Sunday 6th of April 2014
We have made it to Singapore.
After a 7 hour flight from Adelaide we landed in Singapore
at 11:30pm local time. We headed to the Transit Hotel within the airport where
we spent a short 6.5 hours at most trying to get some sleep. I am staying in a
room with Tom.
The flight was pretty rough, there was turbulence most of
the way here, but Singapore airlines is a fantastic airline, great food, great
movies and a pretty good flight.
On Sunday morning, Tom and I had organised a wakeup call so
that we would be ready to check out at 7am. It was a short sleep but well worth
the night stopover.
We had breakfast in a food court within the airport before
heading out through immigration and onto the Metro into the city of Singapore.
We were headed to the Marina Bay Sands development, it took us a few trains and
a walk to get there but eventually, and by probably the most direct route, we
made it to the waterfront development.
We listened to a short spiel about the area, a brief history
of the site and a few interesting facts (Matthew Rofe, our course coordinator
for this trip has lived in Singapore in the past, so he was of course very
knowledgeable).
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| Singapore |
Unfortunately we did not have much time as we had to get
back to the airport for our flight to Vietnam and so we did not get to have a proper
detailed look at the area. We headed back on the metro, on a slightly different
route to before. At the airport we had to pay an extra 10c (we originally payed
$4.70 for a return ticket, the exchange rate is almost 1:1) to actually leave
the airport station, which we were all rather confused about…
At the airport we had about an hour and a half of time to
grab some food and relax before our flight. I went with a majority of the group
to a food court, then with a smaller group following that just to pass some
time wandering around.
Our flight was to Da Nang via Siem Reap in Cambodia. It was
a little strange to fly for 2 hours, land, get off, and then get back on the
same plane 30 minutes later in Siem Reap, but I am counting it as another place
I have been, especially since upon exiting the plane you have to walk along the
tarmac (right next to some other planes pulling in alongside, which didn’t seem
safe) so I have walked on Cambodian soil.
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| Siem Reap Airport |
Back on the plane, in the same seats (I was with a couple of
people from our group at the very back of the plane) we were finally headed for
Da Nang.
We arrived, went through immigration (with one of our group
being pulled aside to see what he had written in the notebook at the bottom of
his bag) and onto the airport transfer busses.
I have heard and seen a little bit about the traffic in
Vietnam, but you have to be in it to really believe it. It is nuts. Traffic lights
don’t usually count for much, zebra crossings count for absolutely nothing, and
vehicles pretty much do whatever they like without hitting people.
We arrived at our amazing hotel and headed up to our rooms
for a quick refresh before heading out for dinner. I was able to quickly Skype
with my family but not for very long.
We walked a short way to dinner at a place with the best
name (something like ‘Boss Vietnam Food’) a short distance away. Crossing the
street anywhere is rather stressful and I doubt I will ever get used to it.
The dining experience was interesting. There was certainly a
language barrier and a lot of the things on the menu, they had apparently ‘run
out of’. So everyone ordered something, some people got what they ordered,
others just got rice and were told that they had run out of whatever they
ordered. I got rice…
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| Beers and Vietnamese |
The bill was eventually probably 75% made up of the <$1
on the menu, which worked out to be about $5 each overall, fantastic!
We headed back to the hotel at about 9:30pm and I am sure
most people are certainly ready for bed, I know I am.
Tomorrow we are up at 7 for breakfast and a wonder around
the city before meeting with the Da Nang University.
-Nick
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