We took our car to the airport in Brisbane before our flight, to the realisation we were going back to being backpackers again. We didn't know which airline we were flying with, but found out it would be Qantas, whom we haven't flown with on the trip yet. The flight was to last 8 hours. When we got on the plane, we had individual entertainment screens, which was a bit like when we flew with Emirates. We also got a window seat, something we haven't had in a while. I caught up on a lot of blogs, while John watched a few films.

We got to Singapore around 4pm local time, which is 3 hours behind Brisbane and 8 hours ahead of home. We have a hostel booked in the Bugis MRT region and i'm so looking forward to finally be able to stretch out on a bed instead of being cramped up in the car. Singapore airport is somewhere you could spend a day in itself, it has a rooftop pool, cinemas, spas, massages, gaming room, gardens and even houses a butterfly collection. We didn't stay too long to check it out as we were tired and wanted to head straight to the hostel. We took the train to the Bugis MRT station and walked to our hostel in the heat. Our hostel is in the little India area of town. Hostels are quite expensive here, so we just found one of the cheapest private rooms we could. When we checked into the room, I wasn't too impressed, it was small, had no window and wasn't too clean. On the plus side, it did have air con in the room. The bathroom was in need of redecorating, and had loads of big black hairs down the plug hole. I'm glad we're only here for 2 nights.

We got ourselves ready and went for a wander about to try and find something to eat. There were plenty of restaurants and cafés right near where we were staying, which was handy. We ended up eating in a Turkish cafe, which sold good food. We were really tired, so couldn't enjoy it as much as we would have liked to. It's more expensive than I thought it would be, but we enjoyed the food all the same. After the meal we went back to the hostel to sleep in a bed for the first time in 2 weeks!

Well I had a good nights sleep until around 6am, when I heard people singing. It was coming from the mosque nearby us, great. After that, we didn't really get back to sleep as there was now music coming from the hostel. So much for having a lay in! We've only got today to explore the city, so we wanted to do some shopping and see the sights. First, we went to SIM Lim
Square, it's a whole shopping centre dedicated to electrical goods. We are looking for a cheap laptop to replace the one John had stolen. We had lunch in the food court downstairs, which was a much more reasonable price of $3.50 dollars each, about £1.50 per person.

After lunch we left the SIM Lim place as our mind was boggled with so much choice of laptops about! We headed out to do some sightseeing. We walked towards the Marina as we wanted to see the Singapore Flyer, which is the wheel like the London Eye. We got there and saw the tall building which the top of was shaped like a ship. The Singapore I thought was just a city, but it's actually a city by the sea. I just thought it was high rise buildings and skyscrapers. It's much more than that, there is a lovely marina, with plenty of shopping centres, there is a garden made of fake tall trees that light up in the dark and watching all the lights of the city switch on is pretty cool too. We loved trying out the new camera today, it's got panoramas and loads of settings to play around with.

We sat on some sun loungers by the marina watching the world go by until it got dark. After that we walked around the whole marina where we saw a fantastic lazer light display from the ship building. They have the show on around 8pm every night and it's amazing to see all these lazers and lights flashing from the building, shining upon the water and the other cool shaped building like a flower. The new camera was great at capturing low light shots, whereas, the old one wouldn't have been so good at this. We kept walking around the whole place taking pictures from different view points. The Singapore Flyer was also lit up really well at night. I loved the light shows around the city, I think for me, Singapore steals the show for a city at night. There is so much to see and do around here to keep you entertained. We walked to get dinner at the marina and found an Asian cuisine place that looked busy, so we had some authentic food in there. I ordered some snack like toast, but it came as cubes, and it was sweet. I really liked it, but it wasn't what I should have had for dinner. John ordered some noodle dish which was really spicy. We walked back towards our hostel and saw more light shows from the building like a ship, which had another laser show. I could easily come back to Singapore another time when I have more money to spend here! As for a backpacker, it's an expensive city to visit.