up was a Cockatoo called Shadow who would stand on your arm and eat seeds from your mouth! We then moved to look at some lizards and I held a blue tongued lizard and saw a few others too, including one with a frilly neck who could only run on its hind legs, highly amusing to watch! Next up was the absolute highlight, the Koala. We met an 8 year old male called Barney and we were both able to hold him and have our photo taken once we had made a donation to the conservation fund. We finished off our tour by holding a python called Ollie. All in all, a great day out.

We left our hostel a.s.a.p and came back to Townsville where we're now staying at "Globetrotters" which is pretty good value. For $55 pn we also get free breakfast and dinner, a/c that works and is free, plus a room that isn't a prison cell! This is the life!!

Kangaroos

Just seen our first Kangaroos/Wallabies!! Can't tell the difference! 3 wild ones just hopped past the train!!!

Great Barrier Reef

Yesterday was the big day. We were picked up by the Tusa Dive minibus at 7.30am in the rain and were taken down to join the boat. After a short safety brief and guidance to where the sun (or rain) decks were we began our journey. We were heading to "Hastings Reef" which is in the Outer Reef, about 40km from Cairns so we were in for about a 90 minute trip. The weather wasn't great and the journey was rough from the word go. We had both taken the free ginger pills that we were offered as they are meant to help with travel sickness. . . . . they don't! Within about 5 minutes we were both out the back with our faces in bags. Needless to say, the journey was not pleasant. Unfortunately the only real cure for sea sickness (as my Dad always says) is to sit under an Oak tree and surprisingly there weren't many of those around!!

Luckily as soon as we moored up we both felt better and were able to get on with our day. I had booked 3 dives and to fit them all in we had to get started as soon as we had moored up. The visibility was not great due to the weather but down at 18m I could see about 5m or so in front of me and close up everything was perfect. The reef was really amazing, so many different types and colours all housing thousands of different species of fish. Of these I only saw a tiny percentage (and even fewer that I recognised!) but it was still enough to fill three 45 minute dives. Among the things that I saw that I actually know the name of were: Angel fish, Lizard fish, 3-stripe Humbug fish, a Pineapple Sea Cucumber, Butterfly fish, Pink Anemone fish, Catfish, Dogfish, Clownfish (that's Nemo by the way!!) and the highlight of the three dives for me came on the last one, a Green Turtle! They are so calm and didn't seem to mind that there were 7 people floating there. I took lots of photos with the camera we hired (about 200) and hopefully some of them will be good.

Megan had booked 2 intro dives as she has never tried it before. Unfortunately it was very choppy and this didn't help with her first experience. She didn't like this first session at all but she's not a quitter and decided to carry on and give it another go for a first proper dive. The instructors knew she was nervous so didn't push her into anything. She tried again but after about 10 minutes of being under decided that she really didn't like it so came up and went snorkeling instead, which she liked a lot more. The fact that she could breathe normal air instead of oxygen was better and she was on the surface too. Megan also saw lots of fish and coral and was really close to the reef. The only thing she was disappointed about was that she didn't see Nemo!

On the trip back we learnt from our mistakes and bought some proper sea sickness tablets (for a whole $2, we really should have done it on the way out!) and were much better!

Today we are off to Townsville and we are currently on the train. This is the first train to leave Cairns for 5 days due to flooding. We are very lucky that we've still managed to keep to our plan really. The train we were supposed to be on, "The Sunlander" is in Townsville so instead we are on the "Cairns Tilt Train" which is entirely Business Class. Huge Seats, TVs at every seat hidden in the armrest and loads of legroom too! It is a 6-7 hour trip and we're certainly doing it in a bit of luxury.

Australia

So we've made it to Auz, we got here by way of a somewhat unexpected flight however. Firstly we had booked Singapore-Cairns so were slightly confused when our flight was displayed "via Darwin". This was no real problem as we didn't have to change planes but literally get off, sit in a lounge and then get back on again, all this at 3am! The other unexpected thing was the plane itself. Having booked a BA/Qantas round the world ticket we would expect nice big planes run by either company especially for an 8hr intercontinental flight but no, not this time. We were on a relatively small plane with no entertainment whatsoever, no TV, no radio, nothing. I'm not spoilt but it's come to be somewhat standard really. Once again Megan slept for a couple of hours, I on the other hand did not....AGAIN! I tried and tried but it wasn't happening so i gave up & went to the other extreme and listened to hard rock on my iPod! The flight from Darwin to Cairns was a lot shorter and i did manage to get a few uneasy minutes of sleep in, enough to miss breakfast in fact! I know, shocking!

