Francesca and Henk-Jan's Backpacking Trip!

Henk and I flew to Singapore on the 21st of October with a bit of hesitation – we weren’t too comfortable leaving Perth when there were still a few things (like the Pinnacles) to do there that we hadn’t really planned to do.

However, when we arrived in Singapore, the two of us were immediately excited! The flight was pretty long (about 4 hours) but they served us some chicken and handed us some extra packets of cheese and crackers, so we survived. Henk and I watched a couple movies on the plane (I watched ‘The Young Victoria’ along with some boxing movie with Channing Tatum… in my opinion, the first is much better than expected, and the second was pretty generic.) and the flight went smoothly. We checked our e-mail quickly in the airport before heading towards customs. Henk had been pretty worried that we were going to have a difficult time getting through since we did not possess a flight out of Singapore, but we weren’t asked any questions and grabbed a taxi out of there just fine!

The first thing I noticed about Singapore (besides the intense blast of humidity upon leaving the airport AC!) was how clean it was! As we drove through the city, I pointed out all the rows of colorful flowers to Henk. Having lived in New York, you become used to big cities having bags of smelly trash all over the place – but surprisingly it was near spotless on our drive into the city! Back in Wellington, New Zealand, I had picked up a brochure for a hostel in Singapore called ‘The Hive.’

The rooms looked pretty decent and the prices alright, so we had booked online before arriving in Singapore. However, when we arrived we learned there were no doubles available, only a deluxe twin room. I decided to take a look at the room before we booked in, and the room looked pretty good despite the annoyance of pushing the beds together. The room itself was hot and sticky – but with one click of the remote, cold air blasted in from the AC, and I determined it livable.

It was starting to get late by the time we got to the hostel – our flight hadn’t been until 11:00 am or so and between the long flight and customs it was almost evening. Although Henk and I were both eager to look around this new city, I wasn’t feeling too well and decided to lay down for a little bit. Henk walked the few blocks in front of the hostel to see what was nearby (like the 7-11 on the corner) and picked up some brochures from reception.



The next morning, we decided to start our exploration of Singapore by simply walking around Little India, the closest area to ‘The Hive.’ Immediately as we were walking, we saw Hindu temples and decorations for Deepavali all around. It seems like Little India had just gotten done with celebrating the Festival of Lights! Our first discovery about Singapore was the abundance of malls they had. It did make sense, in the sweltering heat, what better to do than go to the mall and walk around through stores with AC? There was a 24 hour mall called the ‘Mustafa Center’ we walked through, along with a bunch of others such as Mecca Mall. There were too many of them to try and keep track of names!





We did however spend longer in the City Square Mall, trying some of the local cuisine and marveling how cheap meals were in Singapore compared to Australia. I even had us go into the grocery store to check out the price comparison! Anyways, our first experience of Singapore food was two meals: the famously fattening ‘Char Kway Teow’ (noodles and chicken in a broth made mostly of animal fat) and ‘Laksa’ (chicken and coconut noodle soup with egg.) As Henk went to grab us a drink (even a fruit smoothie is only about 70 cents to 1 USD here) I used the chopsticks to stab at one of the dishes; the Char Kway Teow. It was actually really good to my surprise, but extremely heavy on the stomach. The other Laksa dish, I knew immediately I wasn’t going to like. It had a very strong smell about it, and I have a pretty weak stomach when it comes to new food. I still ended up trying a bit of it (at Henk’s request) but needless to say, I was right when I predicted I wasn’t going to enjoy the taste. I’ll stick with the Char Kway Teow.

Anyways, after exploring enough malls, we attempted to map out our next path, which at first was going to involve doing a free walking tour. However, I hadn’t looked at the brochure completely, and we later realized that tour was over the week before. Therefore, we decided to walk down to Kampong Glam (the Muslim area of the city,) the closest area to our hostel and Little India. We walked around outside of the Sultan Mosque, and then crossed over to explore the outside of the Malay Heritage Center. We knew it was already closed, but we had already planned to come back another day.





Then it was time for our 40-minute walk back to the hostel… doesn’t sound too bad, right? Even though it was almost 8:00 pm at that point, it was still gross, sticky, and humid! Henk and I had to stop and run into a couple of malls while walking back to escape the heat for a moment, but we made it. Since we had eaten pretty late that day, we went into the 7-11 on the corner to grab some hot chicken and pork buns.

Our first overall impression of Singapore: humid, sticky, but awesome! Just like the buns! :P

Francesca