New Year’s Eve in Singapore

OK, to say hotels are expensive in Singa would be an understatement! So, we ended up in Airbnb. Kind of really… more like a giant hostel/hotel type of place. Not really sure about this concept. But who cares, we are here to party, party, party! Or so we thought… If hotels are expensive, alcohol is extortionate.  Costs more than in Kuala (unless you really hunt for bargains, which we did).  So, instead we walked a lot in unbearable heat and humidity. And had a lot of water. Seems all the local governments are really supporting our decision to drink less.

We were really wondering what this place was like when the first settlers came. That was answered quickly enough – after nine minutes and 11 mosquito bites (yes, Nives) in local park we retreated (read: ran for our lives) to a cool and safe harbour of Starbucks café to lick our wounds (read: scratch our legs). So much so for exploring nature. Back to food. And water.

One thing is for sure thou – Singaporeans know their business with fireworks. New Year’s one was absolutely amazing! Sky was on fire! It was a really great experience, we thought way better than one in Sidney. That three hour wait sitting on the ground in the marina, eating New Years’ dinner (if you are interested, we shared a char kway teow – fried noodles, so exotic) and toasting with water was totally worth it! Well, maybe more in eyes of some of us (yes, guessed right – Nives). But we did go for a beer afterwards. Not as quickly as we hoped thou. Singapore authorities have really weird notion of crowd management: streets were closed off (for pedestrians!!!) and big fences put in place. Gates would open only for a minute or so at the time to let people pass. We thought it was hilarious. For the first hour. Then at around 3am it became really annoying. All the same, locals were happy to wait. Maybe we are not cut out to live in Singapore?

We were not sad to leave Singapore, as the next stop was our favourite dive spot in the world: Palau.

Before we dive into the blue, click here for some city view pictures of Singapore.