Prague to Singapore in 97 days

Day 98 - 31/08/2010 - 22:36 - Singapore

We'll we've made it. 97 days later, we've made the whole journey across Eastern Europe and Asia. We had our last day in Penang and then flew from there to Singapore, arriving at 10pm local time last night. What an epic journey and the best part is there still is 7 days left!

Our final day in Penang was OK. We got up early to check out by the stingy time set by tunehotels.com for a 10am check out. We headed to the Botanical Gardens. The bus journey, despite not actually being that far took a whole hour. A complete farce only coupled by the farce that the buses didn't start running until noon and we were there sitting looking like lemons at 11am! Never mind, we got to the gardens by 1pm - after much mad driving by the bus driver (taking wrong turns and being told off by passengers for going down the wrong road. He then dropped us off insisting the gardens were around the corner. As you can imagine, he didn't fill us with hope but the gardens were there!

The gardens were beautiful though and we saw a variety of wildlife and plants. In some places (up in the hills) it felt like we were walking through a jungle - the humidity helped the atmosphere of it too! I was sweating manically! We saw monkeys, big lizards and turtles at the gardens - the monkeys were a particular highlight, some of them had little babies and they weren't shy of humans, allowing me to get quite close to take photos! We left the gardens, not knowing whether we were going to be able to get the bus back - with the madness of the drive there. We walked back to where we were dropped off and literally one minute later one appeared - thankfully! Unsurprisingly, like all journeys in Penang - it took a whole hour to get back!

We got back and walked to the hotel to get our bags, before walking back to the bus station to get a bus to the airport. As we were leaving the hotel we saw Norman again and he walked to the bus station with us and got the same bus (but got off along the way) and we said goodbye once again. I won't give any prizes for how long it took to get to Penang airport - but lets just say it was around the same mark as the other bus journeys we had taken!

Penang on the whole was OK. I liked many things, I disliked others. I liked the multi cultural society of the place and everyone was very friendly. The botanical gardens were also really nice, as were the temple we visited the day before - both were free entry too. I didn't like the poor transport on the island (why did everything take so long?!) and the fact that Penang hill was closed (annoying rather than a particular bad point). It wasn't a bad point, but I didn't appreciate being woken up by morning prayer at 6am from the nearby mosque either, although it was funny. The man clearly couldn't sing and dogs were howling with him! Haha.

We spent most the time at the airport in MacDonald's as they had free wifi there and then we were off - 20 minutes early too - it was totally bizarre but we got in early. The flight was fairly turbulent though which was annoying. Air Asia flights are nice though, their planes are very well maintained and clean which is good when you have a 15 hour flight with them coming up next week! We ended up arriving into Singapore at 21:45 and cleared through immigration without much hassle. As we came through to the baggage reclaim bit I could see through to the arrivals hall through the glass barriers and Ali and Daryl - Laura's aunt and uncle were there waving at us. I had to nudge Laura as she had her eye on the carousel! Our bags were there within seconds, perfect timing and we put them on and headed for the exit where we were greeted by them both.

Until now their hospitality has been fantastic - they've been so kind to us both and have treated us like royalty - we've been spoilt really! We went for beers and chicken satay (a Singapore favourite) as soon as we got there by the water front. They've been only happy to help for everything. Ali today made us a massive fry up for breakfast including M&S bacon and sausages and HP sauce! Delicious! Ali showed us to the metro station which is a short bus ride away and gave us their version of an oyster card with some credit already on it! Very kind. It's a long ride to town on the underground (although it's overground where they live!) but it was worth it! We went on our own and were going to meet up with them both at 6:30pm.

We got off at Orchard Road and walked down the length of it, although we only went into one shopping centre. The view from the top of that was impressive. We went in a couple of shops but didn't buy anything. One particular highlight was a sports shop called Premier football - the only new Premier League shirts they had were the "Big 4" (Man Utd, Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelski) as well as.... you guessed it - Aston Villa! It's not even out in the UK yet, but they had it here - although it didn't have the sponsor on it, which explains the late arrival in the UK!

Anyway, after that we walked through a couple of city parks, a smaller one near the bottom of Orchard road and Fort Canning park which was a very nice park. It's one of the forts the British had to defend Singapore and it's very very tropical - feels like a jungle in some parts yet still holds it's old colonial style - very nice! Ali and Daryl picked us up from here at 6:30 on the dot - efficiency!

This evening we went for Singapore's version of Indian food with Ali, Daryl and a couple of their friends who live out here. After that, the 4 of us went to a micro brewery bar where we had... ALE! Oh my days! It's was beautiful, they brewed their own and I had one called Singapore Pale Ale - very nice! It was however, very expensive, I wouldn't pay for that normally but it was a nice treat! The evening on the whole was very nice!

Like I've said so many times, Ali and Daryl have been wonderful so far in everything they've done - it all of a sudden feels like a very different holiday. I must admit, sitting drinking Tiger's on the river front was very surreal last night - I couldn't quite believe that we were in Singapore, our destination, with Laura's family. Very strange. Very awesome.