All down the line

Saturday, 29/09/2012 – 107 A.D.

We first awoke to the sound of a child screaming with delight in the corridor, its parents occasionally speaking, oblivious to there being other guests in the hotel. We estimate this was some time around 07:00. Both Tim and I waited for the other to go out and tell it to shut the hell up. Instead we both went back to our slumbers.

It was the day of our first major train journey in this round the world trip of ours. We had our tickets printed out, we’d planned our travel across the city to the nth degree…so what could go wrong? Surprisingly nothing, as it happened, apart from the rain coming down as we were leaving Marsilling station and about to do our 15 minute walk to Woodlands Checkpoint. That meant the waterproofs came out, with day bags worn frontwise and under them we looked like a couple of pregnant backpackers as we made the punishing walk! Actually, it wasn’t too bad, what with the rain keeping us vaguely cool in the tropical heat.

[Cars leaving Singapore have to have at least more than half a tank of gas to prevent them constantly going to Malaysia for cheaper fuel.]

This is the difference between me and my brother – I poured away my small tub of washing powder, he kept hold of his. I dunno, I guess I just wanted peace of mind. We’re leaving a country where they put drug traffickers to death and the last thing I needed was a customs officer opening my luggage and getting excited by a small quantity of white powder. “But it smells like Persil,” Tim rightly protested. Sure, but that train wasn’t going to wait for me while I went through a full-on body search and got swabbed in all kinds of private places!

[Waiting in line for the immigration process…we missed the sign on the wall prohibiting the taking of photographs! I don’t think you get put to death for that though.]

Getting through customs turned out to be a breeze. All we had to do was put our luggage through a scanner (one obviously designed to ignore Aerial Ultra) and there wasn’t even a body sensor to deal with, which meant we avoided that annoying process of, “Empty your pockets please, ladies and gentlemen!” As we sat waiting for the train, still on Singaporean soil, yet technically under Malaysian jurisdiction, a young child screamed its head off nearby. “I’ll bet they sit behind us!” I remarked and Tim just smiled.

Coach M3 was where our designated seats were. Coach M3 was listed as “superior class”, though given that it’s second class seating, I’m not quite sure what it was supposed to be superior to. Sitting on the roof? Hanging on to the sides? Superior Class turned out to be a bit crappy, but it could have been dirtier. On the whole it was functional enough to get us from A to B (or A to KL) in six hours, providing there were no delays. And sure enough, the family with the screaming young child came to sit in Coach M3. “I bloody told you!” I said to Tim. “Yeah, but they’re not sitting directly behind you, are they?” he replied. No, they weren’t, but five minutes after the train started moving, and with kid still screaming, the whole family got up and came to sit in the seat RIGHT BEHIND US! Why??? The carriage was barely a quarter full with loads of empty seats so why come to make our lives a misery? We had to laugh. Fortunately, just across the water in Malaysia and at the first stop, some people (quiet people) got on and they had reserved the seats directly behind us, so noisy family had to move. Great success!  

[“Now we can eat our packed lunches and watch The Mighty Boosh in peace!”]

Oh yeah, and today I managed to actually bring a packed lunch with sandwiches that contained fillings. So much tastier!

A lot of the scenery on the journey was Malaysian jungle, not surprisingly. Occasionally we stopped at stations of small ramshackle towns where children played right beside the tracks and people watched the train pass as if it was the highlight of their rural day. A part of me wished we could get off and explore these truly out-of-the-way places, maybe even spend a few nights there, rather than retreat to the cosmopolitan safety of yet another metropolis. Definitely one to think about for the future.

Our train arrived at Sentral Station in KL bang on time, which was great because the screaming child was once again doing his thing. The station has a great system for taxi’s where you go to the counter and effectively buy your trip in advance. The standard price to get to our hotel on Jalan Pudu Lama was ten ringgits (5 ringgits = 1 pound) and all we had to do was give the driver the ticket we got from the counter, no need to worry about him having a dodgy meter or going twice around the one way system. And he was banging out some great Buddhist tunes on the stereo, which probably soothed his nerves against the manic traffic.

The Mayview Glory Hotel seems okay and our room has a bit more space than the last one, though it has neither a kettle nor a fridge. There is drinking water available on the 1^st floor, but Tim is still sceptical and it's rubbing off on me, not that I have the option to boil the tap water now. Our room also has an arrow on the ceiling which points west to Mecca in case we fancy a quick prayer, rather than simply living on one as we have been doing for the past three months.  

