June 2008
We arrived in Singapore on a short flight from Bangkok. Singapore is the smallest country in South East Asia at 272 square miles. It’s also one of the few remaining city-states in the world, you can drive across it in less than an hour. In 1963 Singapore merged with Malaya, Sabah and Sarawak to form Malaysia, but in 1965 split away to become an independent republic.
We’re visiting old friends Hilary and Mark, their son Hunter, 2 and a half years old and new baby Austin only 3 months old. It’s great to be spending time with them at their apartment, enjoying home cooked food…a traditional English dinner of roast chicken and roast potatoes…it’s often the simplest things you miss when you’ve been living out of a suitcase for 7 months. Having the use of a washing machine and dryer and to be around a home and domesticity. We didn’t do much the few days we were here as it was more about catching up with our friends for a few days.
I didn’t take any photographs of us at the small restaurant local to Hil and Mark’s place where we ate the best crab dishes I think I’ve ever tasted. I loved it so much I asked the waiter if I could keep my plastic chopsticks as a memory to which he kindly obliged after looking at me oddly. Dave and I had a wander around the city, along the harbourside and in to some of the huge upscale shopping malls full of designer goods. It’s a very strict country with a lot of rules; everywhere is exceptionally clean, chewing gum is banned so the pavements are immaculate. There’s no sign of graffiti or street fashion or teenagers showing off and yelling to one another. It’s a little too perfect, hermetically so…we feel cut off, stifled from the excitement of the countries we recently travelled through. People here seem to keep to themselves, it’s hard to start a random conversation with strangers. The food however is pretty amazing everywhere we eat. We visited Mark’s workplace at the Mini automobile showrooms where he’s the Sales Manager and had a wander with the family around Singapore’s Botanic Gardens.
We fly off to Borneo tomorrow – just for a week and will be based around Kuching in the Sarawak region. Borneo is the third largest island in the world and is located at the centre of Southeast Asia. It’s divided between Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei. Indonesia’s region of Borneo is called “Kalimantan” while Malaysia’s region of Borneo is called East Malaysia or Malaysian Borneo. The independent nation of Brunei occupies the remainder of the island. After exploring the Sarawak region of Borneo we will return to Singapore to take the 6 hour train journey to Kuala Lumpar in Malaysia, spend a few days in the city before heading to one of the islands where Dave can do some more diving and we can see some marine wildlife.
The Travel Diarist 