Whilst flying we could see that there was a lot of cloud but on landing we were greeted by pouring rain, gales and widespread flooding. Not great for our first morning in Australia, but we knew there is always a chance of "showers" in tropical northwest Queensland.
We got picked up by a minibus from our hostel, the "Travellers Oasis" and were taken straight there & shown around. Even in the rain it looked excellent and we both liked the look of it. Nice & cosy with 2 kitchens, plenty of showers/bathrooms, a TV room and a swimming pool (which was overflowing with rain when we were shown it) with sun loungers, chairs and hammocks surrounding it. Our room is decent too, nice and big with A.C. ($1 for 3hrs) a fridge and a sink. Definitely can't complain about this.

Cairns itself is pretty small, there isn't a great deal to it and what there is is geared towards tourists like us. Lots of people come here because it is one of the best places possible to get to the Great Barrier Reef from and also great to visit the rainforests here (which definitely get plenty of rain!) We went into town as soon as we'd got our stuff in and made some enquiries into the upcoming weather and the possibility of reef trips. They said it was clearing up and that boats go to a site which has the best weather (one company has 17 different sites to choose from) and they select the site on the day. We decided to go for it & booked ourselves onto a boat for Friday morning, being picked up at 7.25am. Megan is booked for 2 intro dives and I'm booked for 3 guided dives. We will be taken to 2 dive sites and lunch is included. We paid around $250 each (120 pounds at todays rate) which i think is a fantastic price.

Today we've mainly been relaxing but we also went into town & exchanged the piece of paper saying we have a train ticket for an actual ticket! It seems we're quite lucky as we plan to leave on Saturday for Townsville but this train hasn't been running for about a week due to flooding. We have to be there before 8am to "check in our luggage". A very strange concept for us but long journeys are all part and parcel of travel in Australia and something we'll no doubt get used to in a few months! We also went into a camera shop and hired ourselves an underwater camera for $45 (20 pounds) which comes with massive memory (about 600 photos) and free burning to CD. The camera looks great, about 10 mega pixels (capable of 12 but we get more photos this way) and it also has a "macro" mode which is for close ups and gives extreme detail. It looks good & hopefully we'll have plenty of fish to take photos of tomorrow. We're both looking forward to it!!

Night Safari

To begin our last proper day in Singapore we decided to go and explore another of the ethnic areas of the country so we went to Little India. It was good to walk around and see but nowhere near as impressive as Chinatown. There were plenty of shops selling sari's, bangles and a lot of gold but unfortunately no street markets. Nonetheless not bad for a couple of hours strolling. We headed back to the MRT and went back to Orchard Rd where we knew we could catch a direct coach to the zoo for the Night Safari. Having a couple of hours to kill we decided we would try and walk around Orchard Rd in the dry.

No such luck there, almost as soon as we stepped out a tropical downpour had begun. It seems Orchard Rd doesn't like us!! We were once again confined to the insides of malls, not daring to venture into the weather. This had cleared up by the time came to wait for the bus which was lucky. On the bus we travelled down a lot more of Orchard Rd that we hadn't been able to get to due to the weather. I must admit that I may have been a bit hasty putting it down yesterday as there was a lot more to it than we had initially seen.

The Night Safari was excellent, well worth the entrance fee and I would highly recommend it. We began with a 45 minute tram tour and saw lots of things from Mountain Goats, Tapirs and Kapibara to Rhinos, Elephants, Lions and Tigers. It was really great to see them in the dark, something very different anyway. After this we watched a show about "Creatures Of The Night" which was very good and presented by a brilliant ranger. He was very impressive and spoke about 8 different languages and made people laugh in all of them! After the show we wandered around by ourselves and saw lots more. We went and saw a Malayan Tiger but it was really sad. He was just pacing around the enclosure doing the same circuit over and over again. Its really quite sad to think that there are hardly any left in the wild and pretty much the only way to keep them alive is by putting them in a tiny enclosure. It's probably the only place he won't get shot. People will still pay up to $10,000 (U.S.) for their bones alone and the rest is worth plenty too. Aside from this it was a great evening out and a nice way to finish off our Singapore stay.

I would definitely recommend anyone to come here, but only for a short stay on the way to somewhere else as 4 days was definitely enough for us. We fly to Cairns at 10pm tomorrow, landing just after 8am on Wednesday morning. Australia here we come!!

A Rainy Day

After the resounding success of our first day, today began as a disappointment. Just as we were about to head out it started hacking down with rain. We braved it and went to the National Museum of Singapore. This was the second disappointment (after the rain), it really wasn't that good. I was expecting lots of displays, ancient objects and such like but it was just walls of photos and a dodgy audio tour. The sort of information you could easily read in a book and I would have much preferred to have done that. Its a shame because it was so built up in all the books and guides that I was expecting much more.

