Singapore

Singapore is the most expensive city in the Southeast Asia circuit. Because of this, we only booked one night at the Mittra Backpackers Hostel. We stayed in a 6 bed mixed dorm for $15 a bed. The staff was incredibly helpful and friendly. The first night we went the food courts of Little India which was a short walk from our hostel. The smell of curry and incense filled the streets as we passed by stores with windows full of gold chains and silk fabric. 

The food was spicy and delicious. We tried a few different things and were pleased with the prices. We did not, however, enjoy a beer as they were outrageously expensive, especially in comparison with the prices in the Philippines.

After eating, we continued walking to Little Arabia, which was the adjacent neighborhood. The scene was hip, relaxed and class beyond our budget. There was outdoor hookah, acoustic music and street art. I was still hungry so I got my second prata of the evening to hold me over. Prata is a fried stretchy bread that is often cooked with egg or onion. Alex recalls there being prata with cheese or chocolate but this information is suspect.

The next morning we had an incredible breakfast at our hostel. They served hard boiled eggs, bananas, toast with an option of peanut butter, nutella, jam or butter. We helped ourselves to as much as we could eat as backpackers on a budget in an expensive city would. 

That slowed us down quite a bit. We finally started our only day in Singapore at noon. We checked out the three temples on our block that were on our way to the metro. Once on the train, we noticed a couple of other westerners. They asked us if we were going on the nature walk because they thought we looked crunchy. We were not. However, we decided to follow suit as we are in fact crunchy and love a good nature walk. We emerged from the forest 4 hours and 15 kilometers later after seeing monkeys and lizards.

We grabbed some food at another food stall and then rushed through the Botanical Gardens. We had plans to go to Timbre, a new bar that I read about on a tech blog that is serving its food and drinks with drones. We also wanted to get to the light show at the marina. However, due to our change in plans earlier, we ran out of time. We made it to the Marina to see he skyline and quickly walked through Chinatown. After that we headed back to our hostel to get ready for the first train ride of our trip.

The train left at 11:30 PM and arrived at 7:30 AM. We met three incredibly nice guys from Mauritius on the train who let us borrow Malaysian Ringgets for water and helped us find our hostel. 

Next stop Kuala Lumpur.