Stop 1 - Singapore

Apologies in advance for terrible dullness of this post.

I've taken more stuff on a week to the Canaries. My bag was 12.9kg. I was comfortable in the amount of space left in the bag would allow for a little shopping in the first few stops – I want some ¾ length shorts, for example – but on landing in Singapore and stuffing mmy hoodie in I realised this might not be entirely possible. Hmmm. I'd freeze on the flights without it though, and potentially on the Sth American bus trips (people really rack up the aircon on these things).

The flight was pretty uneventful. I bussed to the airport – about 22minutes from O'Connell St to the airport on the Airlink. I picked up a couple of necessary items (moisturiser, protective case for the netbook which was reduced – apparently Peats are taking over the electronics sales area so they're trying to get rid of stock. Given Peats high street pricing, I think this is a bad idea for airport sales figures.

(Aside courtesy of CNN– does the opening bell in Wall St get a big clap every morning? Weird.)

Transfer in Heathrow was fairly straightforward, though it was weird when I went t flight connections and security directed me to go the public route to T3 rather than through connections, as the connections route had 2 security checks instead of 1! Bizarre, since connecting travellers have already been through security. T3 was absolutely jammed, it is not a comfortable space. Food options were limited so picked up a bagel and Heat. I miss Heat already. What I cannot understand about UK airports is the inability to announce your gate until it's almost boarding time, especially since all the gates are miles away from the general holding area.

Anyway, Qantas food is slightly better than Air France, I slept a lot of the time, though did manage to watch some lame movies (good movies require too much concentration).

First night in Singapore was in an airport hotel – it was the only decent place I could afford. Everything else, while technically not being brothels, all seemed to rent rooms by the hour and involve showering over the toilet, If I'd tried that the first night I'd be home already. I've been told there are other options, but since I'm travelling solo it's a little more difficult to find affordable places. It's a perfectly nice hotel and had a lovely bathroom but really it was in the middle of nowhere. As I woke at 5am I mooched out to a local mall in the morning, didn't see anything interesting. I changed to the Stamford this morning and have a lovely room on the 63nd floor. Fabulous view.

I spent a lot of the day wandering around Orchard, picked up a couple of small items. The weather was wet so I came back to the hotel with the intention of going to vivo city, but i sat down for ten minutes and woke up three hours later. Sigh. What a fail. It is a bit torturous being here though – hundreds of shops and I can't buy the shoes and bags and dresses I've seen as they are a bit too fancy for the whole backpacking trip. Getting back into the heat is amazing. Instantly I felt better. Ok, it's pretty humid, but it's HOT. Yay for hot. A bit of sunshine would be nicer than the rain though.

What I have bought is books. I've already read two and am debating ditching them – I might wait until I get to Christchurch though and see if I can find a book swap or at least dump them in a hostel where someone else might read them.

It was a good idea to start off somewhere familiar though. It's not so daunting at the moment. We'll see when I get to NZ.