Not really having much time to plan a meal, we took a quick walk out of the hotel, stepped over a cockroach on the kerbside and headed to the KFC close by. I asked for the Colonel Burger Combo and questioned whether the girl had taken my order correctly when she presented me with a cardboard plate of potato wedges instead of fries. Still, the sauce they were coated in wasn’t bad at all…a sort of cheese-meets-mustard-meets-something-else…and I’m hoping and praying that the “something else” is something that agrees with my belly! After dinner, the only thing left to do that evening was to sit down and make use of the strong internet connection to watch a live stream of Liverpool stuffing Norwich 5-2. The reception guy at the hotel had earlier said that everyone around KL over 40 supports Liverpool because they were great in the 80s. Well guess what, people of KL, after that victory at Carrow Road, LFC are great again!

Ticket to ride

Friday, 28/09/2012 – 106 A.D.

“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”

Andre Gide

We didn’t really have much to do today except book our train tickets for Kuala Lumpur, hereafter referred to as KL. An easy job, no? No. We tried to book online, but the frustratingly unhelpful website only displayed the available seating for Sunday’s trains, rather than Saturday’s. Sunday’s sleeping berths were already full-up, which was a bad sign. Well, I say bad, but at least if we got a daytime train we’d get to see the Malaysian scenery. I still regret getting a night bus through Utah and missing the stunning sights, but that’s all ancient history now. We decided we’d have to phone the train company to check the seating situation, so we left the hotel and went to find a pay phone.

Just over the road is The Mustafa Centre which we’d stared at from our window for the last few days, but had no clue what it was all about, except that it was open for 24 hours. We decided to give it a go and discovered it’s a big shop that sells…everything! Especially gold. The presentation is a little off though, a bit like Debenhams if it was going through a closing down sale and couldn’t be bothered putting up new displays. Upon entering, the two security guards told us the zips on our day bags needed to be tied with tags in accordance with store policy, presumably to stop people putting stolen goods into them. What they didn’t tell us was how we were supposed to remove the tags if we wanted to go to other shops and fill our bags! We bought some blank dvds upon which we could back up our laptop data, but when purchasing them and asking if there was a public telephone within the store that we could use, the woman behind the counter assumed we wanted to buy a telephone. We gave up and left. And Tim bit the tags off our bags.

Back on the streets, we located a payphone and tried to make the call to the train company. Despite the generous rate of 12 minutes for 50 pence dialling a foreign country, the call would not connect, despite getting through to the queue for an attendant.  There was only one thing for it, we would have to take the train up to Woodlands again and go to the terminal to buy our tickets in person. Still, what else did we have to do with our day? Unfortunately it took an hour out of our lives to get there, although it was naturally less crowded than yesterday because we weren’t travelling during rush hour. Singapore is a very clean country and one reason for this is that they dish out fines of up to $500 for eating or drinking on the trains or in the stations. Merseyrail, take note. Actually, it was a bit of a bummer because I was parched on that train and desperate for a swig of water!

This was the hottest day so far, with no cloud cover to shield us from the punishing sun. I don’t know how these people put up with the lack of variety in their weather – I love the fact that England has seasons! We walked for about 15 minutes to the station known as Woodlands Checkpoint, the clue in its name being that its where you go to cross the border. In what passed for a ticket office we were told there was only one bed available for the Saturday night sleeper, so we’d have to get the 13:45 train (six hours to KL). Then we were told we could only pay by cash. Only by cash? What sort of an international ticket office featuring an automated online booking system does not accept cards??? This meant we had another 15 minute round trip to the cash machine in the nearby run-down shopping complex.

We decided to take a varied route on the way back, mainly because we were getting sick of passing through the same stations. Thing is, our varied route took even longer than the normal one! We got off to the east of Little India at the Geylang district – the traditional red light area. No, no, no. Stop thinking that. We just wanted to walk around and maybe see some interesting sights (from a distance). Unfortunately we missed the red light zone by about 50 metres, though at the time we were unaware of the miscalculation, just puzzled as to why there were no big red numbers outside the houses, which is the tell-tale sign for a brothel around these parts. By this time it was late afternoon and too hot to be wondering things like this, we just needed to get back to the hotel for a shower and some aircon.

