As February arrived we set off on the bus to Singapore, an exciting prospect as it gave me the opportunity to meet up with Luke, Charlie and Al. Singapore is a very modern city, a big change from the rest of SE Asia, but it was a place I enjoyed immensely and could have done with more time to explore. After settling into our hostel we went out to meet Luke after he finished work - 11 hour days you crazy man! He told me we were going for some food but refused to tell me what - it was going to be a surprise. I was worried it was going to be mushrooms, but no, it was nothing so crazy, only frog porridge! Apparently it's a traditional dish, and was actually quite nice, although frogs are a bit fiddly to eat for my liking haha. They were full frogs as well, not just frogs legs, there were ribcages and allsorts in there. We had a good chat and arranged to meet again on Friday for some drinks, it was brilliant to see a familiar face, and especially one I hadn't seen in donkeys years!

The next day we decided to go to Singapore zoo as it was meant to be brilliant. Now I don't know if working at the elephant park has made me more aware of animal behavior but the elephants and tigers seemed a bit stressed to me so I didn't enjoy it as much as I'd hoped. It didn't help that after we'd been there about an hour, it absolutely hammered it down and showed no signs of stopping in the near future! We soldiered on to see a few of the other animals but were cold and wet and decided to call it a day mid-afternoon and go back to the hostel and dry out.

In the evening we had a treat and went to the Raffles hotel to partake in a Singapore Sling, the original recipe as it was created there, and eat peanuts in shells. The hotel bar was like stepping back in time 100 years, all dark woods, old fashioned fans on the ceiling, and glistening glasses, I half expected men in linen suits with walking canes and hats to be scattered about everywhere. From there we walked over to the Marina Bay sands resort, which has a massive boat shaped roof - very bizarre indeed haha. It was pretty impressive though, it is surrounded by water and the lights reflect everywhere, making a really picturesque scene. We walked through it to see about getting a tour on the roof, but it was booked up for the evening so we contented ourselves with the inside, which was amazing, really high ceilings, amazing architecture and just a massive space.

On Friday I had planned to meet up with Charlie and Al, which I was really pleased about as there was a possibility we would never be in the same place at the same time! I'd arranged to meet them in the afternoon so Nina and I went to the National Museum of Singapore in the morning to see a Musee D'Orsay exhibition which had some beautiful paintings I wanted to see, including some Degas, Toulouse Lautrec and Van Gogh's Starry Night, which made my day, although it looked different to the posters and images I'd seen of it. I guess they never capture the true sense of the original paintings. After getting some culture we met Charlie and Al and went for some drinks on the riverside. A lovely couple of hours passed whilst we caught up, Charlie and Al have some brilliant stories of their travels, and we spent about half an hour watching the giant crabs trying to escape from the water tanks at the restaurants - they evidently didn't want to be eaten! Creepy things though, all those legs, ergh. We had a quick wander through Chinatown then Nina and I rushed off to get ready to go meet Luke for some drinks.

It was all a little rushed but we managed to get on the metro and meet Luke, only about ten minutes late, and went up to his house for some drinks. Now Luke has possibly the world's cutest cat at his house, a little ginger and white thing with bog-eyes called peanut. Maybe I just love her so much because her eyes match mine! So that entertained me for a good half hour whilst we waited for Luke to get ready as he had met us straight from work. Once we were all ready off we went into town with Luke, his housemate Shannan and friend Sean. First we went to a little bar which brewed its own beer and had a drink, before going to a club, which was a really nice building, but the music was a bit samey, I think I heard the same song about 3 times so I'm assuming the DJ just had a cd on repeat. It was really strange as well because all the people in the club just stood facing the DJ and dancing, like you would at a music concert, but it wasn't a celebrity DJ or anything so it was all a bit weird! It was a late night and I got back to the hostel about 3.30, Nina had left an hour or so before so we had a nice sleep in the next day then went over to Luke's where he cooked us a full English breakfast - AMAZING! He had drunkenly promised us the day before and we weren't going to let him forget.

After that his friend Sean drove us all over to the Expo centre where we both bought a netbook, for the bargain price of about £220, total bargain. In the afternoon we had an energetic few hours over at the East Coast park where we rented some bikes and cycled around, it was really busy and a lovely way to spend an afternoon. We were going to share a bottle of wine but Luke brought the wrong one and it was pretty much vinegar so that plan went down the pan, D'Oh! Never mind, my liver had probably had enough anyway. To celebrate our last night before flying to Australia, Nina, Luke and I went to Arab street which was just behind our hostel, and has lots of Arabic shops and restaurants, and had some absolutely delicious Turkish food, some of the nicest food I've had yet, but ridiculously filling, my stomach felt like a balloon afterwards. We said a sad goodbye to Luke, who knows when he is back in the UK again, and went back to the hostel to prepare for the next leg of our trip - bring on Australia!

Becca