Fully Grown Homos Podcast
Fully Grown Homos Podcast
Packing Fails and Singapore Tales: An Unpredictable LGBTQ+ Adventure
Ever packed half your wardrobe only to discover none of it fits? We certainly did on our latest journey from Sydney to Singapore and beyond! Join us as we recount the hilarity of our packing misadventures, the emotional farewell to our fur babies, and the 'oops' moment with our visa in Singapore. But fear not, we've got travel tips aplenty, from perfecting the art of packing to navigating airport transitions like pros. Plus, our first impressions on exploring Singapore for the umpteenth time, and the retail therapy plans in Lombok and Brisbane that await us.
Picture this: wandering through the vibrant streets of Chinatown in long pants during a rainstorm—because fashion knows no weather. Our Singapore escapade was packed with quirky hats, humor, and some seriously garlicky eggplants. As the day turned to night, we found ourselves sipping cocktails in the heart of the LGBTQ+ scene at a lively, yet discreet gay bar. From the unexpected to the unforgettable, our day in Singapore was a cultural rollercoaster of epic proportions.
Speaking of rollercoasters, what started as a whimsical idea turned into a thrilling visit to Universal Studios Singapore. Short lines and sudden downpours couldn't dampen our spirits as we channeled our inner kids on exhilarating rides like The Mummy and Transformers. And if that wasn't enough, the Gardens by the Bay offered a lush escape with breathtaking views and the captivating Rhapsody light show. From cheeky taxi rides to admiring architectural wonders, our Singapore sojourn was as multifaceted as the city itself. Engage with us and join in the love, peace, and acceptance that our podcast community thrives on.
If you want to send us a question or would like our thoughts on a particular topic you can contact us at Fullygrownhomospodcast@gmail.com or contact us on any of our socials at Fully Grown Homos Podcast.
Welcome to Fully Grown Homos, a podcast about our adventures as fully grown homos navigating today's world full of inquisitive friends, questions about gay life and the unexplored activities of a life lived as fully grown homos.
Speaker 2:We'll discuss the gay 101s, sex sexuality and topics we don't even know yet, as we want your input into what you want to hear. Nothing is off limits, so email us on the Fully Grown Homos podcast at gmailcom or message any of our socials.
Speaker 1:Fully Grown Homos with Dave and Matt.
Speaker 2:Dave, where are we? Well, Matt, we're on our ship and we're sailing towards Indonesia, arriving tomorrow morning at Bali, Lombok.
Speaker 1:But let's not talk about where we're going, because we'll get to that. Let's talk about where we've been Exactly so.
Speaker 2:We'll start from the beginning, matt. So we left Sydney on Friday, the 15th of November, in the afternoon, heading towards Singapore.
Speaker 1:Well, we left nice and early in the morning where we said goodbye to my babies. I had my pet sitter come along. She was absolutely delightful. Dave got to meet her as well, so she was absolutely delightful and I may have shed a tear when I said goodbye to my Chanel and my Blondie, but she has been keeping you updated with pictures and narrative via Messenger. Yep, she certainly has, and she's been telling me all about how cheeky they are and how cuddly they are and how Blondie they look very settled, don't they?
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're looking very, very happy, so it kind of puts my mind at ease and I can just enjoy my holiday, especially knowing that she was actually pretty bloody good with them and as soon as. I walked out, dave was like she's good and I went yeah, I know, I know. So I felt comfortable.
Speaker 2:But prior to that, matt, the night before we decided to unpack our suitcases because we felt we had too much.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and this is after I'd already unpacked three times Exactly. What did we learn?
Speaker 2:To our horror, we've actually learned that unpacking is not a good thing. Once you're packed, then make sure you keep what you've got in there, because you will need everything you had originally packed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, probably, I've packed some shorts. I packed a lot of shorts to say I packed probably about six, seven pairs originally right which I wasn't going to need, right. However, I didn't realise while packing I'd packed my Mardi Gras shorts, which are tiny, skimpy little things which are not going to be able to be worn on this boat at any stage.
Speaker 2:And then the opposite for me. I'd been out and bought a new set of shirt and shorts matching yeah.
Speaker 1:Hadn't tried them on, Hang on what?
Speaker 2:size are you, Dave? I'm normally a medium.
Speaker 1:It's large sometimes, depending what brand it is, a 32 to a 34 max yeah, yeah, right. What size were these shorts?
Speaker 2:Dave, when I went to put them on last night, I realised they were four times XL.
Speaker 1:Four XL, we both could have fitted into them.
Speaker 2:I was shocked, but the thing is, I'd actually left a lot of my clothes at your place because I'd unpacked some, yeah, thinking, oh, I won't need this many, I've got all these and yeah, that's a lesson learned from me, yeah, so so when we call in Lombok, what are we going to do, matt? We're going shopping.
Speaker 1:Yay, Shopping, shopping, shopping. And then when we get to Brisbane I can exchange those shorts for a proper size.
Speaker 2:I think it's Big W, wouldn't it?
Speaker 1:Big W maybe Doesn't matter.