All clean and rested, it wasn’t long before we were out again and heading into deepest Little India to enjoy a typical curry. As we sauntered along the kerbside we were beckoned in by the owners of several establishments, all promising us the best cuisine we’ve ever eaten in our lives. With our stomachs rumbling, we just couldn’t decide amongst them, so we went back to the first guy we spoke to and made his night. I had a “murg makhani”, which tasted bloody good, but Tim was a bit disappointed with his chicken-and-spinach concoction, mainly because it was on the bone (and a lot of bones at that!)

To walk off our medium-strength meals, we headed back to good old Raffles to stroll around the hotel complex by night and pretend we were wealthy. We took plenty of pictures and ignored the crass English nouveau riche who were hovering around. Of course, we had to try the lavatories, which were spotless, even by Singaporean standards. However, once we saw the prices of the drinks at the bar we suddenly decided we weren’t thirsty. Didn’t like the look of those Singapore Slings anyway. 

Next we headed down to the harbour to get some shots of the city by night. The Marina Bay Casino somehow looked even more impressive lit up against the big back sky. There was a performance taking place of traditional Chinese music, very rhythmic in nature, with cymbals crashing, drums beating, and various other percussive instruments being whacked. Seeing it live was great and made me consider downloading a CD of this type of music, though at the back of mind I knew that it would end up being one of those albums that gets played once a year at most. We also came across what appeared to be an outdoor street version of Play Your Cards Right, but given that I don’t understand Chinese, it might well have been something else (but not the oriental version of Blankety-blank).  

[“Higher! No, lower…errr…you’re wallied – you can’t answer this one…”

It was a steaming hot night, and in some ways warmer than it had been by day. On our way back to the hotel we decided we were thirsty again and stopped to grab a bear at a place that looked like it hadn’t changed much since Singapore declared itself independent from the British in 1965. Well now the British were back, and enjoying a drink in the kind of place where the locals drink. I also sort-of did my first bit of haggling by agreeing on a price for the beers before ordering them – 6 dollars for 660 millilitres of Tiger – best price in Little India! It was a fine end to day in which we hadn’t expected to do much, yet ended up doing quite a lot. Cheers!

Night train

Thursday, 27/09/2012 – 105 A.D.

Asia? It's a piece of cake, a walk in the park, child's play.

By our second full day we reckoned that we'd been here long enough not to need a visitors' centre, but we did still require a cash machine. Therefore, armed with a decent if oversized map, we headed across the city to where we were absolutely certain that Barclays Bank must be - South Tower, Raffles Quay. It was indeed on Raffles Quay, but just as Tim feared it wasn't a bank as we knew it, rather an office complex. And so we just bit the bullet and used the nearby ATM for the Australia & New Zealand bank - what's an extra 2% when you're having so much fun?

[Merrill Lynch's imitation of the Wall Street Bull - touching its bits is optional and won't bring good luck.]

[The out-of-this-world Marina Bay Sands resort. Yes, that really is a cruise ship on top of those towers. Although this casino complex was developed by a Las Vegas firm, it's very much a symbol of Singaporean wealth.]

[The merlion is a national mascot of Singapore. The fish body represents its origins as a fishing village and the lion represents Singapore's original name of "Singupura", meaning Lion City. Pay attention, there'll be questions at the end of this...]

It hadn't rained so far and felt hotter than yesterday. On our way back from the CBD we stopped in Esplanade Park for our lunch. Here I was dismayed to discover that I had left my pre-made sandwiches back in the fridge and brought what remained of the loaf. Desperate for food, I enjoyed a couple of slices of dry bread - enriched dry bread, I might add, which would give Warburtons a run for its money. And as I munched away and watched Tim obscenely chucking some of his lunch to the birds, I wondered if throwing bread to them is technically littering if they don't eat it. Also present in the park was this contemplative chap, no doubt meditating on why two westerners were sitting in his park and eating dry bread and dropping litter.

With my belly semi-full, we walked north through the city and entered Fort Canning Park. This is an elevated park that is rich in Singaporean history; primitive stone tools have been found on the site; it was where the chief of the land had his stronghold during Singapore's golden age in the 1300s; and it features various impressive buildings representing the latter influence of British colonialism. 

  

By now the humidity was really sapping us (and the red V shape across my chest had returned) so we headed back to the hotel to prepare for the evening session - Night Safari at Singapore Zoo. This is based in the north of the island and we'd booked our tickets online earlier in the day. The plan was this:

Get the train to Woodlands Station, which is the main terminal for trains out of the country.

Alight and go to the ticket office and book tickets to Kuala Lumpur, hopefully in a sleeper cabin for two, otherwise in regular daytime seats.

