15th Nov 2012

Good night sleep and no one new joined us in the dorm overnight. It was cloudy out and actually felt nice and cool!

Went for a walk to see some of the sights of Singapore. Started from our hostel in Chinatown and from there walked towards Clarke quay on the Singapore river, an area full of bars and restaurants. Looked expensive! Lots if restaurants had tanks full of lobsters and turbot outside to look at.

Walking further down the river to the marina we saw the prestigious Fullerton hotel and the F1 racecourse and stands on the marina edge. From the marina you got a brilliant view of the sky scrapers of Singapore as well as the marina bay sands hotel, which is 3 skyscrapers and what looks like a boat balancing on top of them! In front of this was also the art science museum.

We decided to go and look round the museum as Ben put it 'I like art and you like science so we should'. There was a photography exhibition on which was interesting and the building was beautiful.

In front of the marina bay sands hotel was a mall that we went to cool off in as the weather had changed to sunny and humid!

We had lunch outside though and it was really strange as there were Christmas songs playing and it was baking hot! The mall also had Christmas trees and decorations- does not feel like Christmas is coming at all to us.

We then went to the garden by the bay which had been constructed this year on reclaimed land on the marina, it was lovely and green and had a huge lake, it also had these huge tree like structures made from metal with greenery growing on the sides of them. There were also some fountains which were nice and cooling on hot feet!

We walked past all the big hotels, mandarin oriental and malls- went in to cool down!

Then we went to ruffles- where the Singapore sling was invented! We thought we did not like them, but they were so good we had 2 each! The setting was lovely, ruffles looked like an old colonial building with shutters over the windows.
They gave you peanuts with a warning to keep them covered or the pigeons will attack. Unfortunately a couple across from us did not heed this warning and the pigeons attacked!

There was a scuffle between the pigeons with one domineering pigeon warning the others away when there was a whole peanut on the floor, however it was too big for the pigeons to eat. Ben thought he would do a good deed and step on the peanut so all the pigeons could have a bit. Unfortunately this caused an awful series of events! The pigeons swarmed and started fighting over the crumbs- it was like an all out war, 2 pigeons in particular started pecking each others necks and wings- it was gruesome!

That evening we decided to go to little India for dinner. There were lots of restaurants and jewellery shops (very gold gold!) lining the streets.

After a walk we went to a restaurant famous for its fish head curries! We decided on a mixed tandoori and rice and naan to share.

Just before we were served I jokingly said to Ben- 'oh I can see it, it's got a massive fish head on top' thinking this would scare him- which it did, then the dish arrived and Ben started to dish himself a plate only to find the first thing he picked was a fish head! We weren't sure how to eat it, so we left it and ate the rest!Read more