As we drove towards my hostel it became apparent just how diverse Singapore is.\u00a0 The area where the hostel is is called “Little India” and is full of colours, flavours and smells you would imagine befitting such a title.\u00a0 I checked into the hostel and was informed that I had literally got the last bed in the place.\u00a0 The person who arrived just after me was turned away.\u00a0 When the place was recommended to me the couple strongly recommended that I book ahead as it’s very popular.\u00a0 Book ahead?\u00a0 Those words don’t really compute in my head.\u00a0 Actually, I was pretty lucky with this one to be honest.\u00a0 The dorm was fine, clean and air-conditioned although somewhat of a comedown from my most recent accommodation in Thailand.\u00a0 I realised that this was the start of my trip when the prices went up and the sunshine levels started to go down.<\/p>\n
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I chatted to a couple of people in the hostel one of whom, Michael, told me about an amazing island called Tioman island off the coast of Malaysia.\u00a0 I must say the thought of a bit more sun, sand and snorkelling really appealed and, shortly afterwards, I was emailing my travel guy and asking for a date change.\u00a0 I went for a wander around little India and later got confirmation that I had another week to play in the sun!<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I explored the area of Singapore around the hostel that evening and the following morning.\u00a0 It was actually very cool and I ate some great food at a local hawkers area.\u00a0 One thing which was a bit strange was the locals.\u00a0 When I say locals, a local in Singapore is a bit like a local in London, i.e. it’s a very multi-cultural city.\u00a0 However, the areas I was wandering about in around the hostel were mostly Indian and Arabic.\u00a0 I’m not sure if this is anything to do with people’s responses to me but on a few occasions men walked passed and hissed at me.\u00a0 It wasn’t like I was wearing a bikini.\u00a0 I was wearing trousers and a vest top.\u00a0 I wondered if it was something to do with having my shoulders uncovered but then saw several other Western women wearing significantly less than me who didn’t appear to be iliciting the same reaction.\u00a0 I considered whether it was because I was smoking.\u00a0 When I got back to the hostel I asked Michael about this and he said that he had never heard of anything like it.\u00a0 I said that I had some odd reactions to smoking in Vietnam and he again said that he had not heard this happen to anyone else.\u00a0 He suggested it may be because I was, “blonde and stood out”.\u00a0 What?\u00a0 Someone had previously referred to me as a redhead!\u00a0 I know my hair has got lighter in the sun but please, has the whole World gone mad?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As we drove towards my hostel it became apparent just how diverse Singapore is.\u00a0 The area where the hostel is is called “Little India” and is full of colours, flavours and smells you would imagine befitting such a title.\u00a0 I checked into the hostel and was informed that I had literally got the last bed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}