Singapore

Tuesday 18/11

Because it was 18th of November I put Latvia's flag ribbon around my arm, that's the least I could do.

Today was going to be the day when we explore Singapore. As we were far from the centre we had to take the public transport to get there. Sharon, our host, was super helpful and gave Pedro and me two spare transportation cards. We just needed to top them up when possible.
We left the place with Jose and David, and we spent the entire day with the two of them. I had met Jose when he was in Riga, and I knew for a fact that he loves to walk about a lot! So I mentally tried to  prepare myself for some walking. We took the bus to the metro, and then the metro to the other metro line, and then finally we got to Little India. Singapore is said to have one of the best public transportation, maybe that is so (but as they don't allow bicycles on board, I hesitate to agree). We walked and walked, took some pictures (while Jose took a lot of pictures). We got to see a lot as we walked pretty much the entire day. The highlight, of course, was Marina Bay Sands. I recall that I wanted to sit a lot as my legs were not used to so much walking. The city is, in fact, very lovely and organized. And compared to Phnom Penh where we had just spent the entire weekend, the city seemed to be like from another time. Also, the cost of everything was much higher, which for us took some time to get used to. As I'm looking at the differences, I'd like to note that most of the population here know English. And the streets are much cleaner than in Phnom Penh where one would actually need boots to pass through some of the trashed streets of the city.
In the evening we met up with our host and another guy, we were all chilling on a bridge in city centre. Apparently that's what youngsters do, because going out to bars and restaurants is much too expensive. So they buy some snacks and drinks in the store and enjoy the nice weather while sitting outside. Later on more and more couchsurfers showed up, I lost track of how many they were, but we were a big company. We left quite early (around 22:00), Sharon had to work the following morning. Portuguese brothers were going to spend the day still in Singapore and later take a night bus to Kuala Lumpur. And as for us, after some doubting whether to stay another day or not, we decided to head for Malaysia the next day. As we were entering the metro station, I realized that I had lost the metro ticket/card. This was silly of me, as the card was not mine, it had about 8 Singapore dollars since we topped them up, and now I needed to buy a new ticket to get back to Sharon's place. 
We finally got back, it was late, and soon we all headed to sleep. 

Flying Into The Future

Monday  17/11

Phnom Penh, it was finally the day to leave the city. Since we had spent a quite a long time there, we were more than willing to head away. We had our flight to Singapore at 15:30 from Phnom Penh's International Airport. As planned, we had hot dogs for breakfast, and Maria joined us even though she was about to leave for work. On Friday we had arranged at one of the bike shops that they would pack our bikes into bike boxes. It was very pricy, $30, but the guys at the bike shop did a good job, wrapped the frame with newspaper, and found boxes that could fit the bicycles. One of the guys then found a tuk tuk driver that agreed to take us to the airport. As expected, we had to bargain about the price, the driver first said 20 dollars(!) but we ended up paying 10.25. Our bike boxes could barely fit in the tuktuk, leaving very little space for us. The ride was quite long, and mostly went along the Russian Federation Street. When we arrived to the airport it was early and the check in for our flight had not even started yet. So we set our things on trolleys and sat down to wait. It was around two when they begun check in. We had purchased luggage space 25kg each, so total of 50, once we had the bikes placed there was still some weight left, so we also checked in my big black pannier, and took Pedro's panniers with us as hand luggage. The security line was quick and we got to our gate fast. Again, it's a small airport, so not too many flights or people around. At the waiting area we seized the time to have a meal, some nice warm chicken sandwiches. Those were also overpriced, just because it was an airport. We got to the plane, and after everyone was aboard the pilots took off into the cloudy sky.
The flight was roughly two hours long. We arrived in Singapore, there was zero problems at the immigration, both of us got stamps that we could stay 90 days in Singapore. We stopped after to assemble our bikes and then it was quite late, but we had to get to the city!
We had found a host in Singapore, Sharon. We were lucky that she was hosting two Portuguese brothers, Jose and David, who happened to be Pedro's Couch Surfing friends. So them two and the host did not mind if we surfed the same couch. The thing was that Sharon lives close to the border to Malaysia, which is pretty far from the airport, so now we had to figure out how to get there. To our surprise, the city is extremely bicycle unfriendly, there is no bikes allowed on the metro or buses, and a regular taxi would not only not fit the bikes, but it would cost a fortune. We were advised to hire a special big taxi that had a fixed rate of 60 Singapore dollars! Very expensive, but it was really to only real option, as cycling would take ages, and there were only highways, and it was dark already. We managed to fit the bikes in the big taxi. The ride was long, about 40 minutes, but the driver took us to the right address, so we knew we wouldn't have to wonder about searching. We soon found the right apartment, and we were glad our host was home and awake. Soon Jose and David arrived, we were charting a bit about our trips, and what to see the following day, but then it was time to sleep.