Sydney to Singapore

Although the area we were staying, Kings Cross, was a little bit seedy we really enjoyed our visit to Sydney. Almost half of the central bit of Sydney is a park. That alongside the harbor, the Opera House, the cafes and the sunshine made Sydney a pleasure to be in.

I was very impressed to find that in Sydney there are lots of Olympic size swimming pools that open to the public for next to nothing. This must be the reason why ordinary Australians swim incredibly quickly even in the slow lane. Steve and I went for a morning dip in an amazing pool overlooking the harbor and ended up in the "special" lane for the elderly or unfit.

If you want to see bats by the way forget Transylvania, Sydney's business district is the place to be. At dusk hundreds of bats take off from trees in the park and fly up towards the skyscrapers. Surreal but beautiful.

We were due to visit Caines after Sydney and see the Great Barrier Reef. Apparently its pretty hard to see much of the coral in torrential rain as it disturbs the water. As torrential rain was all that was forecast for the foreseeable future we changed our flights and after a brief stopover in Caines flew on to Singapore.

My preconceptions of Singapore were that there was no litter or chewing gum or crossing the roads at red lights because that sort of behavior led to a lengthly jail term. Steve had been to Singapore 10 years ago and had felt that people were looking at him disapprovingly, possibly because he had waist length hair and wore a sarong.

Singapore turned out to be very nice surprise. It's very clean (though there is some litter) and very green. Trees seem to have been planted in every conceivable space and Steve ended up taking nearly as many photos of the Esplanade arts center on the Singaporian water front as he did of the Sydney Opera house.

Orangutans now only live in the wild in Borneo and Sumatra. We had thought about making a quick visit to one of these islands to see the Orangutans but as we didn't really have enough time we decided to take the easy way out and go to Singapore's zoo instead. Singapore's zoo has one of the world's largest collections of captive Orangutans which they have been successfully breeding. The Orangutan enclosure is spacious and they are allowed out for a few hours each day to hang out in some nearby trees. We really enjoyed watching them, especially seeing the baby Orangutans play fight.

Singapore's zoo is definitely one of the better ones in terms of the way that the animals are kept. However we still saw a pair of distressed jaguar's pacing neurotically around around a tiny enclosure. I wasn't too sure about the ethics of keeping a polar bear either. There was a sign up proudly announcing that it was the only polar bear ever to have breed in the tropics. Personally I think that there are excellent reasons why polar bears don't breed in the tropics. I mean Steve and I were extremely hot in the zoo, even with frequent stops to sit down and have water so imagine being a huge furry bear!

Another great place in Singapore are the beautifully laid out Botanical Gardens. They have a lovely collection of orchids in the gardens and are responsible for breeding new hybrids of orchid. The VIP orchid garden is quite entertaining. It seems that in Singapore new orchid hybrids are named after visiting VIPs. Women's names seem to be preferred so they are usually named after a female VIP or the wife of a VIP, though some men do get lucky. Margaret Thatcher, Elizabeth II, Laura Bush and Nelson Mandela are all on display though Margaret Thatcher was looking a bit withered.

Singapore also has an enormous number of huge and fiercely air conditioned shopping malls. Unable to withstand the bright shiny lights Steve bought a Playstation Portable (clearly an essential item to be carrying on a round the world trip) and I bought some new clothes.

We have now moved on to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia where we are going to spend a couple of days in a posh but relatively inexpensive hotel pretending not to be backpackers before heading on up the peninsular.