Speaker 2:Anyway, Wherever they work, so yeah, so a lesson learned from us was Don't pack once pack right. Yeah, if you've got too much weight, then just take it with you because you're not going to need it. Fuck it. Pay for the apps.
Speaker 1:So we then obviously transitions at the airport as well, really easy really, really easy, matt.
Speaker 2:You've been to Singapore before. I haven't in terms of like staying over, I've only transited through it has changed a lot.
Speaker 1:It's changed a lot the getting around Singapore and obviously I went with the X, which is very different than sort of going with you, because we've seen things that I definitely didn't see with him with the X, which is very different than sort of going with you Yep, because we've seen things that I definitely didn't see with him and had a completely amazing time in Singapore where we did everything we wanted and much, much more.
Speaker 2:Look, I mean talking about going back to the flight itself. Yeah, the flight was sensational when we landed. Obviously, immigration is very modern and you have to put your passports on this.
Speaker 1:Oh, hang on, let's go back to Sydney, because another hint- Okay.
Speaker 1:All right when you're filling out your Singapore entry card. I copied and pasted, all right. So I also helped Dave fill out his, so he got through no worries at all. And because I copy and paste it, instead of putting the letters PB, it put P8. So I got told I hadn't filled out my visa properly. That's a slight hiccup. The Singapore team there, the guys on the ground was so bloody helpful. He said I think I know what you've done here, helped me and within two minutes I was actually through, like clearing customs, and everything in Singapore was a breeze. But if you can know what you've done here, um helped me and within two minutes I was actually through, like clearing customs, and everything in singapore was a breeze, but if you can get an early flight, because our flight wasn't until like late afternoon, was it?
Speaker 2:yeah, early evening. So by the time we got to singapore it was about 10 o'clock their time and it would have been around about midnight just after midnight, one o'clock in the morning city time, yeah. So unfortunately, by the time we got there, a lot of things in the airport were closing, like the Butterfly Farm, which are big tourist places inside the airport as well. If you do get a chance to go and visit that I would say definitely look at it. We managed to get the last showing of the waterfall At.
Speaker 1:Jewel which was spectacular.
Speaker 2:And that was really worth it it was already in Christmas mode.
Speaker 1:There was not a lot of Christmas carols playing and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:But it was a bit overwhelming as well because we were catching the train to the airport, to the hotel.
Speaker 1:sorry, yeah, we'd been told that the train was the easiest way to actually catch, so we did that. We caught a train.
Speaker 2:and Well, we actually found out we had to catch the SkyTrain first, didn't we? After a little bit of walking around and scratching our heads, thinking where the fuck are the train stations For?
Speaker 1:anyone that knows me knows that direction is not my thing. I am not good with getting anywhere and directions are definitely not my strong suit. I will get you lost every single time, without fail.
Speaker 2:But the actual trip on the train was pretty smooth, very well signposted, all in english, very clean, very airy so cheap?
Speaker 1:yeah, two dollars.
Speaker 2:Fifty no, two dollars fifty. Yeah, that was that trip. Yeah, and that was singaporean dollars.
Speaker 1:But still very cheap.
Speaker 2:So we got to a hotel that we didn't get a choice in the hotel we booked because it went through a trip deal. It was a complete package. Yep, again, I've got no Budget.
Speaker 1:A great deal, as we've been speaking to people on the ship that have booked their rooms separately and stuff like that, and we definitely got a phenomenal deal through a trip deal.
Speaker 2:So good on you. Shout out to them yeah, absolutely out to them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely definitely. We'll be giving them some feedback about where we stayed. It was a four-star hotel, according to them. Um, we got an upgrade. When we got to the hotel, the guy said oh, we've had to upgrade you because we're really busy at the moment, and so we did an upgrade. And well what?
Speaker 2:was the. What was the difference, dave? Had we not got an upgrade? I don't think we were going to be in our suitcases in the room. It was that fucking small. It's very small. Matt couldn't stand under the shower because it came out to his chest being a six foot one guy.
Speaker 1:Look, the service was definitely five star. It was clean, the pool lovely. I got to have a swim in the pool, dave didn't? The hotel was immaculately clean, heavily.
Speaker 1:Indian, so it was a very Indian-based hotel Opposite mosque, because it was opposite a mosque, so there was a lot of Muslim Indians staying there for, obviously, the convenience of that. And I don't think, although we didn't manage to get to Little India in Singapore, because we got and we'll go through what we did and what we didn't do but we didn't manage to get to Little India, but I've got a funny feeling. We were right on the edge of it at the hotel because it was a very Indian base. I think out of 100 guests there would have been 95 Indians and the only other Caucasians in the hotel were the ones that were going on our cruise, that were all being gone through trip a deal as well.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, we, we pretty much hit the ground running, didn't we we? We had to sleep that night because obviously we had just arrived late. So we got up early and we decided to walk into the city ourselves because we thought, okay, we'll have a look around and see what's going on. Now we were sort were sort of on the outskirts of the city, pretty much, weren't we yeah, we were.
Speaker 1:Location was a really positive thing for this hotel as well. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But we decided to walk and I think we did something like 25,000 steps that day, didn't we? Yeah, something like that. But a lot of it was spent in the shopping centre we found, which was absolutely fucking awesome Suntec City absolutely fucking awesome sun tech city.
