Is it real.....is it a theme park....is it one gigantic airport?......no, it's just Singapore!

We had heard a lot about Singapore from people on our travels, especially from expats working there on 1, 2 year or permanent contracts for the many engineering, marketing, accounting, banking and shipping companies that operate out of the island nation. We were expecting a clean, functional and hugely more expensive last few days compared to our last 5 months in SE Asia. You know what, that's exactly what we found.

It turned out to be a very long days travel from Lombok, Indonesia. We almost didn't make it at all due to the extortionate departure tax that we were asked to pay just before we boarded our flight to Singapore. We didn't have enough cash on us to pay it all and they said we could not board the flight. After the last couple of days that we had had (see previous blog) we both stood our ground and told them that we were getting on that flight. Eventually they gave in and we got on, a small but significant victory.

So, we were gently lead through Changi airport in Singapore by the very user friendly signs in air conditioned comfort. This was compared to sweating the equivalent of an olympic swimming pool while trying to combine toilet breaks with tout avoiding emergency manouvers and generally working out if we are going in the right direction. It was therefore quite 'nice' to step onto the direct metro into town that wasn't overcrowded and took you exactly to where you wanted to go. We checked into our hostel with ease and slept deeply thinking lots of nice clean, safe, organized thoughts.

We started our exploration of Singapore like we

usually do with any city, go to the center and have a walk around. This was our first mistake as most people will know Singapore's humidity sits around the 90% mark and a short 20 minute walk can leave you exhausted, which it did.So we decided to refresh ourselves in the Long Bar at the Raffles hotel with none other than a Singapore sling, behind whose hallowed bar it was created. The thing to do in the long bar is to eat copious amounts of freshly roasted peanuts and throw the shells on the floor. We didn't believe this at first, it being Singapore, but when we walked in it was just covered in them.

We duly obliged and felt suitably refreshed and thought we'd take a walk to see some free art exhibition, another mistake as soon we were both sweating, getting very tired and more irritable and then ran out of pavement!

We eventually made it, probably breaking a few road traffic laws in the process and after a delightful couple of hours decided to make our way back to our hostel via a shopping mall. It was at this point we had a revelation and realized why there was no one else walking around Singapore.

It appears that most of the malls, shopping centers, metros, bus stations and office blocks are all connected by a maze of underground tunnels and overhead flyovers, most of which are air conditioned and are lined with shops, eateries and beauty shops in which Louise was snared a couple of times. This was also the point at which we started to feel like we were those little plastic people that appear on an architects models, that city planning had gone a little crazy here. It was almost too perfect.

Singapore, like Dubai, Hong Kong and other wealthy and densely populated areas in world do not have enough people to do all the jobs that need doing e.g. construction, cleaning, serving.... basically most of the jobs they just don't want to do themselves. It has been, for a long time, a collection of people from around the world due to British rule and it's more recent transformation as a travel, shipping and economic hub. Consequently some of the cheapest

labour they can find is from India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and this resulted in Little India being formed. When we left India in May we were pleased to leave the dirt, muck and grime complemented by a lovely dollop of Chaos! We walked into little India in Singapore and were hit with incense smells, shops spilling out onto the street with every type of fabric known to man and Singapore's version of Chaos (basically a load of Indians in a small area without the dirt!)

As we wandered through the streets we dodged round groups of men chatting in the street, mobile phone shops, barbers and the ever present market which oozed people in and out. As we squeezed ourselves through between the masses we found ourselves smiling as calls of 'hello sir, you come see!' rang out and the smiling faces stared as we walked past.

We also happened to be there during Deepavali, the Hindu equivalent of new year/Christmas/thanksgiving, basically a big celebration which made everything more intense. We left little India feeling, ironically, less constricted in this overly designed and created environment.

We also made it to Singapore zoo using buses that ran on time and went where they said they were going, a novel experience. As we sweated our way round the zoo the baboons roamed freely in the trees above our heads and we seemed to be within touching distance from white tigers to 'romancing' tortoises.

It was really a good example of how Singapore does things, clean and well engineered, trying to do things the most efficient and effective way. It did make us feel the whole city is like a massive business themed theme park, with controlled fun and a million shops.

Having enjoyed the efficiency of the place for a couple of days we actually got a little bored. Every shopping mall had the same shops, your walks outside were limited by how much liquid your body could hold and everything was so, well......CLEAN!!! We were glad to head back out to the airport, which we have to say is one of, if not the best, in the world. As we boarded our flight to OZ we realised that the life of most Singapore residents must be a bit like living within a massive airport terminal, but onward we must go to the land down under and Louise could finally return home!

