Right now I’m sitting in the budget terminal of Singapore’s airport, waiting two and a half hours for my flight to Kuala Lumpur. I’ll be there until Monday, when I head across to Malaysian Borneo, and more specifically to Kuching, the capital of the state of Sarawak.
I did meet up with my friend the other night, and we feasted on black pepper crab and prawns in the chilli crab sauce (cheers Tim!). We just made the last train on the MRT… if you were at Clarke Quay MRT station on Tuesday night, we were the two whiteys taking four or five steps at a time and running madly through the station. Sorry.
The walking tour of Little India was interesting. The group was smaller, which was good – but bad because the other four people on the tour were all older, camera happy women. I tried to disassociate myself from them when all four were blazing away with their cameras – that kind of thing isn’t for me, so I don’t have many photos from the last day or so.
Little India is a very interesting place. As the name suggests, it’s predominantly Indian in population and services, although there is, as always in Singapore, a large Chinese population. The streets are narrow and crowded, the smell of spices and vegetables and goods emanate from the shop fronts, it’s noisy and chaotic, dirty by Singapore standards, but fascinating. The tour took us from markets to spice shops, temples to shrines, down the back streets to an Indian confectioner, and a textile shop sponsored by the Indian government that sells goods made in India by people who wouldn’t otherwise be employed. There was nice stuff to buy everywhere, but maybe when I’m back here in four months time…
I met a couple of English guys (G’day Ben and John) on the roof of the hostel when I was doing some work, and we ended up hanging out for a while. Our crowd of three turned in to five, a Qantas 747 pilot and a Swiss guy joined us for a few beers and an awesome curry in Little India.
Anyway… I need to wait for the check in counter to open, and I need to get some form of breakfast (at 1pm – slacker), and I need to find a way to insulate myself from the annoying Australian and English kids who seem to have picked the row of chairs I’m sitting on to climb all over.
See you in Kuala Lumpur!