Speaker 1:Um, that was awesome. Some great buyers in there, some it's a great shopping center and it's not just one.
Speaker 2:Shopper said it's five shopping centers in one, isn't it?
Speaker 1:yeah, there's like five different towers um, has a big, big um water feature type thing in the mill, in the thing where you basically put your right hand in um and tap to the water walk three times around it. You've got to whisper your wish into a friend's ear or someone's ear and it'll come true and stuff like that. It was really sweet and there's some beautiful little traditions and things like that, but again it was fairly cheap, wasn't it, yeah?
Speaker 2:And some of the stuff in that shopping centre. Oh my God, the arcade was just unbelievable, wasn't?
Speaker 1:it. Oh, okay, yeah, let's go. Okay, we'll go to the arcade. So there was an arcade game. For anyone that's listening, that's in Australia, you'll know what a time zone is. This thing was time zone times 20. It was on steroids. They had this huge Hungry Hippo game. That was so much fun. All the skill testers you could possibly imagine, like every kind of Disney character, any kind of universal character Animated character there was games in there.
Speaker 1:There were things in there you could win. We didn't play in there because we're two 53, 54-year-old men, but we had fun, even though we're 14 years old at heart. But we had fun, but we had an absolute ball in there taking photos and videos and then from that night.
Speaker 2:We then went to the market.
Speaker 1:Well then, hang on no videos. And then from that night we then went to the market. Well then, hang on no, no, no. Okay, where's other vending machines in that shopping center as well? Oh, yes, that blew my mind. So again, for anyone that knows me, I have a little bit of a plant obsession, all right, um. And when I say a little bit, my pet setter said you've got a problem, um, with the amount of plants that I have. But there was a plant vending machine where you could buy plants and they all looked really healthy, and the temptation to actually buy a plant was real. I know there's no chance in hell I would get them home through customs or anything like that, so there was no use trying to do it. Um, but I tell you what the temptation was real. They also had a vending machine of phone covers, don't they?
Speaker 2:dave, they did only one and it wasn't working. That day we were there, was it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, the first day it wasn't working and this company apparently only does this in this one shopping centre.
Speaker 2:It's only got the one vending machine, but it was popular as hell, when it was working $15 to have your own personalised cover made. And they had all the modern covers, didn't they?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I've now got a fully grown Homo's podcast phone cover.
Speaker 2:So have I.
Speaker 1:And so anytime I go anywhere, I just basically put my fan face down and it's like advertising our podcast, so everyone gets to listen and see it. So it's quite cool like that. That shopping centre was insane. We can't go through all the shops in there.
Speaker 2:Following from there, we decided not to go back to the hotel. We thought we'd go off to the street markets. I suppose wasn't it. That was in Chinatown.
Speaker 1:In.
Speaker 2:Chinatown. Yeah, no, we did go back. We did go back, remember, because we got the bus back afterwards.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yes, yes, we did.
Speaker 2:There's certain days that I can't remember. Everything closed, we went back home. We walked back, remember we got stuck in the rain on the way back.
Speaker 1:We did too.
Speaker 2:We got saturated, so I think we were there until about 4.30 in the afternoon. Bear in mind, we got to the shops at half past nine and they were all closed until 11 o'clock.
Speaker 1:We didn't realise that, yep, because apparently they open from 11 until 10 until 10 most of them, but some of them 11 and stuff like that but it was very quiet to start with.
Speaker 2:The streets were really quiet. Everything was like really, really subdued. It was lovely weather to start with really warm and then by the time we walked back, we were literally about, I know, probably about 300 metres from the hotel and because you have to wait to cross traffic, we got stuck in this downpour. It started raining and we got saturated. It bucketed, but it was warm weather. Yeah, it was like a shower almost.
Speaker 1:It was quite refreshing and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:So we went back, got changed.
Speaker 1:We got changed Now okay, hints and tips for Singapore clothing Shorts, very shorts, short dresses if you're a lady, something that breathes really well, good footwear, good footwear Because. I tell you what we decided that evening. It was going to be evening time, so we'd wear long pants. Big mistake there. I had long pants, dave had long pants. We were sweating our fucking arses off.
Speaker 2:But we sold it on.
Speaker 1:And we went through Chinatown and we went into every single store in Chinatown.
Speaker 2:And it was good fun, wasn't it?
Speaker 1:It was great fun the crap that they have there. Like we tried on all these hats and I'll post some photos of us in our stupid hats. So, because it was hella fun, our stupid hats were really fun and we really tried on hundreds and hundreds of hats throughout Chinatown.
Speaker 1:And what else did we do in Chinatown? We ate, we ate, and we ate too much. We ordered way too much. Now again, I've had gastric sleeve surgery about three and a half years ago, four years ago so I can eat significantly less than your average human.
Speaker 2:But we had ordered what we would classify as a normal-sized portion. Well, we ordered one of these, two of these like skewers, and we thought it was skewers and stuff like that, and corn on ribs and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:But we ordered this sort of noodle. That was so fucking delicious but the serving sizes were enormous. But there was one dish.
