The first night Harry and I found a hostel called The Little Red Dot, it was a cosy place, often for budget travellers which is perfect as this is where you find all the like minded travellers. It gave free breakfast, which was unlimited bread and spreads (I must of had about 8 slices each morning) and the beds were comfortable. Better still, after an hour of being there we found bed bugs, and so to keep us happy and I presume preventing us telling other guests, our beds were upgraded to private pods.

For travel we bought the Singapore Tourist Pass for 3 days, which is by far the cheapest way tot travel. It cost 30 Singapore dollars which included rental of the card, 10 dollars, and you get this back when you return the card. So in total 20 SGD for 3 days of unlimited public transport, incredible deal.

We met Josh in Singapore quite early from our arrival, as he was there to visit his rich friends, and straight away we hit the common tourist areas of the Country/City. First, the three of us visited The Shoppes nearby Marina Bay Sands. The mall has a river flowing through the centre and is surrounded by luxury brands and extremely overpriced clothes.

After visiting a few shops imagining we were potential customers we hit the streets for some amazing views.

The City is a hotspot for advertising modern technology which was seem indefinitely everyday we walked this area. It was often difficult to get close enough to see what was being demonstrated, but the first day we saw a robotic pavement litter picker/cleaner. The demonstrations often caused pathways to be blocked off as it was crowded by cameras presumably shooting advertisements.

The Red Dot Design Museum gave Josh and I an introduction to the future, and it literally blew our minds. The technology in this place was crazy. It showed three-dimensional prints of polynomial functions, the future of bi-wheeled transport, clothing designs for the next generation integrating nature and providing almost superhuman capabilities, high definition foetal scans and so many crazy inventions.

We also visited the Hawker centre, and after the first time eating there I insisted we went there everyday for lunch! The Hawker centre is known for gathering chefs who have dedicated their lives to perfecting a certain speciality dish. There is food from all over the world and, due to it’s popularity, the food is ridiculously under-priced for the quality. I can’t even remember everything I tried but one lunch I tasted almost every part of a pig including mulitple internal organs, spine meant and even the trotter!

One of the best places we visited was Gardens By The Bay. There was a large building dedicated to exhibiting a variety of plant species. The walk was fascinating, we spent a fair few hours walking around.

I feel we also times the trip well. First, we walked around this building from around mid afternoon, and just before it was getting dark headed to the Supertrees, which is probably the main attraction. It was best to visit these trees as it was getting dark as there were two light shows, the first about 1930 and another around 2130. We watched the first from the floor, below the trees, and timed the second so that we were on the sky walk during the light show. And, if you’re visiting Gardens By The Bay, I would recommend trying to do the same. However, even with a skywalk entrance ticket you need to queue again once inside to receive a time slot from the skywalk. About 2045 is perfect as the queue was long and it took some time to actually get onto the skywalk platform.

Despite having the Singapore Tourist Pass (STP), the City is still huge. So what the three of us did was use Grab’s eScooters. These were electric scooters dotted around the city and aren’t expensive to use (and also really fun).

Near the end of our Singapore travels we visited the Bukit Timah nature reserve. This is great as it’s free to enter, but if you can plan it so that there’s an opera event at the Singapore Lyric Opera, I would suggest doing so. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to plan it in advanced, but we visited the park almost an hour after a show finished and it looks like such an amazing place to be able to watch a performance.

A memorable night in Singapore was the night my STP ran out. I had planned to stay at a campsite in East Coast Park, after successfully staying in the West Coast Park the previous night. Once I got off the bus I walked for about 45 minutes in the direction of the park. Or so I thought. I had walked completely the opposite direction, meaning the walk back was now an hour and a half, and with a 12kg backpack I really couldn’t be bothered. Due to my annoyance I decided to just keep walking to try and find a couple trees to place my hammock between. At this point it was 2300, and my STP would run out in 1 hour as it was now the third day of visiting Singapore. With no luck I’d walked for almost an hour unable to find a decent spot, so now at 2355 I was running out of time, and so thought, f*ck it, i’ll get on a random bus. This didn’t quite work out as the moment I got on the bus, 2355, it changed it’s direction and began to head further in the wrong direction.

And at gone midnight, the bus stopped at the bus terminal and demanded all the passengers to get off. I was stuck at a bus terminal with no money, no STP and no where to sleep. I walked to the MRT (Singapore’s train station thing) and was able to sneak behind a couple through the security gate as I pretended to scan my ticket. Annoyingly, the train I had hoped to get had stopped running, and the one train still to come was once again heading in the wrong direction. But as I couldn’t leave without a valid ticket, I had no choice but to get on it as I needed to follow someone back out of the security gate. At the train’s final stop I get off and use the same trick to get through security. The people of Singapore are very friendly, but the few people left on the train were unable to give me a bed/couch to sleep on, however one guy walked me to a 24 hour McDonalds. At McDonalds I sat for about 30 minutes before asking the manager if he wanted me to work, I was desperately bored. He was confused and said no. The trains didn’t run again until 5am, I told him my situation and he said I could sleep in the McDonalds. He then asked if I’d eaten and I said I hadn’t but that I hadn’t any money, and a couple minutes later he handed me a tray of food and told me to make myself comfortable and that I could stay for as long as I needed. The night ended well thanks to this friendly McDonalds manager.

I ate the meal and fell asleep at the table for a few hours before sneaking back onto the MRT to meet back up with Harry so that we could get our flight to Kuala Lumpur.