Before beginning the Ramble, Alastair and I (Richard) made a 47 hour stopover in Singapore at the start of May 2017 to check out the sites and bites of this island nation.

We left Perth and flew 6 hours up to Changi Airport. After navigating through Immigration, Baggage Retrieval and Quarantine we found the MRT and journeyed towards Chinatown station to find the accommodation for our small side trip.

I got very excited as it just occurred to me we were going to Asia and Asia has pod hotels! 😀

After selling Alastair on the idea we booked a couple of pods at Wink Hostel in Chinatown. Arriving at the pod hotel we found out that they are nothing more than a hostel with beds in a slightly different configuration but the novelty was still there, whenever your card opened the door your bed’s ambient light turned on to greet you 🙂

We had settled into our home for the next two nights so we headed out to grab some lunch in Chinatown. Now I enjoy a bit of adventurous eating so when I saw a dish of Frog and Rice Porridge on the menu I gave it a go, having never eaten either of these items before I was intrigued. My conclusion is that frog is a bit too bony for my liking and you don’t really receive that much meat from it.

Bouncing on from lunch we explored Chinatown and then travelled to the Night Safari.

The Night Safari is quite good. We arrived about 8:30pm and boarded a tram around the main route of the zoo and then took a walk around ourselves. We saw lots of deer, otters, rhinoceroses, elephants and lions. It was a great thrill to see the animals at night but it does mean that you do see the sleepier side of some animals (hello Pangolin).

After a late night of animal spotting we took the next day to explore Marina Bay Sands and do some flower watching at Gardens by the Bay. This garden is something from the future with its towering gardens and two very large conservatories.

Exploring the Flower Dome and Cloud Mountain conservatories allows you to escape the humid Singapore weather and allows you to walk and explore the world of horticulture while classical music plays in the background.

Ticking flower exploration off the list we headed to a Hawker Market and got ourselves some cheap tasty bites.

Bellies full we found the Merlion statue and explored the Asian Civilisations Museum.

With our journey in Singapore drawing to a close we took the MRT to Changi Airport and boarded a plane to our next destination, Phnom Penh in Cambodia!