Find somewhere to eat.

Get back on the train and go a few more stops down the line to Choa Chu Kang, which is the nearest stop to the zoo.

Board a connecting bus (number 927) to take us directly to the zoo and go safari crazy!

      However, it didn’t quite go according to plan. We got onto the train with no problems, despite it being the middle of rush hour and more packed than The Tube. Tim and I felt unnecessarily close, even after all of this travelling! It took about 45 minutes to get to Woodlands and I noticed it seemed quite a bit smaller than a major transit terminus should be. This was soon explained to us briefly by a guy behind glass at the ticket office area. When asked if we could buy tickets for Kuala Lumpar, he simply said, “No.” We quickly worked out that this was not where we wanted to be. As we stood around trying to work out what to do next, a rather irate transit worker asked us if we wanted any help, and when we said we weren’t sure, he snorted that we were blocking his gate, i.e. getting in the way of the rush hour punters trying to leave the station. We explained our dilemma and he told us that we’d have to head up to some kind of checkpoint and get tickets there, which totally ruined our best laid plans. 

[Tim displaying the look known as 'Confused Foreigner'.]

The best decisions are always made on full stomachs, so we looked around for somewhere to eat...there were only about a million places to choose from. We settled on Long John Silver's, a sort-of fast food restaurant for fish and chips. I had trouble working out what the guy behind the counter was telling me (he could have been speaking in pirate), but I managed to order special meal #3 - chips, three battered shrimps and two pieces of battered chicken. For £3.50 it wasn't bad at all. And we decided that we should forget trying to book our Kuala Lumpur tickets for now and just get to the zoo.

Rather than deal with the hassle of a bus, we headed for the taxi rank. Irate Guy At The Gate had told us that the fare should be no more than ten dollars, so Tim tried to establish if this was the case, although the driver didn't give much away. As the journey went on I noticed us pass a sign for the Night Safari on the right, but we kept going further down the highway for a few more minutes. 'Here we go' I thought, 'Taxi man trying to screw us!' Suddenly the driver did a Dukes Of Hazard-style U-turn and headed back the way we'd come, jokingly explaining to Tim that he'd got a bit confused. All this time I sat there silently, playing the part of the unknown quantity who could turn angry at any moment while Tim acted as the friendly negotiator. In fact, this good-passenger-bad-passenger is an approach we might adopt in future because when we arrived at the zoo and the meter was over ten dollars the driver apologised for getting lost and said to just give him ten. Result!

Upon arriving we saw that the Night Safari was incredibly popular, arguably the second most well-known attraction after Raffles' Singapore Slings - the place to come and see animals doing their nocturnal thing. Quite what the animals make of a load of homo-sapien-sapiens gawping at them from a short distance is unclear, especially when they are riding in trams like these:

We boarded the next available tram and set off on our trip around the park, which passed through various zones, such as the Himalayas and Africa, featuring animals relative to the respective areas. There was a zoo employee on the front carriage with a microphone, keeping us informed of all the facts about the animals. The MC told us that taking photographs was okay, but flash should not be used. Even so, look at the quality of shot I was able to get...

...not really. Unfortunately the above shot is from one of the back-lit panels that provide extra information about the animals. In reality I was barely able to get a single decent shot during the whole trip, which was a real bummer because there could have been some real classics. Here's a couple of samples of the actual results...

[Errr..could it be a wildebeest? Or a hippo? Nah, it's a duck-billed platypus.] 

[This really isn't due to my shaky hands, its just poor lighting.]

Halfway along the tram ride we had the option to alight and walk along the Leopard Trail, which means you get to see more animals, this time from behind glass. However, the highlight was walking through the fruit bat enclosure and getting to see the blighters up close, rather than as dark blobs up in the trees like they were in Cairns. And some of them were pretty big, particularly one that hung from a branch and chewed on a conveniently-placed banana, all the time watching us from a few feet away with its big, beady eyes. 

It was just as we were leaving the fruit bats' enclosure that the skies opened and it "hoyed it down", as my brother would say. Fortunately we'd both packed our waterproofs and we scrambled to get them on. But we were the only ones who had packed them...why was this? This is Singapore, right on the equator, where it rains bloody hard and pretty much every day! The extra issue caused by all this water was that everyone who'd alighted the trams to do the Leopard Trail now flocked back to the station to get on again, which meant a massive queue. And as each tram came along no one wanted to get off and get soaked, which meant we were all left there waiting like lemons until the zoo staff realised the rain wasn't stopping soon and  sent an empty tram to scoop us all up. 