Speaker 2:I didn't like Matt. What was that? Matt decided to order an eggplant.
Speaker 1:Dave doesn't like eggplant, I do like eggplant. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.
Speaker 2:But I do like it.
Speaker 1:He loves an eggplant emoji, but he didn't like the eggplant with garlic, stuffed with garlic. I think it was just pure garlic. To be honest, it was a bit too much for me as well. I had a couple of spoonfuls of it. I kind of thought, yep, that's one, and then I think it was all of a dollar fifty, um, so we decided that we would push that one aside and not do that, but it's sort of it really. They've had like one spoonful and it really took a trial on him so it sort of threw his whole appetite off. Um, and then sort of he decided he'd go back and try a lesser garlicky part and it was exactly the same. He was just like, yeah, nah, this is shit, but we ate Chinatown.
Speaker 2:We had a great night out there and then we left and went to.
Speaker 1:We went to a gay bar, a big gay bar in Singapore. It wasn't a big gay bar, well, which is not big. So the gay scene in Singapore is still quite young.
Speaker 2:It's like it's quite in its infancy as such, but it was also quite Because it is still illegal to be gay in Singapore.
Speaker 1:It was set away from the main area, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was in a place called Maxwell or something like that In one of those suburbs.
Speaker 2:We still walk there, don't we? Yeah, Reed Street.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we walked up there from Chinatown. It's not too far from Chinatown. We went to Tantric.
Speaker 2:Bar? We didn't. We went next door to the backyard or whatever it was. We went near Tantric. They were right on the same courtyard, fundamentally.
Speaker 1:And I'll tell you what the cocktail that I had there was fucking delicious, that was really good. So it was a great bar, had a good vibe, a couple of cute guys there. We didn't get into any action there, unfortunately, sorry for our listeners that are waiting for that juicy part, but that didn't happen.
Speaker 2:We did speak to a few people online, but nothing happened. Did we?
Speaker 1:Grinder Pause grinder. I opened grinder in singapore holy fuck, it was going off. I was getting smashed open, grinder and scruff, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing non-stop. It was just off the charts. Now there was a couple of really hot guys that I was speaking to. One married guy, um, his wife and kids were away for the weekend. He wanted to come over and so we could blow him and we could play with him and stuff like that, but we just didn't have time and by the time we were finished every day it was close to midnight. So, like it was, just I'm not getting somebody over at midnight to play around for a couple of hours, so I can then not wake up the next morning.
Speaker 2:So fighting that? Yeah, Day two. Yeah, when did we go? Day two Matt.
Speaker 1:We went to universal studios, so I hadn't even thought about going to universal right, and we were somewhere. I can't even remember where we were, but because I said because I said, oh, we've got to go over to sentosa island, right. And then dave was looking and he's gone. Oh, there's a universal studios.
Speaker 2:This is prior just leaving australia, wasn't it? Yeah, and I went.
Speaker 1:No, it was while we were in Singapore.
Speaker 2:No, I said that I wanted to go to Universal before we left Sydney. Remember, Did you? I can't remember.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, anyway. So we decided we were going to go to Universal Studios. Now, my expectation wasn't high. I didn't know what to expect at all, but I tell you what it was sensational. We walked in and again steroids, singapore, well done. Triple ticks, all the green marks, because everything was just enormous.
Speaker 2:We got a taxi there, didn't we? We got a taxi there, we got a taxi there.
Speaker 1:Cheapest ships from our hotel. It was all of $12,.
Speaker 2:I think it was.
Speaker 1:Yep, so it was cheap. So we'll come back to taxis in the don't section a bit later.
Speaker 2:The do's and the don'ts, we'll definitely come back to that, going back to Universal Studios. So we decided to wait off and hold buying our tickets because we didn't know whether the weather was going to be good enough. So we bought them online, so you can opt for a fast pass, which is like anywhere else. But they wanted to charge an extra $90 for a fast pass.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but then the hotel lobby actually told us oh, there's this really good pass that you can get for $300 and something like that. So I think they make money. So don't buy your tickets from your hotel lobby, you can buy them at the entry.
Speaker 2:And it cost us $83, Singaporean dollars to get in and it was not busy, it wasn't busy at all.
Speaker 1:It had the right amount of crowds just to actually give it some atmosphere, but not too many to make it shit.
Speaker 2:So we didn't queue up any longer than 10 minutes for any of the rides. Some of them we went on twice, didn't we?
Speaker 1:The only time we queued up was probably about 25 minutes, and that was when it was pouring down with rain and Singapore weather, it's fantastic it can be sunny, then rain then sunny, then rain, then storms. And it's just crazy.
Speaker 2:And then humid.
Speaker 1:And then humid as hell, but it was great.
Speaker 2:So what was your favourite part of Universal Matt?
Speaker 1:Oh look, I really, really loved the Mummy ride. I thought that was a lot of fun. Yep, look, I had like. The Transformers ride was also. That was me. Like you guys all know, and Dave definitely knows, I'm a 14-year-old kid at heart, right, I really am like, and probably in my brain as well. So I just had so much fun going on the rides.
