South East Asia

We arrived at Melbourne Airport far too early - Bundy thought the traffic on the road and the lines in the airport would be horrendous, however it was quite the opposite. The traffic was almost non-existent and since we were business class we went straight to the front of the check in line, the customs line and the boarding line. However, once we got through everything and waited around awhile our plane had a 2 hour delay due to engineering problems. Just what I needed to hear - we're flying on a dodgy plane.

We finally boarded the plane 2.5 hours late. In business class we had large leather seats with footrests and were served free champagne while the lower class thugs boarded. We were given a free toothbrush, toothpaste, blanket, neck pillow, ear plugs, eye mask, headphones and free entertainment systems (economy class had to pay for headphones, entertainment, and food since it was a budget airline) . We got free appetisers (greek salad) and a main (choice of three delicious meals), bread and dessert as well as all the free alcohol and snacks we could ask for. We arrived in Singapore and took the very efficient and modern (and on time) public transport system out to Little India. When I tried to get out the gates at the station my ticket said it was invalid. I had to go to the counter and re-new it. We then walked to our hostel through large crowds of people, most of which were drinking on the street (we assume for New Year). The weather was very hot and humid (even at night) and it was nice to have air-conditioning in the hotel. We were staying at the Prince of Wales hotel and there was half price food at the bar downstairs so Bundy and I went down for a small dinner. We were quite tired so we went to bed early.

We arrived at the Singapore Zoo at 11:00am after a long bus ride through and out of the city. We realised when we saw the enormous line for tickets and the non-existent line for e-tickets that we should have bought tickets on-line. As soon as we walked in we absolutely loved this zoo. There were monkeys lounging and flying around in the trees all around the zoo and almost no cages or glass keeping the animals in. It's also almost completely surrounded by a lake and you can take a boat from one side to the other. the scenery is beautiful. There were small capuchins in one of the smaller trees in the middle of the footpath near the entrance which were close enough to touch and trained to stay in the tree. The cheetah and white tiger were about 3m away and kept at bay by a ditch of water. We watched the rainforest show and the elephant show and the splash safari which were quite funny, elephants are very cheeky. We went into the fragile forest section which is the worlds largest open butterfly house. There were butterflies (duh) and mousedeer running around and heaps of birds and bats. There was a lemur just chilling on the steps which you could pat and sit down next to. And a sloth being very lazy. Lunch was absolutely delicious, had rice and some special sort of grilled chicken and some green stuff in some brown stuff and some soup stuff. Instead of pigeons annoying you while you eat there was a pea-hen. Camera ran out of battery One of the monkeys would copy Bundy so he was easily entertained. After that we walked over to the Night Safari. Had dinner which was a vege burger and chips with some sort of green sauce stuff. Watched a fire breather show. Went into the night safari, also super amazing. Heaps of people but it was so quiet and most people took the train around the zoo so hardly ever ran into anyone. Walked around for about 3 hours. Saw 2 slow loris's mating, went into the free flying bat enclosure. Some of them were super tiny I thought they were moths at first. Saw a flying squirrel fly which was pretty awesome. Had to leave early to catch a bus back to catch our overnight train to KL so didnt have a chance to take the tram around. So even though we walked around non-stop for 10 hours looking at animals it was amazing. Loved it.