Singapore and my first experience of backpacker burnout!

We arrived in Singapore late on Wednesday night after a 4 hour flight. Just flying over it you could see how built up it was from all the bright lights and tall buildings. This is the cleanest most futuristic place I’ve ever been! Didn’t see one tramp, stray dog or piece of rubbish on the floor and didn’t get one wiff of shit! It felt like it was costing me momey just being there lol. The centre is absolutely amazing and so different to any of the places we visited in Sri Lanka.

Me and Paige outside the famous Marina Bay Sands hotel.. I reckon we could have blagged our way to the top but Paige wasn’t keen

The gardens by the bay were pretty impressive.. haven’t got a fucking clue what the trees are supposed to be but we enjoyed spending the afternoon there!

The massive alien looking trees at the garden by the bay

On the night time we saw the most impressive lazer show I’ve ever seen at Marina Bay. Jets shoot up a screen of water and images were projected on to it! Well worth watching if you ever get the chance.

Apart from sight seeing we did a bit of shopping.. my bag was fucked so that needed replacing and we both agreed that we wanted to invest in a decent camera with a good zoom. Have yet to try it out but it looks good! We also visited little India and a few other places. There is a lot of high end shopping here and a lot of very rich people around!

The state of my backpack as we were leaving Sri Lanka! I’ve had it for 5 years so definitely had good use out of it!

As for this backpacker burn out.. travelling is hard! I’d read about it in other peoples blogs but of course, being a typical bloke it wont ever happen to me.. I’m to tough and determined for that shit! Paige had taken a more sensible aproach by sleeping in a bit more and having relaxing evenings. But my first thought on a chilled out afternoon or an easy morning is finding a local gym and squatting myself stupid or hitting bodyweight workouts and shadow boxing. Coupling this with walking miles (10 hours some days carrying our bags for nearly a month now) this has absolutely flattened me! The last 2 days I’ve been hanging so will learn from this and not be so full on.

Paige copying her new Chinese tourist friends

Have overspent our budget here a bit but it’s nothing we weren’t expecting. There’s plenty to do and see for free and even more if you’re not on a backpackers budget. The food in the centre is similar to what you would pay in central London but a short walk outside you can grab a decent meal for under £5. It’s a weird feeling from being well off in Sri Lanka to having to watch our spending closely in Singapore! Taxis here are pretty reasonable and no locals seem to walk anywhere, we had walked for fucking hours each day before finding this out so I’m just letting you know lol. For me the one thing I have found irritating is how rude some of the Chinese tourists are! Don’t get me wrong some of them have been really nice, for example a young chinese family we made friends with made chinese tea and brought it to our room to share with us but others are arrogant as fuck, have no manners and quite frankly need a slap. Apart from that it’s a wicked place, really westernised and definitely worth a visit. We’ve really enjoyed our few days here but are flying out to Kuala lumpar in the morning!