Speaker 2:But we were very goofy about a lot of things, weren't we?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we were very goofy about a lot of things, weren't we? Yeah, we, we were definitely goofy. Um, we, we challenged ourselves, we just had fun. We were being stupid. We were the ones that on the rides that were screaming as they were going down the hills and stuff like that, um, and some of those rides- were pretty full on, weren't they some of those?
Speaker 1:rides are pretty full on, weren't they? Some of those rides were fucking horrifying, but the adrenaline was pumping, it was, and Dave decided. So my favorite rides I'll say rides, because we had quite a few was definitely the Mummy. I loved the Mummy, see, I like the Transformer ride and the Transformer. Those two were definitely my favorites. And the two roller coaster rides the definitely my favourites, and the two rollercoaster rides the two rollercoasters like the human one and the cyborg one, or whatever it was.
Speaker 2:No, I think the one where we were hanging in and going upside down was a little bit more extreme, wasn't it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah that was more extreme Because the other one you felt when you were sitting up the right way, you felt a bit safe if anything. And I if anything, and I don't want to feel Word of warning as well, if you're going to go either.
Speaker 2:go very light, so you don't have to take a big backpack because they have got lockers there that you can hire out all day. Yeah, don't take anything, Just literally take what you've got on you. Or you can each ride. There's a set requirement as to what you can and what you can't wear on the ride like glasses, hats, then that locker extension actually expires after 45 minutes, something like that.
Speaker 1:But there is actually also all-day lockers available in the Jurassic Park section of the complex as well. So that's there and available for you.
Speaker 2:Food-wise, there wasn't a lot of choice was there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, nah the food-wise, there definitely wasn't a lot. Again, it was very catered towards Indian culture, yeah, indian culture and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:So, if you like, spicy food, then there's a lot of choices for you, but otherwise not a great deal. But we also decided that we were going to pick up a couple of friends, didn't we?
Speaker 1:We picked up some really cool friends and you will see them all over our socials in coming weeks. They are buddies, yeah, our travel mates, our travel mascots, our alter egos as such, and they are Bert.
Speaker 2:Hi, I'm.
Speaker 1:Bert and I'm Ernie. That's right, dave is Ernie and Matt is Bert. We've decided because Bert has less hair and he's taller. And he's taller and yellower.
Speaker 2:But they're both gay, so that suits you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're both gay anyway, if you read all the pop culture stuff anyway. So they're supposed to be gay.
Speaker 2:We've been taking them everywhere. Now We've been taking them everywhere.
Speaker 1:They're getting their own photos, they're having breakfast with us.
Speaker 2:They're on the cruise ship with us. Yep, they've fucked already we were going to enter them into the Mr Handsome competition.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the Sexiest man Alive competition, but we missed the event. But we missed the event, unfortunately, because we were at the art auctions. Instead, they were at the art auctions with us as well, but we'll talk about the cruise afterwards.
Speaker 2:Yep, definitely, but going back onto, the second day After this Universal. We decided to then go over to the Bay Gardens. The Gardens by the Bay Gardens, by the Bay we went to Because that's where they've got all the forestry, the sort of like treetop adventure thing. The two domes. One has got the flowers. Yeah, the Flower.
Speaker 1:Dome. What's it called? I've written it the Cloud Forest, the Cloud Forest, the Cloud Forest.
Speaker 2:Is one and the Flower Dome is the other one Gardens by the Bay.
Speaker 1:Everyone knows it by the big flashing tree, the light-up trees. Bloody spectacular They've got Rhapsody, I think it's called is the show, the light show Definitely worth seeing. It was absolutely beautiful, beautiful, stunning, um, absolutely gorgeous, and we've seen that. But that was after going. That was after going to the cloud forest, so cloud forest just looked like a big building, but I thought it was like it wasn't that expensive. I think it was all 34 bucks was it?
Speaker 1:yeah, it wasn't expensive, but it wasn't that expensive, but it was lots of fun. We said, all right, let's go and check it out. And, oh my God, my plant obsession. I feel okay, because I didn't have nearly as many plants as those guys. They had so many plants. Well, it is actually an indoor plantarium.
Speaker 2:I don't know, but it was spectacular, wasn't it Everything? We spent about two and a half hours in there, didn't we? Yeah, we did, and we still didn't get to see everything we wanted to see in there, didn't?
Speaker 1:we? No, they had carvings that they made of little possums and eagles out of all this old wood, and they had stalactites, stalagmites.
Speaker 2:And what are tights, dave? Tights come up and tights come down. That's correct. They've taught me that If I ever go back to tipping- Well, I was always taught at school that tights always come down and the mics go up. Yeah, so there you go.
Speaker 1:There's a hint for your learning people.
Speaker 2:Every day is a school day here at Fully Grown Homos, but we actually came out. This is as a start of the show, didn't we?
Speaker 1:The light show, yeah, but look if you get an opportunity um cloud forest right.
Speaker 2:Go and spend some time in there, even if you go in the daytime.
