12th March 2010
The hotel that we’re staying at does provide breakfast, but since it’s very much a cereal and toast meal we’ve been missing our daily fruit fix. That changed this morning as we’ve discovered a fruit stall at our local food mall where we can get a large plate of mixed fruit so we can start the day right.
After our fruity breakfast we had to go back to the Vietnamese embassy to collect our visas. This time we took the bus all the way there as we knew where we needed to go. We were a bit early so had a quick coffee in a local shop near the embassy. We were only in the embassy literally 5 minutes before emerging with our approved visas for a month in Vietnam.
Our next job was to book our onward travel from Singapore to our next destination which is a small town on the west coast of peninsular Malaysia called Melaka. The MRT and a short walk got us to the Golden Mile Complex, another shopping centre where all the coach companies going to Malaysia are located. This was a totally different sort of shopping centre to the light, bright affairs in the city. Quite dark and dingy with a funny smell on the air. However, we bought the bus tickets without any difficulty although for our onward travel to Kuala Lumpur we need to buy the tickets in Melaka.
With the day’s jobs out of the way we crossed the street from the Golden Mile Complex to another hawker centre for some food. After some delicious savoury and sweet pastries Ed decided to try cane sugar juice - not nice, definately an acquired taste but at least we tried it.
It was then onto bustling Chinatown, crammed with small shops and eateries. We wandered around the narrow streets lined with market stalls and tailor shops, selling everything and anything. We bought two umbrellas as it was starting to rain and had our first go at bartering. Not too successful I’m afraid, we managed to get a grand sum of 50 cents off the two brollies or 25p. But we have to start somewhere!
This evening we returned to the street where we’d had satay a couple of nights ago. Now we knew what the score was we were keen to try it for ourselves. We had some delicious satay along with some noodles and vegetables and the compulsory jug of Tiger Beer.
After our lovely meal we walked down to the Merlion to get some more photographs of Singapore at night. When we got to the Esplanade there was a jazz band playing as part of the Mosaic Music Festival which is currently going on in the city. It was a free concert so we sat and listened for a while.
We then made our way to the Suntec City complex to see the Fountain of Wealth. This is the world’s largest fountain and each day there are a number of shows with lasers, lights and music.
However, on our way to the fountain we got sidetracked again by the IT Show that was on at the Suntec Convention Centre. Just typical that there is a 4 day 6 level IT show going on while we are in Singapore. Luckily, it had just closed, so Ed’s gadget gazing was limited to looking at the Canon camera stall. It was absolutely packed with people trying to leave the area.
We finally arrived at the fountain and on first glance were a little disapointed. It looked like a fire hydrant had been set off. The lights were pretty though so we took some photos, then as we were leaving we spotted a poster and realised we’d missed the sound and light show for tonight and would have to come back another time.
We walked back to the hotel as the MRT station was still rammed with people leaving the IT Show and it looked too much like hard work to fight our way through.