The tour continued and we got to see all kinds of weird and wonderful creatures, which I won't list in full, a. because I can't remember them all and, b. because it's getting late as I write this. Suffice to say we had a great deal of fun at Singapore's Night Safari and by the time we got the boneshaker bus all the way back to Little India it was almost too late to drink beer, but we managed it anyway. 

Welcome to the pleasure dome

Wednesday, 26/09/2012 – 104 A.D.

I’m not sure when I first woke up to the Asian dawn. At some point approaching morning I am positive that I opened my eyes to see the dark silhouette of my brother get out of bed and go to the window and take a look outside. Not sure if he then went to the lavatory, but I went straight back to sleep. Thing is, Tim swears blind that he didn’t get up once in the night. Either he is sleepwalking, this hotel room is haunted or the doxycycline is weaving its eerie magic.

Neither of us slept perfectly last night, but at least we slept. We may as well have been lying on planks of wood, the beds are that hard! Every time my heart beat against the mattress I could hear the bed springs noisily responding. Singapore is an extremely humid part of the world and I looked out of the window to see monsoon-like rain coming down. Although it didn’t last for too long, it made us take our time getting up, which we needed. Breakfast television in Singapore isn’t up to much, but at least it’s in English. They get eight free channels here, one of which is Channel 5, for some reason. And even though it would be a 30 degree day here, it’s still never quite warm enough to enjoy a cold shower…by the time Tim located the switch for the heater I’d just about stopped shivering. That said, even with the switch down it was lukewarm at best, but the temperature of the water is unimportant in the grand scheme of things.   

Given that I’d eaten six segments of dark chocolate for breakfast, we needed to get out and purchase supplies from the nearby shopping mall. If there’s one thing Singapore has it’s shopping malls – they are everywhere! It might have something to do with the citizens having the third highest purchasing power per capita in the world.

An aside – I wonder if the UK has anything of the highest per capita in the world?

As you can see from the above shot, this particular mall wasn’t particularly crowded. I know it’s a Wednesday morning, but you’d still expect more of a turnout, and some of the upper levels were totally devoid of customers. Maybe it’s because they’ve built too many, which wouldn’t surprise me as, after only being here for 12 hours I get the impression that expansion  is the name of the game around here. The road is being dug up all along the street our hotel is on and the horizon is dominated by new skyscrapers spring up from the ground. Anyway, back to the mundane – we were able to find a supermarket that provided us with sarnie-fodder, so a reasonably typical British lunch is still on the cards in this far off mysterious land.

Back at the hotel we asked if they had any laundry facilities as the humidity was already starting to make our shirts stick to our backs. Alas they had no such facilities, but the reception guy directed us down the road, take a left, then take a right, two more lefts, back round the corner, another left, then a right, under the bridge and…we gave up trying to follow the instructions and went back to hand washing and hanging the clothes from the air con vent in the room. Some things never change! Oh yeah, and just to add, we got around using those towels by imagining that the dark stains came from contact with a rusty nail. Anything else is too hideous to contemplate, even for Asia.  

Still easing gently into the Singapore experience, we had but two goals for the afternoon - to find the visitors' centre and locate a Barclays cash machine, of which there appeared to be a couple spread across the city. Unfortunately we went on to accomplish neither of these goals, but we got a general feel for the place. One of the big issues with being in Asia is being wary of drinking the water. Tim had a very bad experience in India and doesn't want to take the chance here, despite every website we look on saying that the tap water is fine to drink. Because of Tim's graphic description of what he went through, I'm playing it safe by boiling a kettle's-worth and then pouring that into my water bottle. Unfortunately in a humid climate of 30 degree heat boiled water can take a long time to cool down, and every time I went to swig it while strolling through the city I was effectively having a warm drink. I've since solved this problem by investing in some extra water bottles - as ever, it's a learning curve.

Still heading vaguely in vain to the visitors' centre using another dodgy Google Maps photo on Tim's phone, we walked through Burgis Junction, which contains outdoor market stalls and the odd nutter prancing about waving birds feathers and shouting in one of the other three official languages of Singapore besides English - Chinese, Malay and Tamil. Part of the markets is indoor and as we entered we were immediately attacked by all kinds of smells,some of which were so potent they could have punched us on the nose. It was a real assault on the senses. It was also slow moving through the crowds and I immediately went into one-hand-on-camera-and-one-hand-on-wallet-mode. Rearrange the words "thumbs", "like", "out", "stood", "sore" and apply them to the two of us. 