Speaker 1:I know our friends, like some of our friends, will absolutely love that. And I don't know if, um, my very well traveled friend, you know your name. It starts with an a. I can't remember what your pseudonym is right now, so I'll just say that the one that starts with an A. But I know you have a pseudonym. But you'll know who you are because you're my super world-travelled friend that's been around the freaking world and done all that kind of stuff. But if you haven't been to the Cloud Forest, you because you're a spiritual hippie, right you will absolutely fucking love Amy that's what we called her, didn't we? Yeah, you will absolutely love it and the tranquility of it all and stuff like that. So, yeah, check out Cloud Forest.
Speaker 1:And then, once that finished, then the gardens by the bay, yeah, we went out there and we watched the light show in the Rhapsody Yep there, which was stunning.
Speaker 2:Again just breathtaking and overlooks the. What's? The hotel at the back there? Oh, the Marina Bay Sands. Yeah, the Marina Bay Sands one, the one with the big ship on top, yep. Yeah, which again and again. That looked amazing from that point.
Speaker 1:From a distance, from a distance, from a distance. It looked amazing, but then we got a little bit closer to that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but. And it probably wasn't as but the end of that day, going back to the end of the day, it turned into a little bit of sourness for us because we wanted to get a taxi back, because there wasn't many buses available that we could find. So we thought, okay, we jump a taxi. It cost us 12 bucks to get there. We thought, okay, it's going to cost 12 bucks to get back, to get back.
Speaker 1:So we thought it might cost a little bit less because it was half as half the way yeah.
Speaker 2:So we jumped in and this guy, yeah, yeah, his taxi come over, and he went in and matt was gonna jump in. I said just check how much you know.
Speaker 1:He said cash and I said yeah, no worries, I got cash. I said, but I've only got a 50, so you have to change. He said no, 50 is fine. And I said sorry and he said 50 is fine he said I got mercedes I I'm not paying $50 for a taxi.
Speaker 1:And he started to walk away and he's gone, ok, $30. And I said absolutely no chance, mate. And he said it's a Mercedes. And I said I don't give a fuck. If it's a fucking helicopter, all right. I said I paid $12 to get from my hotel over to bloody Santosa Island. I said I'm not about to pay $30. I'm not being robbed here, so be very aware they will rip you off. And unfortunately, yeah, we walked away because we said fuck this, we'll go and get a train. And how much did it cost us? $2. $2 instead, right, and it didn't take that long either.
Speaker 1:No, that's no exaggeration. I think it was like $1.95. Right, but unfortunately, and 95, right, but unfortunately. As we were walking away, an older couple were there and he ushered them towards the thing and they said oh, we've got a friend with a walker and he's got no problem. No problem, right. And he would have ripped them off blind, right. And this is what was really sad. Now I wasn't going to go and jump in and say don't do it guys, because it's not my place, but it guys, um, because it's not my place.
Speaker 2:But I thought to myself you poor bastards you've just been ripped off by this fucking prick, but he was super friendly, but until we actually turned around and went. No and then, but every other taxi driver we have was fantastic, amazing, really really good yeah she was spectacular they are regulated by the government over there. They don't have ubers anymore, as we found out, and they have to rent their cars, and it costs them about $100 a day to rent their cars, apparently. So we were told yeah.
Speaker 1:And the other way of getting around there Buses. Buses are fantastic, but you've also got Grab. So they don't have Uber, but they do have Grab, which is basically Uber, and that way you can actually see what your fares are going to cost you. So that way, if you're wondering, oh I'm going to go to the city, I want to know how much it's going to cost me. And the taxi from our hotel to the airport costs us $8, I think it was Sorry, from the hotel to the ship terminal.
Speaker 2:It's $8, $10.
Speaker 1:Yeah, $10 exactly, yeah, $10 exactly it was. So again, taxis are a really reasonable way to jump around out there as well.
Speaker 2:So, going on to the, that was that day, that was second day. We had one more day, full day, before we then caught the ship. So on the third and final day, we decided that we were going to go to Raffles.
Speaker 1:Raffles. We wanted to check out Raffles. We were originally going to have a Singapore sling there, but we decided, okay, let's go back a day, because we went to Marina Bay Sands, to the big boat, to the shopping centre. We were going to go up to the observation deck.
Speaker 2:No, that was the last day, was it? Yeah, we did raffles. Oh, okay, yeah, we did too.
Speaker 1:That's right, yeah, sorry. So we went to raffles first, all right, and we decided we'll go there in the morning because I'm not a big drinker, you're not a big drinker.
Speaker 2:Well, we walked, didn't we? We walked down there because it wasn't that far. We walked down there Not too far, found a lovely place to have breakfast.
Speaker 1:Yep, that was called the Rocky Master Rocks or something like that, and it was pretty much adjacent to Raffles, wasn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, just behind Raffles, not too far away, we saw what we thought was like a Raffles not Raffles Hotel itself, but we thought they were like the Raffles shopping centre sort of thing. Didn't we All done out exactly how Raffles would look normally? But what we didn't realise was it was part of Raffles and when you walk all the way around the front part you see the original building of the hotel, which is a lot smaller than I thought it was. But what I didn't realize was all this wraparound stuff where they've got shops and stuff now was where all the original accommodation was yeah, all the accommodation used to be there, and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:And it was pretty big in that regards, wasn't it?
