The journey begins

We had originally intended to create our blog before we left Australia on our big adventure however, as they say, the best laid plans…! That said, just two days in we’re happy to bring you ‘The beer is better when backpacking – tales of a year long weekend’

We’ve been asked by many to provide a rough itinerary of where we’re off to… here goes;
We start here in Singapore for a weekend of spoils before turning into true backpackers and travelling through Vietnam, Cambodia and hopefully Laos. We’ll be in Hong Kong for Christmas and New Years then will continue north through China up to Beijing. From Beijing we’ll be making our way to across Mongolia and Russia via the Trans Siberian. We’re hoping to land in the UK by about March 2012 where we’ll stay for 6-9 months including exploring through Europe there in-between.
The plan is to visit USA and South America before returning to Aus, although we’ll see where the year takes us.

Day two now and I don’t think either of us realise what we’ve embarked on. For me it just feels like the weekend… and hey, we just happen to be in Singapore. Yesterday was a lonnnng day! After quite an uncomfortable flight sitting next to a man who snored loudly the entire journey (I am aware I will probably have to get used to this in hostels) we arrived at Marina Bay Sands. Check in wasn’t until 3pm but they offered us 12 o’clock check in to compensate with us arriving so early.

With only 6 hours to kill before our room was ready we went to good ol’ Maccas for breakfast so Joel could get his McGriddle fix. It’s like a sausage and egg mcmuffin however the muffin part is actually made of a choc-chip pancake. Hmm each to their own :| We then checked out a couple camera shops for Joel and went for a wander around the Marina Bay Shoppes. They have a massive food court with every culinary choice imaginable – we decided to stop and have lunch.
The place was packed! After battling through the overly populated food court for over 10 minutes trying to find a table we realised we were going to have to eat our food standing if we wanted to enjoy it while it was hot. So there we stood in the middle of a food court drinking beer and eating kway teow.. was a little different :-)

We visited the Raffles Hotel in the evening for one of their infamous Singapore Sling’s before enjoying chilli crab, Singapore’s signature dish, at one of the little hawker centres – Yum!

We’ve had pretty relaxing day today. Caught up on some needed sleep, soaked up a bit of sun and took in the amazing view from the infinity pool! Tonight we caught the MRT into Chinatown for some more hawker market food and now we’re back at the hotel, eating our in-room desserts and sipping on vodka, lime and coke’s… It’s a hard life ;-)

One more night’s sleep in luxury before we officially become backpackers in Vietnam tomorrow – cannot wait!

Renée.

Ps. Between our blog and facebook we’ll try and keep you all up to date regularly, depending on internet accessibility and time (they will most definitely not always be this long). Please feel free to comment on our blog, will be great to hear from you along the way. We look forward to sharing our travels with you!