sg diary: p1 -- no cambodia go s'pore

after the plans to visit cambodia got scrapped due to high travel costs, the transit port(singapore) looked like an attractive option.. most folks rubbished spending 1 week in singapore, you'd get bored they said... such a myth! 8 days after i still had plenty of places not crossed off in my list... partly due to my erratic, unplanned sleep-pattern and mostly due to the heavy rains that lashed the island the entire week... add to it the heat and humidity.. and you're tired of all the required walking by mid-day.. the trip - eventful at start, tiring the first two days, amazing and fun-filled the rest of the time...inarguably one of the best!

first, the booking the flight... the debit card i had wasn't an accepted mode of payment. hence i had to use my credit card that first required an activation for a huge annual fee. once the tickets were booked, got my passport-sized photographs according to the prescribed specification...( the pics came out unbelievably ugly.. i am never going to that studio again! ) next the search for a travel agent.. that ended rather well - deccan travels at forum malls's 4th floor. locating their tiny office was half the job done. handed over my passport and 2 photographs and nothing else. and bothered them endlessly about getting my visa in time... the visa arrived on the day of the travel, though the previous day the agent called me up to say i had been granted 2 years' visa and that it would arrive the following day at 11am. the electronic-visa was also forwarded to my email, a document you need to carry a printout of each time you travel to singapore. if you require me to submit my passport to you for a visa, why don't you just stamp it in there.. why give me an additional document to carry around!

there was no buying/exchanging of currency since i was going to stay with a host family and expected to be taken care of :)