Speaker 1:It was Like the plot that it's on would have been enormous.
Speaker 2:It's beautiful.
Speaker 1:But it is opulent and it is beautiful.
Speaker 2:Everything was marble. We didn't go inside, did we? Because there was a conference going on so we couldn't really go inside, but we did go into the fountain area where they had the breakfast yeah. The courtyard, yeah.
Speaker 1:And we did use their toilets and you sold toilet paper. Okay, so I stole a roll of toilet paper from Raffles I. I stole a roll of toilet paper from Raffles.
Speaker 2:I'm guilty as charged. And why did I steal a roll of toilet paper from Raffles, Dave?
Speaker 1:Because back in our hotel, where is the toilet paper? Dave, above the toilet.
Speaker 2:So you're sitting on the toilet on your right.
Speaker 1:You have to pick up your right hand, reach behind you, almost dislocate your fucking shoulder to actually get the toilet paper. So I went.
Speaker 2:And single sheets as well't it? Yeah, and it was just like one time I'm sitting there going.
Speaker 1:If I get the runs in this place I'm fucking doomed. Um, but it was just. It was a bit of a nightmare, the toilet paper. So I thought these ones aren't even attached and I thought I'll be the tourist, so I knocked off the roll of dunny paper.
Speaker 2:So after after we finished raffles then we went over to the bay yep to have a look at this hotel which Matt was talking about.
Speaker 1:So we went through the shopping center and stuff like that, Dave was like holy fuck, this is a shopping center on steroids and very expensive High end Like I'm talking your Gucci, your Cartier, your Rolex, everything.
Speaker 2:It was so expensive, but extremely opulent.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a beautiful shopping centre. Now we went into Apple Store there because I love my Apple products. I bought myself a new watch band because you couldn't be at an Apple Store in another country and not buy something. And we were just about to walk out and the guy said have you been upstairs yet? We said upstairs, so we went up these escalators and, holy christ, it was all bloody glass from ceiling to floor. You could see the marina bay sands. You could see out the whole of singapore um, you could see everything. It was so, yeah, so we went to the Apple store really enjoyed that.
Speaker 2:We're just perving at the guy. Sorry, Sorry, somebody just.
Speaker 1:Sorry, he got distracted, oops.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we thought we'd go up and have a look at the hotel while we were there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we went to look at the viewing deck as such. But we went downstairs and you've got to pay to go up just to the viewing deck as such. But we went downstairs and you got to pay to go up just to a viewing deck and it was on level 56. It was about 36 bucks, wasn't it?
Speaker 2:36 bucks, something like that. But as you get close to this hotel, bear in mind. It's like the Sydney Opera House. It looks amazingly white from a distance and then, when you get close, it's like the gray brown. It's a bit drab the outside of it looked absolutely cheap, cheap or not cheap, but just boring.
Speaker 1:It was nothing. It was nothing.
Speaker 2:It wasn't as exciting as it looked from the distance, but it slid up at the time. Yeah.
Speaker 1:But yeah, and when it had, like I said, the lights of the big domes from Gardens by the Sea in front of it.
Speaker 2:So they were playing like a visual point of what the top deck looked like, weren't?
Speaker 1:they on the TV screen. Yeah, deck, looked like weren't they on the TV screen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it looked absolutely basic again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I'm not paying, and apparently you could also book a restaurant and then you could go up for free, right, which my nephew had told me. But then when we were chatting to people, they said, yeah, you can definitely do that. They said, but it's a minimum spend of $50 or something like that, but you've got to buy at their restaurant, and they're like that. And they said, literally, if you buy two drinks, it's going to cost you 80. They said so. We said, oh, we went, you know what, and we're not tight. Neither of us is tight. Everyone that knows me knows that I'm happy to fucking spend money, but it just didn't make sense. I went up, you know what, we had some great views and things like that. I just didn't make sense. I went, you know what, we had some great views and things like that. I just didn't want to go up that high.
Speaker 2:Also. I think we'd done so much walking at that point, hadn't we? Oh yeah, we were fucking knackered.
Speaker 1:I think day three was almost 25,000 steps.
Speaker 2:We checked out the Arts and Science Museum, didn't we? Yeah, which again was absolutely a waste of money.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they wanted 70 to enter an arts and science museum. I went like, yeah, I can go to the internet. It was not not great at all, but yeah and and again, anyone that knows me, um you know, um cleopatra, will know that museums are not my thing, um and my friend cleo.
Speaker 2:So then we basically caught the bus back eventually after finding where the bus stop was that was a little bit of stress at this point. I've not seen much stress before because he's really calm and normally very much I was getting annoyed because I don't like Waiting.
Speaker 1:No, I don't like not having control. Right Again, I drive everywhere in my life because I need control of where we're going and stuff like that. Now we're currently and stuff like that. Now we're currently on a cruise recording this. So obviously I have no control, but I've committed to having no control. I know that the captain's going to take us to where we're going to go, right.
Speaker 2:He has no control.