After this we were off to the much famed Orchard Rd, variously called the "epi-centre of shopping" and a "must see". Unfortunately for us, this was the third disappointment of the day (and we'd only been out for about 90 mins!). It was just another busy street with a few malls along it. Lots of shops, yes, but nothing new or special. After some umming and ahhing we decided to head towards the river in the hope that the rain would give up. Luckily it did and our day got better. We wandered around the lovely Clarke Quay area, relaxed with a beer and had some food. It was a relaxing evening after a poor start to the day. Luckily the weather was a lot better and we managed a stroll along the riverside before heading home.

Arrival in Singapore

The flight over from Dubai was bearable but not great. We actually had 2 flights, one from Dubai to Doha and then another from Doha to Singapore. Initially we had an hour between landing in Doha and taking off again but after leaving Dubai about 30 minutes late it was a bit of a rush to get through and onto the next flight. We were among the last people to board but at least we didn't have to queue!! Once again, Megan slept for 4-5 hours, I tried but had the world's most annoying woman sitting behind me. She liked to move about a lot, mostly by grabbing my chair and pulling herself up with it, needless to say, a randomly moving chair isn't the best sleeping environment!

Anyway, onto Singapore, our first view of it was coming out of the airport and to describe it in 3 words I would have to say hot, sticky and grey! We are pretty much bang on the equator here so the weather hardly ever changes, it is always hot and the sort of tropical plants we were greeted with proved that point. To get from the airport to Kallang, where we are staying, we used the renowned SMRT, Singapore Mass Rapid Transit, which is the underground train system. It is cheap, reliable and easy to use, we got ourselves an EZ-link card which is like an oyster card and got to where we needed for about S$1.50 (about 50p), not bad for a 20 minute journey. When we got to the hotel we were somewhat disappointed with our room. It was clean and had all the facilities but it was tiny. Imagine a hotel room, now shrink it so that the walls just about surround the bed, that's pretty much what we had! The next morning we went to reception and upgraded ourselves to a "deluxe" room which was a lot bigger (not hard!) and for only about 2 quid extra each per night i was willing to make that sacrifice!

Our first full day in Singapore was a successful one, we started off by heading to Chinatown and it was like nothing either of us had ever seen before. As soon as we stepped off the MRT we were straight into a street market surrounded by Chinese buildings, pagodas and red lanterns. It was absolutely fantastic and we fully immersed ourselves in browsing the traditional (and touristy) goods for sale. The major thing we did here was to go to a tailor and both got measured up and fitted out for new suits. The tailor we went to was excellent and a big fan of Britain. He was so excited that we were British and told us all about how his Dad was in the British Army and how Singapore was much better under Britain. He was an excellent tailor and really knew what he was talking about design-wise. One of the photos he had in his shop was of Bill Clinton there. If his suits are good enough for a US President then I guess they are good enough for me!

After this we continued walking around and went to a temple which was amazing, it was the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple and displayed Asia's biggest Stupa (a type of Buddha) made from 420kg of pure gold, decorated with 201 rubies and surrounded by 35 statues of Buddha. We then walked down to the oldest Indian temple in Singapore, not quite as impressive but an amazing tower at the entrance featuring statues of divine beings.

After engrossing ourselves in yet more browsing through stalls we took the MRT to HarbourFront and got on the cable car to take us over to Sentosa Island. This was a really good way to get across, we could have gone by train or bus but we saw a lot more this way. Sentosa is a heavily forested island paradise with a few beaches and a few tourist attractions. Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, they are extending the island and are building hotels, casinos and goodness knows what else. Whilst on Sentosa we enjoyed the views and saw the giant statue of the Merlion, a symbol of Singapore. We also went to "Underwater World" which is a sea life centre and had a whole variety of sea life including coral, tropical fish, crabs, sharks, jellyfish and Megan's joint favorites, Clown Fish and Turtles! There was a tunnel running under the tanks that you could go through and see everything, we both really enjoyed this.

After dinner, the plan was to go to the "New Asia Bar" on top of the Swissotel in town. It is the tallest point in Singapore and would have been a perfect way to finish the day, a brilliant view of the city apparently. Unfortunately, to get in you have to be 23, well MEN have to be 23, women only have to be 18! So instead we stayed on the ground floor and had an excellent view over, well, the pavement. Not quite the same but it was a really nice bar where we had appletinis (yes, that's right Adam!!!!) and it was still a good way to finish off the first day of our short stop in Singapore.