Day 9- Sunday 9th March- Singapore

The flight continued as any flight does- boringly. The old Indian man next to me kept falling asleep and I had to wake him twice to get to the loo because of my dodgy belly. Food wasn't bad- I had a chicken something or other with a great lemon cake for dessert. The entertainment selection was pretty cool, but you couldn't choose when to start the movies. There was a great SNES emulator built in, though, so I played Mario World, Mario All Stars and F-Zero.
When we finally landed and got off the plane, we were shocked by the quietness of the airport. Sure, it was 7am (two and a half hours ahead of India, so 8 ahead of the UK), but it was completely deserted and we'd been used to the chaos of Delhi. We went through immigration and got another new stamp in our passports. My card was, thankfully, still working, so I withdrew two hundred Singapore dollars, about £70, for the next few days. Outside, a man hailed a cab for us. A mean looking driver got out and took our bags and shoved them in the boot. He had a look at my hostel booking sheet and we hopped in.
'Welcome to Singapore!' he said.
Singapore smelt of noodles, in the same way that India smelt of curry.
'Thanks!' I said 'Do most Singaporeans speak English?' I asked, seeing as I had no idea about the country at all and whether we'd be stuck, language-wise.
'Ah! You are very clever!' He laughed.
The city is lovely and clean, wherever you look. It was very humid, despite the early time of day. The streets were near deserted though and everything looked very American in the design of buildings and signs.
The driver asked again where he was taking us. My directions said to tell the taxi driver to go to 'sims avenue and then turn left at (pronounced) Her Jee Pow's shop. I told him this and he burst out laughing at me and snatched the directions off me. He was quite scary, with a shaved head and menacing, tiny beard. His cab license said his name was Tay, which just reminded me of Tay Zonday, so that made me less scared.
We finally arrived and got out of the cab. I paid the driver and was very pleased when he didn't ask for a tip. We were pointed up some stair which came to a door on the second level of this building. There were simple printouts all over the door, confirming that this was 98SG, our hostel. The printouts said to ring the doorbell, so we did, but got no answer. We kept knocking and ringing and eventually, a youngish Australian guy answered. He was a traveller, too, and he and his travel mates had just flown in from India and were waiting for a room. They pointed out a sign which said 'back at 2, Eric.' We all assumed that Eric was the owner and were a bit annoyed that we'd have to wait till 2, seeing as it was only 8:30am.
After half an hour or so, two more travellers joined us- two welsh girls who were on our flight- I remembered them because I'd seen them in Delhi airport and one was very good looking and the other had the biggest jaw-line ever. We all chatted about India before deciding to do something rather than just hanging around. I was starving, but completely shattered from not sleeping at all on our over-night flight, so we didn't get far. In fact, we circled the block and bought a bottle of water each before walking back to the hostel.
9am and Eric still hadn't emerged, although apparently he was just asleep in his room. The hostel basically looked like an apartment, with a cool little living area and everything. We sat on the sofa and I kept drifting off, but every time I fell asleep, I would twitch and wake up again. Eventually, I got up and went on the internet- it was 11am by now and still no Eric. I sent some emails and tried to upload some photos, but had no joy.
When it got to 12, the aussie guys decided Eric had had a long enough lie-in and knocked on his door. After a while, a stocky little Singaporean man came out looking sleepy. He checked the aussie guys and the welsh girls into a dorm and sorted them out. He then asked me to fill in a form about deposits and that kind of thing. We then had to pay, which wiped out the money I'd withdrawn.
We were shown to our room, which consisted of two bunk beds. When we went in, a guy was already asleep on one of the beds. Eric kicked him out and moved him to another room, to which he complained a lot. There was no window in our room, but there was a decent air-con system. I dumped my stuff and fell asleep nearly straight away.
I awoke at 6pm because Sarah was playing her music quite loud. It was time I got up anyway. Apparently it had rained quite a bit earlier but was ok now. We decided to venture out and explore a bit. We got to the nearby MRT (subway) station before Hannah decided she still felt a bit dodgy and went back to the hostel. Sarah and I bought our tickets and hopped on the train. The tickets are reuseable plastic ones, so you have to pay a deposit on them, which you get back when you return them. We went two stops down the line and got off in a district called Bugis. Immediately, we spotted a Mcdonalds and, upon further exploring, a Topshop. We went through a busy marketplace and found a food court where we bought some very nice chicken and rice. The rest of our exploring was just looking around the market, but not buying anything. Before getting on the MRT to go back, we popped into a 7-Eleven store to buy supplies.
The MRT was quite busy returning to Aljunied (the station next to our hostel). Hannah was up and still feeling rough. We all had showers and then hit the hay at 10:30pm.