Speaker 1:I vetted a lot of this last night, which we'll talk about. I just like to have control and I didn't have any and my GPS was not telling me the right directions and it was fucking pissing me off and it was taking me way longer to get back to our hotel than I thought it should have taken, and then, on top of that, it was on the back of that stupid taxi driver trying to overcharge us, so it was just like fuck this all, but yeah, but we made it back. We made it back.
Speaker 2:Then we decided to have.
Speaker 1:Hang on, bob. I'm going back to that morning On the way to Raffles, right, Because we'd be really remiss of us to not talk about the architecture in Singapore, because Dave loves buildings, right. And there is the most magnificent building in Singapore and it's not too far from Raffles. I don't know the name of the road it was on, but it was like an Art Deco building. It was so high. It was called the Park, something or other. Yeah, the Parkway, parkway or something like that, but it was just absolutely blinding. It was just stunning, just absolutely blinding. It was just stunning like art deco, um, from the day built. Then, um, the outside of the building was just monumental and breathtaking. And then, as you sort of walk out, like the exterior, and then you walk up and then we went inside the building and it was just as beautiful.
Speaker 1:And again, we're going to put up a whole series of photos of our little trip to Singapore. I've put up a little teaser and stuff like that. We're going to put up a series of where we've been with our hot tips, because it's fun For me and I think you're the same as well, matt.
Speaker 2:I think for me, I'd definitely go back to Singapore again, I'll go back to Singapore.
Speaker 1:There's so much I didn't get to see that I want to see. I want to spend more than four days because four days was good.
Speaker 2:And the cost of it was no different to living in Sydney anyway.
Speaker 1:No, I think eating has been really cheap in Singapore. Buying stuff is cheap. Yeah, buying stuff is cheap, Like it's on par with Australia dollar, right? Getting there? Well, obviously it was part of our trip or deal pack, so it cost us next to nothing. Right?
Speaker 2:Because, like I said, we've spoken to people on the cruise, I think the only thing that we didn't have this time was time yeah correct Because we were only there for three days, four nights, but for me, if I was going to go back say we were going on holiday to Thailand or something like that I would definitely spend a full week in singapore, I think it definitely deserves that time limit, 100, I need to spend a full week and you know you can get.
Speaker 2:You can get so much done, as we found out as well, in that time frame. Um, but it was just so interesting, it was so busy, it was just so full-on, yep, um, but again, like I said, for me it was a great, great place to visit, for sure so our favourite place to eat there, like we went to the hawker bar, I liked the market, the Chinatown, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:My favourite breakfast was croissant cafe. It's like. It's a bit like croissant, but it's with a D at the end.
Speaker 2:And this was our last day of being there, because we tried to get there before, didn't we?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we tried to get there on the Monday but they were closed the Sunday. They were already sort of shut in the afternoon and we got out somewhere else. Yeah, but I tell you what the Croissant Cafe. The service was amazing, the bacon.
Speaker 2:It was $12 for breakfast, wasn't it For breakfast?
Speaker 1:$12 for breakfast, wasn't it? I had the waffles with bacon and something that was for coffee as well, wasn't it Coffee as well? It was $12 or something like that, and it was delicious and the service was great. They gave us these little rock cakes with a little business card on them and stuff like that, saying we've now turned one. So it was just really sweet. So look that up as well.
Speaker 1:Well, we put this on the list anyway of all the things to uh lots and we would recommend, as opposed to you have to do.
Speaker 2:But I mean, if you do go, I would definitely say go pack a bit lighter if you want to buy a lot more stuff yeah, pack light, pack light. You won't need as much as you think you need, but if you're going on the cruise and obviously make sure you've got enough shorts, t-shirts, et cetera, et cetera, as we found out, yeah, yeah, but all in total, I think, singapore, five stars for me, five stars for me, yeah yeah, it was awesome.
Speaker 1:We've loved it and we enjoyed it and we look forward to catching up with you on our next episode.
Speaker 2:We'll talk about, after our um, our starts of our cruise and because we're only on day three of the cruise now yeah, and we've done a lot already, or? Should I say you've done a lot, matt hang on, we, we did two people. I mean a lot of people, I mean in terms of your karaoke. You know sand your.
Speaker 1:Oh, that stuff as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, matt, hasn't matt hasn't let the team down in terms of like getting up there and being the one the star of the shows.
Speaker 1:Yes, let's not give too much away, because that'll be for the next episode we want to look forward to, but, um, but yeah, it's definitely been fun and um, so this has been your fully grown homos on tour, and if you want to send us a question about singapore or about other things, anything, you know how to do it. How do they do it, dave, on the Fully.
Speaker 2:Grown Homos podcast or at our Gmail account, which is the Fully Grown Homos podcast at gmailcom, sending love and peace from us all and Bernie and Ernie. Bernie and Ernie.
Speaker 1:Bernie and Ernie, send love and acceptance as well. Bye, that's a wrap from us. We've been your Fully Grown Homos and we look forward to opening your mind, your ears and your curiosities. Don't forget to like, comment and subscribe, and share our podcast with your curious friends. You can contact us on fullygrownhomospodcast at gmailcom or any of our socials. Fullygrown Grown Homos Podcast.
