After a last day in Medan (which is nothing to write home about really, so I won't) we left Indonesia and travelled on to Singapore.

Maybe it was the air conditioning, or the signs being in English, or maybe it was the fact that nobody tried to sell us anything that made us fall in love with Singapore a little bit. It was a well-needed breath of fresh air, after the thrill of Indonesia. By the time we left the airport, Si was actually in a bit of a gentlemanly delirium at how easy everything had been since getting off the plane.

After committing the small faux-pax of eating on the tube - and luckily avoiding the £250 fine for doing so - we arrived in the middle of the city to walk to our hostel. And we got lost. Apparently all that time in the southern hemisphere has jumbled my internal compass (that, or I wasn't fully paying attention). But the cloud had a huge silver lining because instead of finding the hostel we found cheap food at the first of many hawker stalls that we frequented during our time in SG.

We did eventually find our hostel. It was (and still is, I suppose) in the Little India district, which is low-rise, self-contained and quite strikingly different from the commercial centre of Singapore. The ethnic mix of people changes dramatically in a matter of two streets and there are tons of good Indian restaurants, many of them veggie. Heaven (for me, Si was less bothered).

That evening we began The Great Hunt for the Wide Angle Lens. Si had been contemplating exactly which lens he wanted for a while now, and had made his final decision; all that was left was to find the cheapest deal. On our way to the hostel we'd walked through one mall (mostly for the air conditioning) and found it to be full of electronics and camera shops. He found someone that sold his lens and got a price from them. So, bar set, that evening was devoted to finding the Digital Life mall and then buying said lens.

The Digital Life mall really is impressive. It's bigger than the Oracle in Reading and stuffed to the gills with electronics shops. It's the kind of place where you could easily lose a geek for hours. Unfortunately for Si (and maybe fortunately for me), by the time we got there almost everything in the Digital Life Mall had closed! So he swore a solemn oath to return another day and we contented ourselves with window shopping, eating and then a bit more exploring and photo taking, before heading back.

The next day we went on a paid walking tour of Singapore and learnt all about Armenians, nuns and Sir Stamford Raffles from a cheerful and lovely tour guide. She also took us to see some nice aerial views of the city and finally dropped us off at the (in)famous Raffles Hotel at the end of the tour.

The thing to do in the Raffles Hotel is visit the Long bar (which we did), throw the shells of the complimentary peanuts on the floor (which I did, Si mostly threw them at me) and drink a Singapore Sling (which neither of us did, because they're extortionate). The peanuts thing is a bit odd. We thought it was based on a film or something at first, but it seems to be the thing to do just because you can; and possibly because littering anywhere else is a massive no-no in Singapore and will land you a hefty fine.

After getting all the peanut dust out of my hair, we whiled away the rest of the afternoon looking around the theatres. That evening we set off in the direction of Chinatown to catch the "best view of Singapore" as recommended by our tour guide that morning. This is from a walkway that runs over the top of a complex of seven huge residential towers called The Pinnacle. We planned to be there for sunset at 7:30 pm, cameras in hand. But we were hampered almost every step of the way:
1. Tower C is wrong tower, please trot quickly to tower G.
2. Entrance to sky garden walkway (fifty floors up) closed on tower G please go back down and try another tower
3. Gate to sky garden walkway on tower F (fifty floors up again) cannot be opened as ticket was not purchased from invisible ticket booth at floor 1 of tower G.
4. Sunset basically finished.
5. Slump to the floor and watch fading light through the metal turnstile doors. Dogged as we are, we did eventually get onto the walkway before it was totally dark - after I tracked down the invisible ticket booth on floor 1 of tower G - and it was a lovely place to have a walk and see the city spread out below you.

The next day was shopping day. We went to Orchard road which is Singapore's Oxford street - only about a hundred times bigger. On reflection that was silly really because it's probably the most expensive place in all of South East Asia to go shopping, but I had a lovely time and bought some light clothes for the weeks ahead. Si returned to the Digital Life Mall and completed The Great Hunt for the Wide Angle Lens, ultimately buying it from that very first place we'd been to on the day we arrived.

That evening we went on a night safari at the Singapore zoo. We arrived there quite early at 8 pm to catch the guided car-train ride. We also hopped off and did a walking trail as soon as we could to see a few more animals. All in all, we saw leopards, lions, bats, civets, elephants, rhinos, hippos, otters and many many other animals that are perfectly happy to be awake at night for the paying tourist. We left, happy and only slightly smelling of bat poo at about 10:30pm. It's a cool idea for a zoo.

On our last day I did even more shopping while Si went to the National Museum of Singapore. Here he learnt all about Raffles and the founding of Singapore and apparently he got trapped against his will by an excellent exhibition all about food. We met up again in the afternoon and went to the Asian Life museum, which is really nicely done and packed full of interesting things. Then I made it up to Si for dragging him to veggie Indian restaurants and we went to a diner for a burger and chips. Finally, we watched the Avengers film. Thoroughly ridiculous, but a good way to end our time in lovely Singapore!