Thu, 22 Aug 2002

author Tim	location Singapore
posted 17:17 Singapore Time	section Europe2002/Asia/Singapore/Singapore 1 ( all photos )

Little India, Pulau Ubin ( 36 photos )
What a great 24 hours! Without going too far into the history or politics, Singapore is traditionally divided into three main Ethnic Quarters. Our hotels have been near "Chinatown", and yesterday, we went for a walk up to "Little India". A huge eye-opener! We went on a walking tour around the area, and saw a huge variety of Indian traditions - gold jewellery, saris, body art and of course food.
We suprised ourselves by walking into a vegetarian restaurant, and doing the "I'll have one of what they're having" trick. Liz was excited when the menu came, since it was in English. Imagine our deflation when we realised that while the letters were English, what they came together to form was certainly not something we had encountered before. The communication with the waiter was quite amusing - he came back to ask if we wanted one of the things or the other. "You'll have to suprise us", I said.
But, as you can see on the left, it was all worth it - fantastic food, highly recommended. We just have no idea what it was. It was about a 45 minute walk from our hotel - in the heat, we're both sleeping a lot and feel very fit from not yet taking a taxi, even though they seem to make up around 50% of the traffic.
Today we followed on a suggestion by Alan Heighway, and took a trip out to Pulau Ubin. Pulau seems to mean "Island", and Ubin is the particular island. It is quite a long way off the beaten tourist track - in the strait between Singapore and West Malaysia, but governed by Singapore. This involved a walk to Outram Park station (about fifteen minutes), train to Pasir Ris - the end of the line (CityRail could learn a lot by sending a few representatives over to observe the trains here - they are absolutely fantastic), a bus to Changi Village (at the North East corner of the main Singapore Island), then a ferry to Pulau Ubin (actually called a "bumboat"). Yes, it was a very interesting trip.
The island itself seems to survive mainly on tourism - most of the shops hire out bikes, which we of course did. Liz had two out of fifteen gears working, mine managed four. We ate lunch out there before heading back, utilising all the modes of transport that we did before.
This was the first part of the trip where the GPS has worked - in the city the tall buildings obscure the signals, since there are very few satellites directly overhead (being so close to the equator). It was very handy, but we've found our way around most places using low-tech maps and memory.
We feel we've accomplished and seen a lot here already, and still have a few days to go! Might need to spend a little more time in the hotel pool (pictured right, from our room's window), and we're still intending to get to Sentosa - possibly tomorrow.
Until next time...

(customised)