 By now the afternoon was getting on and the visitors' centre wasn't where we thought it was. Neither was the Barclays Bank, and if we don't use one of their ATMs then we have to pay additional fees. Progress was slow, not necessarily because of the heat, but from having to stop at endless pedestrian crossings to get across the street. No one seemed to be jaywalking and we weren't going to take the chance in a city state where you can get locked up for chewing on a Wrigleys Extra. But it wasn't all in vain as we came across the infamous Raffles Hotel. I may look out of place standing outside such a prestigious establishment, but one day I'll be in there and sipping Singapore Slings until I'm too drunk to say my own name, let alone, "Im staying in Little India, please can you call me a cab so I don't have to navigate those endless pedestrian crossings." One day, Jimbo, one day...

We got back to the hotel in time to skype our parents before they went on holiday to Spain. And then we sat down to our laptops and started planning our next moves across this great continent. I’m all for a bit of planning – came in handy in whatever the job I used to do was – but so soon after arriving we’re already thinking about moving on? I guess that’s the way it goes on The Road. After a couple of hours I went out for a walk around the surrounding streets as the hustle and bustle of the locals continued into the night. The people do try and get you to come in and eat at their establishments, but they’re not pushy about it when you say no. In fact, I really like the vibe here already – if all of Asia is like this then we’re going to have a lot of fun together!

  

And I almost bought some knock-off eau de toilette for a couple of dollars, but wasn’t sure if it was perfume-in-disguise. 

Into the void

Tuesday, 25/09/2012 – 103 A.D.

Up until now this has been easy. It’s been a piece of cake, a walk in the park, child’s play. So far we’ve suffered heatwaves, frosty mornings, tragic loss, unnecessary gains, setbacks, delays and far too many Macdonalds Cheeseburger Meals, but none of that matters anymore. Now the ante is upped and we need to raise our game accordingly. If we don’t…we get our arses kicked. Big time.

The whole day was spent in transit, although we did manage a stop-off at Victoria Markets as we crossed Melbourne, hoping to find some dual-layer dvds on which to back up our photos. We found none, but Tim got himself a great big hotdog with everything on, though he questioned the logic of chilli sauce and mustard on the same sausage. Our rucksacks felt a lot lighter after we’d got rid of the stuff we’d sent back home by sea mail. Plus I’d donated the fitted sheet we’d bought for Greyhound travel in America to the Salvation Army.

By far the easiest way to get to Melbourne airport is the Skybus, which you take from the central train station for $17. It takes about 20 minutes and we arrived with plenty of time for check-in. Everything went smoothly as we got on the plane, but don’t you just hate it when you’re stuck in the middle seats of a 3-4-3 set-up? Tim was jammy enough to get the aisle and me, in seat 69F, was stuck next to an elderly women who was far too twitchy for my liking. Fortunately there were a couple of spare seats across the aisle from Tim, so once that plane was airborne I was over that aisle and into a beneficial legroom zone. It was an eight hour flight, but Qantas provided more than enough entertainment for the trip and I watched Sacha Baron-Cohen’s new film, The Dictator, plus multiple episodes of the American version of The Office, and – surprise, surprise – The big bang theory.

We touched down in Asia about 21:35 local time (we’re now seven hours ahead of the UK). I filled out my customs arrival form, noticing the warning in big red letters that DRUG TRAFFICKING = DEATH IN SINGAPORE. Mind you, just dropping litter here carries a several hundred dollar fine, which I think is a good thing. And we’d been made aware that you can’t bring chewing gum into the country, but these days I’ve cut right down on that. However, I still had a bit of chocolate and some boiled sweets in my hand luggage, but I thought I should check out if this was okay, what with the Australasians being so hot on bringing anything organic into their countries. I approached a woman with Customer Services on the back of her jacket and asked if it was alright to bring sweets into the country. “Sweets?” she replied, “What are sweets?” Oh dear, it’s the first language barrier moment! I thought they were all supposed to speak English here (or at least a mix of English and Singaporean known as “Singlish”). Fortunately she understood the word “chocolate” and said it was fine. Happy I wasn’t breaking any laws so far, I went to use the facilities, which were spacious and sparkling. An electronic touch-screen by the exit said ‘Please rate our toilet’. I didn’t have time, but I would have been very complimentary.

