Singapore to Bangkok in 10 days on $300 – Day 1
The following is part travel journal, part budget travel guide and part journey of self-discovery. My unedited dairy laid bare for you. It was literally written on the road so it may be slightly hectic and jump around a bit, but hey, welcome to my adventure, and possibly a glimpse into life inside my head.
Day 1: Auckland – Brunei – Singapore
December 2, 2008
My adventure has definitely kicked off to an unexpected start. Yesterday I got a call from my travel agent to inform me that Bangkok airport was still closed. She managed to get me a flight to the closest available airport, Singapore. So my plan of heading to Bangkok and skipping down to Koh Chang for 10 days of lying in the sun before meeting up with Alex has been replaced with an overland adventure from Singapore through Malaysia and southern Thailand, hopefully arriving in Bangkok by December 11. It was a pretty quick change, but I’m stoked, an adventure through a new country sounds like fun. The only downside is I have to pay $400 to change my flights and my remaining $300 is going to be pretty tight through Malaysia. But that’s only going to increase the challenge and I hope the adventure. I really have no idea what to expect, I jumped online and booked the cheapest hostel I could find in Singapore, so I guess I’ll start from there.
At the moment I’m sitting in Auckland airport, check in time was 3:30am and when I arrived I got handed a letter saying our flight had been delayed until 10:20am (pretty suck), so I’ve spent the night trying to sleep in the waiting area. The upside is my stopover in Brunei will now be shorter, but I will miss out on the tour of the city. I also got a complimentary $15 food voucher, which was pretty sweet seeing as I’ve only got 50c left in NZ dollars.
I’ve landed in Brunei; the flight here was pretty good, great service and a pretty sweet plane, but unfortunately no alcohol because they’re Muslim. I’m now sitting through a 3 hour transit in Brunei Airport, it’s pretty basic and I don’t have any Brunei Dollars which means I can’t even buy a coffee, so I’m sitting here re-reading Sideroom magazines and writing this journal. I’m actually quite enjoying waiting in airports by myself, it’s funny I’m a lot calmer when I’m alone and seem to just chill out and go with the flow a lot more. In 4 hours I will be landing in Singapore. I’m really looking forward to getting out in a new city, having to work out the trains and hopefully getting just a wee bit lost.
So yea I got pretty lost, and it was super hot, but I remained calm, asked for directions from heaps of friendly locals and eventually found my hostel. It seems alright, a pretty standard hostel but I think I need to get out of Singapore. I’ve already spent $30 (Singapore), which is $50 (NZ) just on my accommodation and one meal, which was the cheapest I could find, and probably a bit dodgy.
Tomorrow night I think I’m going to head straight to the station and try to book an overnight train to Kuala Lumpur, that way I can cover accommodation and travel in one hit.
All in all today was an epic first day. I’ve had heaps of short sleeps and random meals at weird times so I’m feeling wasted. But at least now I’m connected by land to my destination, we’ll see what tomorrow brings.
To be continued
