Day Four - Singapore to Sydney

I would like to say I as rudely awoken by the Mosque at 6.00am this morning, however, I did not have a good nights sleep. The hotel, for some strange reason, turned into Crewe station around 3.00am and stay pretty much like that throughout the night.  By the time the Islamic alarm clock went off (and I must say, I do kind of like it, it makes a change from Yellow by Coldplay which normally wakes me up) I at least thought thank goodness at least it is 6.00am.

Today is Andy's birthday!  Gave him his card and we both got up and washed, packed etc.  My hair really is not coping well with the humidity.  I am going to get on that plane later looking like the mad woman Borneo! All packed and

ready to vacate the room we went in search of food.  One, of many things, I have noticed in Singapore is they do not really do breakfast.  Needless to say, after wandering around Little India for a while, dragging hand luggage bag with me, we couldn't find anywhere to actually get a cup of coffee and anything that resembled what I would call a breakfast.  In the end we did what the locals, the locals as in Indian locals, do.  We had a curry.  We had some pancake things with some dahl.  I was lovely.  I did order a coffee but couldn't drink it as it had milk and sugar in it!  The whole lot, for two cost $7 which is around $3.50!  We followed it up by going to an Australian coffee house so that I could have a coffee. By now, there was really not much else to do.  It transpires that there are only 6.5 million people in Singapore.  When you compare this with 8.5 million in London you can see why we thought it was quiet.  To me Singapore is the Waitrose of the world.  Thailand is like a very good Tesco but trying to be a Sainsbury's.  Cambodia is really a Aldi with Loas, I suspect, being more like a Lidl.  It is so clean.  I just want to see a pile pf puke or a crisp

packet somewhere, but I know I am going to be disappointed.  They are very hot on punishment here.  We have seen subliminal messages on the tube that state you are subject to being caned for certain offences.  I have just looked at the following page:  https://www.sps.gov.sg/docs/default-source/stats-release/sps-annual-stats-release-for-2019_713kb.pdf.  that gives you details of the number of people imprisoned in Singapore.  Last year four people were executed.  They do not mess around.

We caught the tube to the airport. The underground trains here do not have a driver and I was able to stand at the front of the train as if I was driving it. I made a little video of it.  It really was weird and what was even stranger was the fact that even the underground was spotlessly clean.  No newspapers. No litter. No dust. Nothing!  We took their version of the Oyster card back and got our $10 refund.  We had spent $20 on travel which is around £11.  How cool is that for all our travelling.  I really have not spent a lot of money here and have found it reasonable.  Like everywhere else though, if you eat at top restaurants every night or in hotels, of course you are going to spend more.  As you know I chose not to do this.

Arriving at the airport we were able to check in our luggage and then had a wander around.  The airport, like the rest of Singapore was quiet and clean.  In fact, Terminal 3 was empty.  People were waiting to serve passengers in

restaurants and shops, but there was not a soul around. It really was quite a strange feeling.  Eventually, we went for a cuppa and I treated Andy to Afternoon Tea for his birthday (all very civilised) and we sat and waited for our flight. Finally, time to board and we waited, and we waited, and we waited then, just what you never want to hear.  There is a problem with one of the seats in the cockpit and we are going to disembark all the passengers, give you $20 (approx £10) and hopefully, hopefully, we will be off in three hours.  Now the problem with all this is many fold. Firstly, it turns into a scrum with people getting off; secondly you are really limited with choices of food left at an airport at 10.00pm at night and thirdly and most importantly, what is there for me to eat?!?!?  I had to, reluctantly, revert back to vegetarian and had a some slices of luck warm pizza which has resulted in me wanting some chewing gum, which is, you guessed it, a big no no in Singapore.  You are not allowed to chew it and can be fined on the spot.  So here we are, sitting at a table waiting to see if our flight will leave at midnight.  The joys of travelling.

I just started to put together my Ocado order for when I get home and they call the flight; of course they do!  Back on at the same plane I would like to say we were off; of course we were not as people are stupid and we had to wait ages

for people to get back on because they had not paid attention.   We took off and the crew, who I must say were of an age, my kind of age, come round with the dinner.  Now look at me, do I look like a woman who does not eat?  I did not eat this. It was terrible. Soggy pasta with peppers and black beans! I mean, really. I started to watcher Spiderman again (this is the third time of watching it) and soon fell as sleep.  I sleep better on planes than I do at home.  They come round with 'breakfast' which was a vegetarian croissant and coffee and then we were told that there would be a delay when landed as a crew member had become ill and the the biohazard/quarantine team had to come on first to check it out.

Finally, some four hours later we got off the plane, got our cases, cleared customs and went to get a taxi.  Even that was an experience. It was filthy 
and in my opinion, it did not look even road worthy!  Andy is convinced he was driving us round in circles as he was tracking it on his phone.  We had arrived at our AirBnB.  It is fine.  Plenty of space, could do with a proper clean in my opinion, but fine.  We had landed.  We dropped off our bags and went to get some bits from the local deli.  Beautiful food but as I had expected, quite expensive.  Australia is not cheap, I know this from my previous travels.  They had given storms for this afternoon, but nothing has happened yet.  We have both had a shower and are chilling and I suspect that is what we are going to do, just have a quiet night then be ready to go tomorrow.  

As always, with my love x