Singapore - F1

Air-conditioning, one meter of legroom, extra soft and wide arm rests and head restraint for relaxed sitting and a massage function in the back. No, this is not a First-class-flight with Lufthansa, this is travelling by bus in Malaysia. It took us nearly 5 hours to get to Singapore, but in a very relaxed way without waiting at airports and at least for 15€ each roundtrip-ticket.

Travelling by bus is a great way to get an overview of the landscape and the beautiful and various flora of a country. But maybe we had bad luck with that on this journey, only driving on highways being straight as a die. The only thing we could see to our left and right was palm-oil plantations, palm-oil plantations and wait, yes, palm-oil plantations. As a total contrast to this agricultural scenery, Singapore was awaiting us with skyscrapers, port facilities and construction sites all over the place.

We found ourselves in front of our hostel, right in the middle between legal and illegal redlight district. You can differentiate between these two forms of prostitution by looking at the sidewalks. The illegal ones are all standing in front of their buildings on the sidewalk, the legal ones you can hardly catch sight of, you only see their pimp trying to arrest your attention.  But this only mentioned as a notice in the margin, because we were in Singapore, indeed, for other purposes.

After checked in our hostel, we didn’t get our booked rooms, instead we were put in some random rooms. I’d like to say that we didn’t expect European standard, but I rather think this wasn’t any standard. Non-cleaned bed linen, full of foreign hair, the air-con badly smelling of spoiling and mold all over the ceiling. So there’s no need to talk about the sanitary facility in detail, only one thing worth to mention, the shower was to be found over the very undersized toilet.

But our plans in Singapore weren’t to stay all day long in our hostel, so this happening even motivated us to spend our time in town.  Nevertheless we were in a good mood, expecting an amazing weekend.  And like a bright star once upon a time, we could immediately hear the werewolves howling through the high walls of glass and concrete, leading us downtown and reminding us of the real adventure we were expecting in Singapore. But this mentioned ‚howling‘ was just a harmless whisper through Singapore‘s warm and smoggy night instead of the screaming F1-engines trying to burst our eardrums at Marina bay the following days.

Singapore at all is a very busy and impersonal city. Even as Europeans you don’t get any special attention on these days. Almost 20% of the people walking around weren’t looking of asian origin, especially in front of the big hotels, in which areas the common bars and clubs can be found. After our first original german beer since weeks (see photo below), which maybe was little bit overprized (14 S$), but tasty, we finally found some clubbing place to survive the night with really fair prices.

 

Singapore at night is an amazing experience of itself, but attending a formula 1 race during night hours and within this stunning ambience is an unforgettable memory, branded in our minds. As expected, Sebastian Vettel won the race, only one point missing to celebrate his second world championship. After a great race, a two hours lasting Linkin Park concert for free and a long night in the streets of Singapore, we overwhelmed sank in the armchairs of our bus, fell in a deep and satisfied sleep to arrive KL and UiTM for our classes just in time.