Singapore - Back in SE Asia

Leaving Darwin, we took a quick flight to nearby Singapore. We were back in SE Asia for the rest of the year! Singapore is interesting. It is a city and a country, and the country isn't much more than the city. The current population is around 4.5 million, and with such tiny space Singaporians have definitely learned to build up! Singapore is also a unique blend of multipule cultures. We stayed in Chinatown while we were there, but we also ventured to Little India. The area is truly cosmopolitan, and it known as one of the better places to eat in the world due to variety and quality of the cuisines represented. Well, we did our best to try new foods, and quickly learned that the hype was warranted! Taking our knowledge from Thailand, that the cheaper/better food is in the street style stalls, we found many excellent new dishes at extremely low prices.

Like in Melbourne, we weren't able to enjoy the city as much as we could because we were so busy shopping around trying to buy things that we needed for the months ahead. Our missions included buying a new camera, since we no longer had one, I needed new shoes since mine were falling apart and I wanted to start running again to stay in shape, and buying a 60m rope for rappelling off a route in Malaysia that we intended to try (more on this in the Malaysia post that's coming). Like Melbourne, we walked the town up and down and explored the shops, malls, and markets looking for the best deals. In the end, we bought a new Canon IXUS860 (same as the SD870 in the US/Canada I believe), a wide angle point and shoot, a 70m 8mm tagline that was light and much cheaper than any other options, and I found some obscenely light Asics that are perfect for backpacking.

While in Singapore we managed to get off the beaten path some. Our first night we went to a local bar that had an extremely good band that did covers of American music and hung out with Nathalie's friend Vincent who lives there. Another day we visited him at his apartment when he threw a party with coworkers, and we went for a much needed swim in the pool at his apartment complex. There was a month long art festival going on while we were there so we went to see something different, a Cantonese Opera. It was truly a unique experience, the singing style and the music were completely foreign. The music was way too much percussion for my tastes, and we had no idea what was going due to the language barrier, so Nath and I balied at the intermission since it appeared it would probably last over 3 hours. We managed to hit the climbing gym in Singapore twice while we were there to start getting the muscles going for the upcoming route we would be trying in Malaysia. It was small, but had a cool lead wall about 15m tall that was outside. I think that the best hour and a half that we spent in Singapore was at a yoga studio. No one else showed up for the scheduled session, and the instructor just did a private class for Nath and I and did much instruction and correction of our poses. It was an amazing opportunity with the best yoga instructor I've ever had!

After about 4 days, it was time to hop on the bus north and cross the border up into Malaysia!