A typical exit!

Exiting Indonesia was such a quiesential SE Asian affair that it was destined to be a blog entry. We saw it as leaving SE Asia, although of course that wasn't strictly what we were doing as a trip to Singapore was preceding our true exit from SE Asia to Australia. Somehow though Singapore doesn't really seem to belong in that generalised SE Asia category with it's organisation, integrated transport systems and cleanliness. Exiting Indonesia was a kind of two day affair, as is apt of course, considering the part of the world. We were on the Gili Islands, east of Bali and if we could have would have got onto a flight there which would take us straight to Singapore, but sure that would have been too easy. There is no airport in the Gili Islands (infact there is, rather uniquely, no motorised transport at all) so getting out of Indonesia was always going to involve a number of forms of transport.

Shunning the horse and carts rattling along the sandy track towards the "harbor" we donned our backpacks and set off on foot. It wasn't far we had to go, not that ridiculously short distances put off the many tourists who had more money than sense from using them - of which there were many! We headed first for the travel agency where we had bought our boat and bus ticket the day before...when I say travel agency read organised local gang out to exploit tourists with every sinew of being. There we were simply redirected to the "harbour", a small concrete box with three staff who would very happily help you with your travel arrangements for three times the price of the organised gangs (sorry i mean travel agents), a beach, the sea and a straw roof for shade from the sun.

As I padded bare foot down the beach, into the water and onto the boat I felt a certain nostalgia at leaving this way of life behind. By way of life I mean basic rooms with cold showers and, if you are lucky, a hand basin

I mean sitting for an hour wondering if the boat you are "booked" on will ever indeed show up and then spending the journey wondering if you will infact make it again to dry land. I thought about how nice it has been in so many destinations to be able to sit on a bit of quiet beach and have a drink brought to you for a few pounds and how amusing it is to watch the way of the locals as they splash around in the sea fully clothed, like 3 year olds.

My nostalgia didn't last long...

On arriving back on the bigger island of Lombok we were accosted by more horse and cart drivers telling us the bus stop was too far to walk "very far, you take horse cart" no thanks. Annoyed that our ticket which supposedly offered a boat then a connecting bus wasn't quite what it had been sold as we trudged along the dusty road in the heat, our bags on our backs and fronts! We couldn't see a bus stop but found ourselves drawn into a wee cafe, which it turned out was the "bus stop" we were looking for.

We told the guy who we were and where we were going and we were told to wait. We waited and waited and waited. Finally when the last mini bus load of people was about to go we asked him when our bus would be. In some mixture of frustration and disbelief he shook his head, pulled his hands over his face and approached the loaded up and ready to go van...a short discussion later and the driver was up on top undoing the strings holding down all the luggage. We passed our luggage up then went to get in only to find there was just one seat left. Now, this has happened so many times I don't care to even try to count, but at this stage we were just so ridiculously fed up with being treated like crap, being over charged for a service that we usually didn't even get in the end anyway. We argued. "two people, one seat, no good" we said. We refused to get in. They told us we had no choice. We asked for a refund and he said we'd have to travel back to the island which we had just come from to get it from there. We refused. We reached a stalemate and he began to have our bags unloaded. We got in. Grumpy, to put it mildly, and I squeezed between who strangers who also lost their fair share of seating space.

We got dropped off in Mataram where we would stay the night before flying the next day. Here our frustration melted again and we met lovely shyly smiling locals who looked bemused at our presence in their rather unremarkable town. We had a coffee in McDonalds for lack of other options and had a right good laugh at the groups of Australian P&O cruise passengers who had been brought into port and had obviously made a beeline for a big Mac meal each. Seriously, you have what like two hours in a place and you go to McDonalds?! For a meal between meals?!!

The icing on the cake however has to be the actual flight out. We were flying "Lion Air". Think of rusty baked bean can with paper wings. It was worse than what you just imagined. I have seriously never been on a more disgusting airplane and I mean I've flown Ryanair and easy jet!

Lion Air beats them hands down...as we sat on the runway waiting to take off I poked around and found a prayer card suggesting the passengers pray for the pilot to have the ability to do his job safely and that we would reach our planned destination. As John has written in the last blog, we would have laughed if we weren't so flippin nervous!

We're outta here!