After my big day yesterday (and complete lack of sleep due to an aching heel), I didn't wake until about 9am, once both Amy and Owen had left for work. I put a load of washing on, had some of the cafe style toast with vegemite, and surfed the web for a while.

By about 10:30 I was ready to go, and MRTed it out to the HarbourFront, to catch a cable car. The cable car goes across to a mountain one way, and then to Sentosa Island in the other (where Universal Studios is). After a five minute stop on the mountain, I then crossed back to Sentosa Island and went for a walk across the island. It's like a huge 'attraction-world' - they'd created a huge Merlion replica; had numerous beaches; ziplines; biking etc. After trekking half the island I caught a monorail to the Universal Studios stop where I was given a freebie. It looked like a casino chip, however it turned out to be a tin of peppermints! An lunch of Toast Box (kaya French toast) followed, and then I decided to try to get tickets to the gymnastics at the Youth Olympic Games.

It took about 45 minutes, switching lines 3 times, to get out to the gymnastics venue, along with a walk in the scorching heat. When I arrived, I was told that the event was sold out but I was welcome to join the queue (in the sun!) for standby tickets. Um, no thanks, wasn't that interested. I was quite happy to return to Amy and Owens and spend the afternoon playing on the web, working out my travel plans for the next few days.

I had arranged to meet Amy and Owen at 6pm at the Bugis MRT. As it was my last night in Singapore, they were taking me to a highly recommended Mexican restaurant (I LOVE Mexican food). The restaurant was empty when we entered, although soon filled up. Rather than order my traditional vegetarian burrito, I went for a 'brandy snap-esque' potato pancake with frijoles and rice on the side, and we shared 'burnt' cheese with burritos as a starter. The food was absolutely beautiful! Apparently the cook was from Mexico, any everything was made from scratch. Everything was very light, as opposed to greasy and Westernised, with tantalising flavours.

Post dinner we went for a walk through Bugis, which is the Arab district of Singapore. There were markets, lots of offerings and incense burning for the 'Hungry Ghosts', and I managed to fit in an ice-cream sandwich. This is literally ice-cream in bread, although the bread is not quite the same as the bread we know, it's coloured and sugary. I remember they had a challenge on the Amazing Race to sell 25 ice-cream sandwiches, and it's no surprise that they were snapped up very quickly, especially at only $1 each!

Wednesday morning I had to say good-bye to Amy and Owen. I loved Singapore and could have stayed there for a lot longer, but there's more of Asia out there for me to see! I gave them a box of Cookie Museum cookies as a thank-you.

I taxi-ed it out to the Lavender Street Bus Terminal and unfortunately missed the bus to Melaka by about 2 minutes, so had to wait almost and hour and a half for the next one. The ride was fine, with the bus half empty, and we pulled into Melaka at about 3:45. Into a taxi to get to the guesthouse - at this stage I was absolutely starving as I'd had breakfast at 7am and nothing since! Of course, since I was starving, the taxi driver got lost. I ended up making him drop me in Jonker Street, the main street in Melaka, and finding it myself. The guesthouse was hidden, with no signs - only a doorbell to ring! When I'd been looking for accommodation in Melaka, all of the hostels looked to be quite dodgy, so I'd decided to pay a little extra for a nice place, single room to boot! The place, Number Twenty Guesthouse, was great. It was a large Dutch mansion with lots of exposed wood, and very minimalist furniture. It had a great book exchange too, where I was able to catch up on UK and Malaysian Cleos!!

After dropping my bags off, the first thing I had to do was eat. Of course, I turned the wrong way to find a restaurant and ended up in an older area, but I was that hungry that I stopped at an Indian hole in the wall and had a dosai (crepe) and iced milo. That was enough to sustain me for a walking tour of Melaka, although the heat didn't help. I don't think I've ever been that hot in my life - it was 5pm and felt like 50 degress with 99% humidity! I walked along the water-front, up a hill to an old fort, and through some picturesque parks before deciding the heat was too much. Once in the air-conditioned comfort of the guesthouse, I didn't want to leave so forfeited dinner for a couple of cold drinks. The heat and the issue with the taxi driver had put me against Melaka as soon as I'd arrived, so I decided I would head to KL first thing in the morning.

A slight sleep in this morning, as 'we' had breakfast scheduled for 10:30 at the local Tiong Bahru hawkers market. There, we met up with several other ex-pats that lived locally, and all enjoyed a good catch-up on the election 'results'. I really enjoyed listening and speaking with the ex-pats, as they had all been living in Singapore for a considerable period and they discussed the politics of the country as opposed to Australia. I also swapped e-mail addresses with one of the guys who said he was interested in coming to India for the Commonwealth Games. Breakfast was a very deep-fried affair, as I sampled more Singaporean delights - a churro-type pastry; curry puff; and egg tart, all washed down wimth iced milo (which I'm becoming addicted to!)

With a stomach full of food, Amy and I farewelled Owen for an afternoon of shopping in Orchard Road. Orchard Road is THE destination for shopping in Singapore, lined with mall after mall. All of the malls try to outdo each other as well, so there are about 3 LVs, 4 Guccis, etc in the one street. Our first stop was to a Youth Olympic Games tent though, as we'd been told at breakfast that the coke machine had been giving out free tickets with each purchase. I tried it but unfortunately didn't receive a ticket - my freebie was a Youth Olympic Games lanyard.

