Posted from Singapore.

The plane ride to Singapore was uneventful. The kids played card games, on Ayesha ds and my iphone, watched the inflight movie…. Typical western civilization plane travel. The excitement started when we got to Singapore.

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Nici was feeling very nervous about carrying all our passports and visas and voiced her concern at doing so. As we passed through customs I put mine and Orlando’s in my pocket and then we went and found some free internet to track down Vem’s place, our host in Singapore. Somehow, we managed to confuse two different people, address and phones and contacted the wrong person to say we were coming…. Though we did not find this out till later.

We made our way to the cab rank and got in a cab to be told by the driver the address we had was incomplete. Nici ran back into the airport to get the street address for our apartment building and meanwhile the cab driver decided I should unload all the bags and the kids and we should get another cab. I thought this was pretty shitty, but thought he must have arranged this with nici when she was talking with him outside the cab. I also thought I had got all the bags….
Nici returned from inside to find me standing on a traffic island, kids on the side of the road and me trying to organize our bags so we could get straight into the next cab.

Nici did a quick bag count and realized we were missing a bag. I had not checked the front seat of the cab since I thought nici had taken her backpack with her. It had left with our cab driver. Nici passports, both of Ayesha’s passports, Orlando’s German passports, nicis cc’s and wallet, $450 Singapore dollars, nicis iphone, nici’s Nikon d90 camera power pack, our Russian and Chinese visas….. all gone the moment we arrived in Singapore.

For 6 hours we tried to get the airport police to check the cctv footage to find the number plate of the cab but for some reason this could was not achieved. We filled out reports and stuff around until finally we gave up, resigned that we had started with a major disaster. We had budgeted on staying for free with Vem for our first night, now we found ourselves looking at $300 a nite hotel rooms. We opted instead to stay in the red light district for $100. Being Singapore, it was far less in your face the kings cross so it was really quite ok. Treated the kids to fried noodles for breakfast…. A bit of a change from weetbix…

Rang the police and central taxi organization but our bag had not turned up. We rang Vem and organized to meet her in the center of town. Our cab driver was great, and reassured us we would most likely get the bag back… this was Singapore! We nodded but did not share his confidence. Vem was wonderful, and we very much enjoyed staying with her and her family. We would never have got to see the real Singapore without her and she also made our traumatic start somehow not so bad. 2 days later and no word on our bag and we were almost about to give up hope and start the lengthy process of reapplying for them when the taxi company rang to say they had our bag. If had everything in it, not a thing had been touched. Amazing.

Singapore has a fantastic train system; it’s cheap and easy to get around. Everyone is very friendly and helpful. We spent a lot of time in China town, but also visited little India and Arab Street. We did the typical Singapore shopping for computer and things and saw Singapore at night.

Holy shit it was humid. Sticky sticky sticky. We knew it would be but never imagined just how sticky it would be.
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