Singapore in a day

Raffles Hotel

We flew from Borneo to mainland Malaysia after bunking down in the airport for the night.  Once we arrived in Johor Bharu, 1 hr from Singapore, we embarked on the crazy transit adventure to get into Singapore.  We took a shuttle from the airport to the bus station and then jumped on a bus to go to Singapore.  Seeing as it was early in the morning when we flew out, we were starving by the time we reached the bus station and as we were herded towards the bus, touts standing all along the bus station yelling out city names and trying to convince you to take their bus, we  were told the bus was leaving soon!  When we hopped on there was no driver, so I ran into McDonalds - but as I was standing in line, Greg came running in to say that the bus was leaving.  It had actually started reversing when Greg jumped up to get me.  I had already paid for breakie and had no time to wait any longer so I left our breakfasts behind and jumped on the bus.  Sadly no food and out of pocket we headed to the border.  We jumped off the bus, walked through customs in Malaysia, jumped back on our bus, crossed the border then jumped off again and went through Singapore immigration and then jumped on another bus.  As we sat down on this different bus, the driver came back and handed us our McDonalds order!!!  Can you believe it -  3 buses and  2 countries later and we were having our order hand delivered!

We had the day in the hot humid city of Singapore and we explored it as best we could.  We chanced the technology maze of the shopping centres, dined on street cuisine, went to the Raffles hotel and wandered through Chinatown.  We were going to splurg and get a Singapore Sling at the Raffles hotel - we think this is where the sling came to be - but then we discovered that they were $26 each!!!  Even after the rise in costs in Borneo we almost choked and decided  to pass - especially when one person at the bar described it as cough syrup.   The city was fantastic.  It is the cleaniest city, it is illegal to sell gum, you can be fined heavily for chewing gum, eating on buses, dropping a cigarette butt or littering in any way.  The colonial buildings mix with the skyscrapers and Chinatown is an entity all to itself.  With the coming New Year there were flowered trees lining the streets, lights and decorations everywhere.  In the evening we headed to the airport to stay overnight - for the second night in a row.  However, Singapore airport is incredible, it has an actually movie theather inside - so we watched part of a movie, shopping galore, tv areas with big screens and couches, free internet, a butterfly conservatory, a coy pond, and reclinging lounge chairs to snooze in.  Not to mention the gym, pool and hotels that you can use for specific time periods.  So we stayed up late and raced around the ariport most of the night.