Singapore

Cyclone Yasi caused my original plans to be cancelled (I hope everyone in QLD is making a speedy recovery) so I found myself in Singapore for a further 7 days on top of the five I had already spent here. Too long.

My first hostel was Tresor Tavern. I've been traveling around S E Asia for 4 months and this was by far the worst hostel I have stayed in. Dirty, smelly, the rooms were damp, and cramped. It was disgusting! Thankfully that was only for one night. The next day I moved to the (its fun to stay at) YMCA.

The (its fun to stay at) YMCA is in an ideal location. The MRT (Dhoby Gaut) is a 2 minute walk away and acts as interchange station for 3 lines. Perfect. Based on Orchard St, it is shoppers haven. They are mostly designer malls which didn't really interest me as a budget traveler.

The one good thing the re-scheduled flight was that I got to spend Chinese New Year in Singapore. This was actually the first time I had celebrated CNY in an Asian country. I was in the mall at Raffles Place (I only go to the malls for the food halls. So much choice!) when I overheard two Caucasians wishing each other a happy Chinese New Year. I was like, wow, this most be a big deal, EVERYONE celebrates it! Or maybe because the population of Singapore is 75% Chinese so EVERYONE gets at least 4 days off work. Huzzah. Good times! The only bad thing for tourist is, well , there's nothing to do if all the shops are closed...

Of course because of the occasion, everything was going down in Chinatown. I thought the MRT peeps did an excellent job controlling the crowd, and running later trains which was good for me for since I was still staying in the (its fun to stay at the) YMCA at this point. I shuffled down Pagoda street with the rest of the crowd, and turned the corner into Smith Street for some food. I have to say I wasn't too overjoyed with the selection of stalls available but the buzz of people made up for it. After this, myself and Pete wondered around for like an hour and a half waiting for the countdown in which time Pete managed to fall into an open drain (what the hell?!) and fractured his wee nose :-( We didn't know this at the time, and ignored the advice of a kind nightshift guard telling us to visit the hospital thinking that he did not want messy blood on his steps rather than because he had experienced several others fall and break something outside his block.

Anyways, with a wee roll of tissue up his nose we wandered back to South Bridge Road where there was a big stage set up, and people singing. I kept trying to speak to people here in Cantonese because the place reminded me of Hong Kong (but with little personality), and because they don't really look like they're from China. Its mostly Mandarin here though, and so I did not know what the woman was singing about. It was raining, and you had to pay to get into the seated area facing the stage so we just hid under the shelter of the mall.

waiting for the CNY countdown

So many different coloured brollies. It was a great sight, and the fireworks were worth the wait for sure. One of the best I'd seen I'd say. They had so many firecrackers on top of this one building I thought it had caught fire at one point. Not joking.

The next day we moved to Chinatown to a hostel called a beary good hostel which was actually really great. They had a lion dance show in the lounge area for CNY! The cymbals and drums were quite loud in such a small place but it was good fun, and they put on a show at their sister hostel a beary nice hostel on Smith Street too.

Offering for the lions

Lion dancing at Beary Nice Hostel

As part of the performance the lions crouch down and I guess open up the satsumas and use the segments to create lucky numbers. I've never seen this done before.

Lucky numbers from the lion

A nice welcome. Then we sat and played the Wii for two days because everything was closed, haha. I will write about the food in Singapore in a seperate blog because there's so much to say.

Happy Lunar New Year everyone!!