It’s always good to have friends in all parts of the world. At least temporarily, I also have this advantage. As two of my fellow students, Jochen and Joachim, currently work for SAP Singapore, I took the chance to visit this city/country from Thursday til Sunday. The cheapest airline to get there seems to be JetStar Asia, a Singapore based low-fare airline. So I paid my 12,000 Rs (240 €) and saved the hotel costs by staying with Jochen. Thanks to Dominik, his landlord, for allowing this!
The only disadvantage was that the flight for Singapore left at 3 am IST, so I did not fetch much sleep that night, only two hours before the flight and a few uncomfortable minutes on the flight itself. And since we arrived at 10:15 am Singaporean time, after a 4 hour flight, I did not get the chance to sleep there… Oh, well! I met up with Jochen at SAP Singapore and we went to lunch together.
Afterwards, Jochen returned to the office, and I went to discover the town. After fetching the latest information at the tourist office, getting a map, and a thank-you mousepad (not comaptibale with the optical mice used at SAP 🙁 ) for fiiling out the feedback form, I did the usual tourist program: Visit the old buildings, some churches, making the boat trip on the river, and getting a drink at the New Asia Bar, in the 70th floor of the Swisshôtel, the highest publicly accessible building on Singapore. A very nice view from there, and during the time of the world cup they have happy hours from 3 pm to 6 pm, and from 12 am to 1 am, with all drings for half the price. They do have a minum age for „gentleman“ of 23 and „ladies“ of 18, but I had no problems getting in there. Okay, it was 3 pm, and I was the first guest of the day, so they probably didn’t bother to check….
Singapore has a truly well-designed public transport system. They have buses there, of course, but it is hard to find out which bus leaves when, because they only publish the average interval between buses. And they have the MRT, the mass rapid transport. It’s a train system which is underground in the city and overground outside. You can purchase a reloadable RFID ticket, whith which you can simply tap in and out at the station gates. You can also use it in the buses, so that you don’t have to pay every time you use a train or bus. The underground platforms are fully enclosed and the doors open only when a train is standing there, so there is no chance to get onto the rails.
As Jochen had to work on Friday, I also spent this day in town, but also got outside a bit to visit the very beautiful Chinese Garden. The adjacent Japanese Garden was closed, unfortunately. Although I wanted to shop while in Singapore, I had to discover that the city is definately not cheaper than Bangalore, and especially technical stuff is even more expensice than in Germany. The only thing really cheaper than anywhere else are memory cards, so I purchased two 1 GB cards for 35 S$ (Singapore Dollars, 2S$ = 1 €) each, about 17€.
In the afternoon, I went to Sentosa island, located just off the coast of Singapore. You can go there by cable car – grab the chance to make the round trip on the mountain there for a great view of the Singapore skyline. On Sentosa, you can get around with the free buses running there. Sentosa features two golf courses, an underwater park, a dolphin lagoon (all of which I did not visit), and, most important, a beach! Watching the sunset from there is very beautiful, and on the way back you can see the lights of Singapore harbour, Asias largest harbour, along with Shanghai.
That evening, we watched Germanys beautiful – well, clear – victory over Argentina (go, Germany, go!) in the Timbré, a bar which you only find when you know where it is. The entry is located in the back road to a small backroad, so we had some trouble to find it. We had a nice time until 3 am (remember, Singapore is another 2.5 h ahead of Bangalore) in a bar with mostly Argentina fans :).
We started Saturday by sleeping until 2 pm :D. Then we left for Bukit Timah, Singapore highest mountain with 160 m above sea level. Jochen is planning a trip up some 4000 m mountain with a lot of stairs, so the goup meets on Saturdays to train on Mt. Faber. And trust me, they got enough stairs on that mountain… So we spent the next 2.5 hours climbing up and down Mt Faber, in very humid 25°C. And with very humid, I mean you sweat simply sitting in the shadow… And by the way, don’t feed the moneys! You’d be in for a 10,000 S$ fine and 6 months of jail! The trip was finished with a common dinner Asian style: You order several dishes and simply share. Jochen and I the watched the movie „Sideways“ before heading off to bed (or in my case, mattress on the ground).
On Sunday, we took part in the Chilly Crab Chase. During the Singapore Food Festival, lasting from 1st June until 1st July, every foreigner in Singapore gets a Singapore Chilly Crab for free! And because the opening took place on Saturday, we also managed to get an additional free sampler. We took the sampler as lunch, and decided to keep the full crab for dinner. While Jochen did some shopping, I took off for the National Gardens of Singapore.
The Gardens are nicely laid out, and the entry is free! It has differently themed areas, for example a rainforest. It also has the National Orchid Gardens, but you have to pay there. Fortunately they accepted my German student ID, so I got in there for only 1 S$ instead of the usual 8 S$. They have a very wide variety of orchids, so I took a lot of pictures for my grandfather, who is a great orchid fan.
Jochen and I took our free Chili Crab at the Palm Beach Restaurant at the One Fullerton, a rather top-flight restaurant. Afterwards, we met up with Kirstin and Michael, two other SAP interns from Bangalore who were in Singapore for the same time as I, for a small concert on the riverbanks and an ice cream cone. A big ice cream cone :). Then I packed my stuff and left back for Bangalore, leaving at 1 am Singapore time and arriving at 3 am Bangalore time, leaving me with less than 3 hours of sleep before work on Monday morning.
Although Singapore is a very nice town, and so much cleaner than Bangalore, I think I saw almost everything there is to see, with the exception of the zoo and the night safari. But you I am happy I went there, especially while it was only a short-distance flight.