Leaving Singapore for another adventure

It was another teary goodbye as I left Singapore for Cape town, South Africa. My parents are still not accustomed to my sudden bouts of wanderlust and mom had so many questions for me as I left.

I had planned a one month volunteering stint at ADDO elephant national park ( That explains the elephant on my background) but had additional time. The volunteering stint only starts on 4th March and I planned to reach Cape town and move downwards towards Port Elizabeth.

Compared to my previous trip where I cycled through Korea, this would be a back-packing trip and in this blog I'll try to detail my journey as much as possible, particularly on the places I stay at as well as the means of transport. Having no car licence, I'll be relying on public transport.

I took the cheapest flight possible, flying from Singapore to Doha and Doha to Joburg for a one hour layover before heading to Cape town. The entire journey took 21 hours but it was a delightful experience flying with Qatar airlines. Not only were the staff friendly and approachable but the sufficient in-flight entertainment kept me occupied.

The colour coding on the ticket sleeve made things a breeze as well and I entertained myself waiting at Doha by visiting the numerous shops around.

Arriving at Cape town, the queue at the customs cleared rather quickly and I found myself looking for the driver from Capetown back-packers. Realizing my name ( and the driver) were nowhere to be seen, I got a cab and proceeded to the backpackers. The journey cost me 250 Rand and I arrived at Capetown backpacker's quickly. The view of table mountain throughout the cab ride was amazing and pretty much fuelled my interest to hike up before I left Cape town.

Entering Capetown backpacker's (www.capetownbackpacker's.com), I was treated to a beautiful Victorian house, spacious and done up nicely. The staff were very friendly and I definitely felt welcome. Shifting my luggage to the shared dorm, I came up again to take some pictures of the house. Besides the bar, the room where breakfast could be had in the morning captured my attention.

The entire floor had a very relaxed atmosphere to it, something I needed at that point in time.

Sitting down at the breakfast room, I chanced upon a copy of coast to coast, a book packing loads of information of things to do, prices as well as backpackers all along the way to visit. Besides information, the comics and the humor in the book definitely perked me up. Martin, from Capetown backpackers let me try Stroh 80 ( 80% proof) and that woke me up a little from the jet-lag.

 The clean white bed and comforter was definitely inviting and well worth the price paid for a dorm bed. It was past midnight Singapore time and I was really tired when I took a quick shower and crashed.

A new place and a new day tomorrow awaited.