Day 3: Mon 18th Oct 2010 - Singapore

Although its day three of the travels things only really feels like it start today. The plan for the day was to go to the world famous Singapore Zoo. Over breakfast (toast and coffee sat round a little table on stools in the little hostel foyer) we planned our route which involved the metro and a bus. On arrival at the required metro station a girl asked if we were going to the zoo and pointed us in the direction of a free bus. This sounded great. We bought zoo tickets from a man and boarded a packed minibus. It was only then that we had our first panic and thought why hasn't this ideal bus service been advertised. It only takes a third of the time of the regular bus and it's free!? Thankfully with it being Singapore, the safest country in Asia we arrived at our destination and even more surprisingly the tickets were perfectly valid.

 

We spent a few hours walking round the Zoo checking out the animals. For me the what sets this zoo apart from any other I’ve been to is the setting. The grounds are still basically rainforest just with paths linking the different animal areas. Even then animal enclosures are very subtle on the whole by just making it look like they are just on the other side of some thick forest plants rather than behind a fence.

After the zoo we made our way to Chinatown for some dinner. After a meandering through the streets taking in the sights of Chinatown we stopped at a hawker centre for some grub. For those of you not familiar with a hawker centre, its basically a collection of fast food stands selling an array of foods. From what we understood these were the places to eat if travelling on a budget and we soon discovered why. We had set a fairly big budget for Singapore as we knew it will probably be the most western place we visit but we were both very pleased when our total food bill was 7 SGD which is roughly about t £3.50.

 

We made our way back to the hostel via Little India (just for a quick look) to get some sleep and ease our symptoms of jet lag (yes we were starting to feel it, we couldn't fool our body clocks and to put it nicely we we're being difficult to be with each other). Getting to sleep initially was easy at 9pm but after waking up at midnight getting back to sleep took several hours of tossing and turning.