As well as discovering Singapore, I’ve also learned what hostels are like, never having stayed at one before. After I found what looked like a good one (The Little Red Dot), I went for the cheapest type of room they had (a dorm with four bunk-beds in it), so it’s cramped but at least it’s air conditioned at night! The common area is pretty sweet, I was just chilling playing video games and watching films with the main guy Jon on my first night here. The people have all been cool too, I’ve met a bunch of fantastic dudes and dudettes from all over; Australia, China, England, Germany, Singapore, Ireland, America, India, South Africa… My first experience with a hostel has definitely been a pleasant one.

It’s a shame everyone stays for such a short time though, far too few of these cool peeps were partied with for my liking. Though worry not, some epic partying was indeed done, and funnily enough, it all started with the arrival of four Irish people on Friday. There were a bunch of Indian guys in my room at first. They were MBA students studying in the Phillipines and were only here for a careers fair. After seeing them all suit up before heading out though, I quickly realised they weren’t here for fun times :( The day they left though, the four Irish people checked in and after all the obligatory introductions, promptly headed up to the roof garden to drink. I joined them after a bit and they were only too happy to spread the love and send a few beers my way! Jon headed up too and he brought a whole bottle of vodka with him! It wasn’t as good a thing as I first thought though, he was pouring these ridiculous shots that were just completely full of neat vodka, we got messed up pretty quickly.

It helped when a few more people showed up to share the love and it was brilliant that the American, Eric, and the two Germans, Phillip and Daniel, were knocking them back as quickly as Jon, I and the Irish had been. What didn’t help though was the massive beer run we went on when all the booze finished; we ended up coming back with another two bottles of vodka and probably more beer than was wise. It was really cool just chilling on the roof with such good company and stopping by downstairs every now and then to meet and drink with new arrivals at the hostel. We were all on a pretty good level by this point, Phillip had plugged his speakers into Mikey’s (one of the Irish guys) iPad and Jon was DJing, it’s incredible how much liquor that tiny Chinese man can take. I reckon he had almost half of the first vodka bottle by himself and he wasn’t even a little bit hung over the next morning. That would have been enough to make me feel terrible the next morning (and I did, especially because a hot, humid country is not condusive to hangover recovery but also because I lost my wallet, or at least thought I did for several hours after waking up. To say that would have messed up my holiday is a gross understatement but it was good because I ended up getting an expensive lesson for free. I am definitely not going to take more than a single card with me on nights out from now on!) Anyway, since we were all so merry on the roof (and because Jon apparently goes clubbing every night except Monday and Tuesday (!)), someone suggested we make movements and find somewhere to get our funk on. The Irish and the American had drank enough by then but the rest of us were all gonna go to the same place. That is, the plan was to go to the same place but then these two lovely English girls showed up at the hostel and Jon quickly headed off with them, leaving me, Phillip and Daniel with no idea where the hell to go. I later learned that Jon took the girls (who I found were great company after I sobered up the next afternoon) to this club called Attica. Some useful info and a bit of context: this place is known locally as slutica, which is probably all that needs to be said about that!

Elsewhere in Singapore, the club the Germans and I ended up at was called Grooove. It was absolutely packed and the music got us even more lively than we already were. We knew the drinks would be expensive in there, alcohol is pretty expensive in Singapore (those bottles of vodka we bought earlier were 50 Singapore dollars each), but we weren’t expecting prices quite as steep as 16 dollars per bottle. We still had an amazing time though and we partied with a lot of cool people in there, there were some very interesting characters outside afterwards too. Every good thing comes with a price though and I paid heavily the next morning. I woke up at around 1 in the afternoon and just felt like dog shit. I was worrying like crazy for hours trying to find my wallet too but in the end it wasn’t as big of a thing as I thought because I ended up finding it in my locker (well done Jaz). I definitely had it with me at the club though and didn’t remember taking it out of my jeans so I don’t know how it ended up there. Getting into the locker was a bit of a problem because one thing I did actually lose was the key to the lock I had on it, nothing a pair of bolt cutters couldn’t solve though. All in all, it was a pretty excellent night then but after how I felt the next day (I was by far the most hungover), I wasn’t looking to repeat it the next night like the English and the Germans were.

I can’t believe that it’s taken me this long to discover how awesome hostels are! This is the kind of living a guy could get used to!

Top: Shots!; Above: Me and Mikey