It was quite late, but we’d decided we weren’t going to spend the night in another airport, even if Changi is one of the better ones in the Asian world. Therefore we’d be checking into the Arianna Hotel in Little India, which featured a 24 hour reception. At first we considered getting the train into the city centre, but upon seeing that we’d have to change twice, we decided against it. Therefore we had to find a taxi, making sure the fare did not cost more than $44, which was all we had. At the rank, we watched a brand new high speed blue taxi pulling away. Then ours arrived, which was pea green in colour and looked like something from the 1970s. The driver didn’t have a clue where the Arianna Hotel was, and he wasn’t adept at understanding the photo that Tim had taken of Google Maps on his phone. At first I thought he was hustling us (third world paranoia kicking-in already!) but as the conversation continued I realised he was just confused. We headed off into the night, keeping a keen eye on the meter. At one point a Porsche convertible with the largest spoiler ever constructed zoomed past us, which prompted our driver to race it from the slow lane.

It took about ten minutes to get to Little India and we had to circle several blocks until we found the Arianna (to be fair to our driver he switched off the meter while we were looking). The hotel looked okay from the outside, but we’d been hoping for a bit of luxury, despite the fact that Singapore is probably about as expensive as Asia gets, Japan aside. After checking in, we discovered that our room was alright, but with good and bad bits:

The Good:

-          We don’t hear the traffic outside.

-          We have a telelvision.

-          We have a fridge.

-          The internet is free and the connection is great.

The Bad:

-          We do hear guests in the rooms nearby.

-          The fridge is in a cupboard and the door doesn’t open properly because the bed is in the way.

-          There is no separate shower – the bathroom is one big shower.

-          The beds are hard as nails.

-          There are towels…both with brown patches all over them.

Oh well, you have to take the rough with the smooth, don’t you? At least we’ve arrived and can get our head down for some shuteye. I’m sure the next three months will just fly by…

Pills `n` thrills and bellyaches

Sunday, 23/09/2012 - 101 A.D.

We got up early this morning because there was a lot of driving to do. The boys were going to hit the Great Ocean Road, while Harry stayed home to look after Otis and get a few things done.  Plus there was no room for all four of us and the luggage in the car. The Great Ocean Road is listed by the Australian National Heritage and is 151 miles long in total, built by returned soldiers between 1919 and 1932. Given that we’d be out all day doing our circuit and would barely cover a short patch of Victoria, it was yet another reminder of just how vast this country is.

Above is a shot of Bells Beach, where we stopped off for a quick leg-stretch and view. It is home to The Rip Curl Pro Surf and Music Festival, which I gather is some sort of event that is big on the surfing circuit. As you can see above, there weren’t any surfers out there today, but that is because the cross current was coming in at a 2.7 overflow curl when you need at least 3.6 mixed with a beach wind of 12 hectares per furlong. Or it might’ve been a bit too cold. Either way, it was good to get a look at the Southern Ocean, a vast expanse of majestic blue sitting before us. Next stop south is Antarctica!

We stopped for butterfish, flake and battered saveloy and chips at the small town of Apollo Bay, then headed slightly inland and took a detour to look for some wild koalas. Liam claimed that the last four times he’d taken people to this exact spot they had seen koalas in the trees and today was no exception – strike five! Unfortunately they were a bit too high up to get a good picture, and besides, as good as it is to see them, koalas in the wild is a bit like old news. Now we want to photograph snakes and, errr, crocodiles, the latter of which we definitely will not see in Victoria (same probably goes for the former, given it’s not dry enough). I also forgot to say that earlier on the drive we saw a group of five kangaroos hopping across the rolling green hills, which was a cracking sight, but once again the superfast skippers were too quick for my camera shutter.

The main draw on the Great Ocean Road is The 12 Apostles, which is a collection of limestone stacks jutting out from the water in dramatic fashion. They were formed by erosion of the cliffs which formed caves, which then became arches, which in turn collapsed, leaving the free-standing “apostles” which can be up to 45 metres high. I actually think there are less than 12 of these stacks…or maybe it’s more…but either way it’s not exactly 12. Still, that’s erosion for you, it never waits. But erosion had created a spectacular sight and it was well worth the long drive to get here.