Shopping in Orchard Road (well, Singapore in general) is like having all of the world's best stores in the one place. For example, there's Witchery and Diva from Australia; Marks and Spencer and TopShop from the UK; Takashimaya from Japan. Takashimaya was my favourite - the food court was unbelievable! Amy and I had a late lunch here, with me tucking into 'fried carrot cake' again. I was looking for a pair of sunglasses and a pair of gladiators but didn't have any luck - yep, I went away empty-handed!

We returned to Amy and Owen's for a rest before heading out to Little India. It was a good initiation for the real India in October, with 1000s of Indians lining the streets. We headed into a recommended vegetarian restaurant and sampled idli (like glutinous rice cakes) and dosai (big crepe) with sauces. Both were delicious, at least I know I will

Flight 5: Kuching - Singapore (Tiger Airways)
Country 2: Singapore

Having walked most of Kuching, I decided to have a leisurely morning before my flight to Singapore in the afternoon. After smashing down more vegemite toast and packing my bag, I walked down to the riverfront and took a boat cruise for an hour. Very nice and relaxing and gave a different perspective of the town. With a few hours still remaining before I needed to head to the airport, I called in at a beauty salon to treat my nails to some TLC, before returning to the hostel.

I shared a ride to the airport with my roommate and was very excited to board the flight to Singapore, a country in which I had never stepped outside of the airport. (The airport is so nice though there's almost no need!) I took a taxi to Amy and Owen's place and the friendly taxi driver gave me a great tour of the city on the way, pointing out the Singapore Flyer, Marina Bay Sands, etc. He also gave me an overview of the politics and economics of the country, comparing those in Australia to those in Singapore. The inaugral Youth Olympic Games are currently being held in Singapore and there were many flags and signs out for this - I also saw the village and Olympic torch on my way.

On arrival at Tiong Bahru and reuniting with Amy, Owen, and Carmen, my hosts took me down to the local hawker market to introduce me to Singaporean food. Now, everyone that knows me knows that I'm not much of an eater (American scientists have recently stated that fussy eating is actually a medical, psychological condition, so it's not just me being annoying!) and food is not a big part of my travels. But oh my goodness, Singapore has changed the way I look at food! For dinner, I tried out chee khue (sp?), which was like rice patties topped with radish and chilli; and 'carrot cake' (chai tow kway), which is like an omelette made with radish and spring onion; washed down my iced milo. Delicious!! If this is Singaporean food, bring it on, especially when it's only a couple of dollars.

Singapore is absolutely striking as a country. It almost seems like a perfect nation - perfect tourist attractions everywhere you look; polite people (you don't have to worry about walking after dark here), perfect green grass next to new apartments; great food ..... I was instantly thinking, 'I could really live here!' I couldn't wait for Saturday, as it felt like my first day of being a tourist since I left Australia. Everyone in Borneo was of the cool backpacker type - it was like an unwritten competition who could be the most untouristy and stay at the cheapest place - taking a photo was unheard of! Here, there were heaps of tourist attractions and heaps of tourist, especially with the Youth Olympic Games on.

Before we headed out to Sentosa Island for Universal Studios, we stopped by Tiong Bahru Plaza to have breakfast. NOBODY eats at home here since eating out is so cheap. I am love love loving the breakfasts here, there are so many 'Toast' places! I had french toast with kaya and an iced milo ... the first of many french toast/kaya toasts, and not limited to breakfast!

From there we MRT'ed and monorail'ed it over to Sentosa Island. The tickets were all sold out for the day, but luckily we had pre-purchased ours as we were expecting it to be a busy day. We were one of the first in the park, taking a few souvenir photos before the rides opened. We managed to go on just about every single ride and take in every show, even the ones aimed at the littlies like a carousel! The Battlestar Galactic rollercoasters were closed though, as on a recent test run a seat had fallen off! The second ride of the day was the Jurassic Park water ride and right at the end I was absolutely soaked - it was just like I'd taken a shower in my clothes! Having worn my jelly shoes my feet dried quickly, but the denim shorts I was wearing took forever to dry!

By 4pm we had finished the park, and we monorail'ed back to Vivocity mall, where I had my first experience of shopping centres in Singapore. It was massive! Having been on our feet all day we weren't reallly up for shopping, but the one place I did want to check out was Cold Storage, which is basically a supermarket for ex-pats. After all the vegemite toast in Kuching, I was running low so I picked up a tube. Also within the mall was 'Candy Emporium', which had lollies from all over the world. I was stoked to find Clinkers and Bertie Beetles among the Aussie section.

Back at Amy and Owens we remembered the election results should be in, and switched on the news to see what was happening. As expected, the result was too close to call. I also checked the footy scores and was devastated to find that the Crows lost to Collingwood by less than a goal after winning the whole match - this happens in every single match! We finished the night watching 'Melissa and Joey', the new American tv show featuring Joey Lawrence from Blossom and Melissa Joan Hart from Sabrina, which I loved!!