We caught the 9am bus to Singapore. It involved a border crossing, of-course. However, we noticed that our bus driver was a bit jittery about getting a move on at the Malaysian immigration office. When we exited Singapore immigration, he had driven off without us and about 8 others from our bus!!!After some faffing about, finding out information, and seeking out local currency, one of the drivers of another company let us complete the journey on spare seats in his VIP bus for free!!! He is pictured here with a rubber duck that I gave him as a thank you (it came on top of a cake that I had earlier in the journey).
It was a bit of a shock to the system to come to Singapore - the cost profile of the sabbatical shot up! Hotel prices went up about three-fold, and many other prices went up too!
We stayed at the Robertson Quay Hotel. It is on one of the three quays, and this is the least busy one. We had a nice view of the river and the swimming pool.
In the evening, we met up with Jonathan (a friend that I had met travelling on the Trans-Siberian railway) and his friend Odora (spelling?). They took us on a nice walking tour along the quays and of China Town, and we saw some really interesting modern buildings too, as well as a famous dancing old man - you will have to see the videos!
In China Town, Jonathan helped us to choose some really delicious local dishes, which we gathered and ate from different hawker stalls. He we are all seated with our massive meal! The food included a fantastically delicious peppered crab (the guy I bought it off brought out a live crab to check that I was happy with it!), tasty satays with peanut sauce, Laksa and Taiwanese sausages. The dessert of sweet peanut soup with sticky rice balls was strange!Many thanks to Jonathan and Odura for introducing us to such good tastes!
P.S. How cool is this - Jonathan slept a night in one of the towers of the Great Wall of China!