 Do we look a little windswept in the picture above? That’s because there were icy gales blowing straight off the ocean, so cold that my face nearly froze and I thought I’d got earache. Shame really, because we would have spent a lot longer staring out at the apostles had it not been so chilly. And just as we were walking out of the car park, I spotted coming straight towards us the two German girls who we’d shared a room with back in Canberra. I put on my best smile and tried to make eye contact, but they walked past with faces to the floor. Given that they’d just come back from the viewing point they were probably too cold to see anything, let alone a lanky English bloke with a big silly grin.

After that it was the long drive back to Melbourne and Liam was good enough to drop us off at our hotel. We are staying in the Baden Powell Hotel in the eastern suburb of Collingwood, and those who have been paying attention will be aware that it’s where my Aussie Rules Football team are from, though I’m not sure if the ground is anywhere near. It’s a double bed in the room, but at least it’s en suite, though curiously the bathroom is not enclosed, i.e. there’s a space above the door. Good job there’s a television so we can turn the volume up loud if needs be! It’s a bit of a comedown sharing a bed again after having separate rooms at Liam and Harry’s, but we can suffer this last hardship because in Asia we will be living like kings, right?

Hmmm… 

Monday, 24/09/2012 - 102 A.D.

This is an anti-malarial pill, doxycycline to be precise. I have to take them to prevent some very nasty bites from some very nasty mozzies. This particular anit-malarial needs to be taken 1-2 days before arriving in an affected area and four weeks after leaving one. That means I’m still going to be popping these little green pills back in England in deepest January when this trip is a distant memory! The white ones in the tub are paracetemols and the brown ones are multi-vitamins for a bit of extra protection. I popped my first green pill this morning and I’m pleased to report no side effects so far. At one point I felt as if I was feeling a little sickly, but I’m sure that was just psychosomatic. Tim feels fine as well, his oncoming cold somehow having disappeared (not for the first time on this trip!)  

Our last day in Australia would be one for getting things done. Although we were yet to explore the centre of Melbourne, we’d been told that there were relatively few highlights to see anyway. The Melbourne experience is all about living here over time and taking it all in, living as a Mebournian – apparently it’s been voted the most liveable city in the world, not sure by who, but I’m pretty sure the jury did not consist solely of Melbourne residents.

Things we did today included:

·         Turning up to the popular Victoria Markets, which is closed on Mondays.

·         Trading in the guidebook for a new Elmore Leonard novel (in light of no south east Asia guidebook being available).

·         Eating lunch at Hungry Jacks, which is basically Burger King, but somehow a little more tasty.

·         Sending stuff back home in a cardboard box via sea mail. It takes three months, so by the time it gets back…we’ll probably get back as well!

·         Getting out some Singapore dollars to pay for a taxi ride to our hotel.

·         Having a haircut at a place called Jets Hair Stylist…

I think the young oriental girl did a reasonable job, don’t you? Back at the hotel we found that the staff had come in at some point to take away our towels, but had neglected to provide us with fresh ones. When we went a-huntin` for them, no one was around and the bar below the hotel was closed on Mondays so couldn’t ask around in there. However, there was no time to ponder solutions as we were meeting Liam and Harry for drinks at 7.15 in the city and we had to gobble down a couple of $5 pizzas before heading out. 

The current trend in Melbourne is that the coolest bars are down grubby side alleys within buildings made to look like they are derelict (in many cases they probably are!) Apparently there are 200 or so bars like this in the city. Unfortunately it was still Monday and therefore a lot of the places we sought out were closed. I enjoyed drinking in the establishments we did get to and I didn’t mind paying $38 dollars for a round of four drinks. In a way, it was a fitting farewell to the ever-expensive Australia.

So, having conquered another country, what are my thoughts on leaving Australia? I found it difficult to adjust at first, struggling initially to get into the hardcore backpacking scene that dominates the east coast. It didn’t help that I arrived here tired from a month in a camper van, missing an iPod and sleeping the first night in Cairns airport. Oz for me was never somewhere I had a massive desire to go to, more like a place to pass through on the way to other climes. Still, I’m really glad I did pass through, even though I didn’t do the regulation snorkelling, rafting, etc. All that will just have to wait until another time, and possibly another incarnation. There are a lot of positive things I could say about this country, but I think the guidebook summed it up best when it said, “…there is a general feeling that things are okay…” and I agree with that. Everything is okay here, it’s a shame it’s also a little pricey for us Brits, but the people are ultra-friendly and they really know how to run a Greyhound service. Right now though, I think Australia has suffered because it directly preceded the looming behemoth that is Asia…a behemoth that looms ever larger…only an eight hour flight away now…