Feeling Hot Hot Hot

3 June: Singapore 5:30am local time

Backpackers foyer, 5:30am

Katriel and I are sitting in the foyer of the backpackers - even despite a late arrival into Singapore last night she’s not able to stay asleep at 9.30am NZ time, more’s the pity!  In fact she’s been awake for a while, and her regular whispers indicate that her mind is firing on all cylinders about our trip.  “Mum, what time are we going to Cambodia?”. “Mum what is London like?”  “Mum when can we start buying toys?”  :) 

We’ve just been disturbed by a group of fellow backpackers who have just returned from presumably a hard night of living it up!  Wow I vaguely recall a day I could have stayed up until 5.30!

AWESOME!!!

Airbus A380 rules!

Bags packed and weighed and repacked and reweighed.!

The Qantas flights were brilliant.  Those little individual entertainment units were better than we could have imagined – movies, music, games, flight information, tailcam etc all within the press of a button. We even found a seat to seat text messaging function so spent far far longer texting each other messages than it would have taken to lean over and say, but it was way more fun!  On top of that there was more food and snacks than we could keep up with.  But sleep was admittedly pretty hard to come by.  We had a brief stopover in Sydney, long enough to spend the Aussie coins we’d had at home and that was about it.  Even though we stayed in transit we had to have our cabin luggage rescreened, spelling the end for the grossly overpriced water we’d bought at the airport in Christchurch and not finished.

Bleary-eyed and grumpy as all out on arrival at Singapore

Singapore is super hot, and so humid you almost need to swim.  We arrived last night about 10:30pm and when we stepped out of the air-conditioned airport the children thought there were some great big heaters pointing down on us under the verandah!  Singapore airport is massive, big travelators eating up the impossibly long distance from the arrival gate to customs.  There were people everywhere we looked but no queues and no crowds, not even at baggage claim, the other 500-odd passengers that got off the plane with us mysteriously evaporated. In fact several times we wondered if we were going the right way.

Taxi ride to the backpackers was a bit exciting, rather an adventure thrill ride on its own.  Traffic at almost midnight rivals rush hour traffic in Christchurch (where are they all going?) so we resolved to leave extra time to get back there during the day.

Our cosy home for 12 hours

Mitraa Backpackers is clean and comfortable. We have our own dorm – 3 pairs of bunks fitted into a space that would be uncomfortably close if the other 5 occupants were strangers.  The room is airconditioned but our numerous adjustments in the night indicate that it’s difficult to achieve a comfortable balance between hot and cold.

Singaporeans are the masters of using space – in every direction are multi-storied buildings, no bungalows in these parts!  Every inch of space is used for something.  We won’t have long to explore today as we have to return to the airport to go to Cambodia but we will at least have the opportunity to see Singapore in daylight.  Evidently there is a mall just down the road, open 24 hours, air conditioned, selling everything you can think of and cheap – what more could a bunch of tourists from wintry Christchurch ask for! 

LT

Here’s Katriel: hi  every  one  we  got  to  the  place  we  wanted  to  go  on  a  taxcy.