6800 miles from home

It's been a pretty crazy 30 hours since we embarked on our trip back in Hemel Hempstead (with a few ups and downs along the way) but we've finally made it to the first leg of our trip Down Under - Singapore. The first interesting (or panic-inducing) moment was when we found ourselves locked in the hotel car park at 5am on the morning of our flight. We had to make a special call to security to open the shutters and let us out! 

After a more straightforward run to Heathrow airport and an emotional farewell, we were in the air by 11.15 am for a 12 hour flight in economy class. Sadly no upgrade, unlike my brother Tim who was bumped up to First Class on his first long haul flight to Canada! At least it wasn't doom and gloom as we were well looked after by Singapore Airlines with refreshing hot towels and both me and Lizzie taking full advantage of the complimentary food and drink. It's hard to imagine that we flew out of London on exactly the same day 5 years ago...

On arrival to Changi airport, we picked up our luggage and decided to take the cheaper option and use the MRT to get us to our hostel in Chinatown. This might have been a slightly foolish mistake as the temperature was at least 25 degrees celcius when we arrived at 8 am in the morning (soaring later to 32 degrees). The humidity was also 89% - oh that familiar sticky feeling, how I haven't missed you!

Once we managed to drop our bags off at the hostel, we had to endure a further 5 hours of sleepiness as we couldn't use our beds until 2pm. As we were still in the clothes we wore on the plane (not board shorts and flip-flops but heavy jeans and trainers) this made for a rather uncomfortable day!

We managed to fill our time by exploring Chinatown and heading down to quaysides and Merlion Park to see the country's mascot, a half lion/ half fish sea creature. Walking back to the hostel we were caught in a massive thunderstorm and got thoroughly soaked to round off the afternoon!

Although the dorm room in our hostel smells a bit of sweat, at least we're right on the doorstep of Chinatown for the lunar calendar new year's celebrations...More of those to come over the weekend!