Greetings from down under! I'm afraid we didn't manage to find an internet cafe or anything in Singapore (not that we were looking too hard, we were on holiday after all!), so our first update is from Sydney (hot and sunny by the way, how's the weather in England ;-) ).

Singapore was lovely, though extremely hot and humid! We treated ourselves for the first leg of our travels (and for my birthday) and stayed in a lovely boutique hotel called Scarlet Hotel. We got a complimentary drink when we arrived, before the porter took a moment to point out the umbrella that came with the room. It's a little cause for concern when that's a feature that needs to be pointed out! The food was great and, as we mostly ate at street stalls, very cheap. They have these hawker centers, which are massive collections of essentially street food stalls, but all under one roof with communal seating in the middle. Each stall sells something different so you just wander around, point a a picture of anything you like, and then take it to a random table and dive in. We happily tucked into bowls of I-don't-know-what and noodles, even when MacDonalds and Starbucks were just around the corner!

Tuesday 1st March - Singapore Flyer. Our first day started with breakfast in bed and ended on the Singapore Flyer with cocktails. Not a bad way to start your 30s! (It is Lindsay's birthday today). We decided to properly treat ourselves and splash out on some room service for breakfast in bed. Then we got dressed up and headed to the Singapore Flyer for a cocktail trip. For a little bit extra you can have cocktails and nibbles in a special car. It's not exclusive though, you could be sharing your car with anyone else who also paid extra. In our case this was just one other couple. It was a lovely trip, going up over Singapore and getting to see the skyscrapers and massive hotels from a completely different angle, as well as appreciating the smaller ones inbetween that you wouldn't normally notice at all. When it came to an end we discovered that the other couple had actually paid to go around twice, so they didn't get off. And as no-one else got on they got to have an flight all to themselves - very nice!

Wednesday 2nd March - Singapore Zoo. This zoo is lovely but enormous! It was wonderful to walk around, but the heat got to us in the end and we only made it around two-thirds of it.

Thursday 3rd March - Sentosa Island and Singapore Night Safari. This is pretty much just a big resort with nice beaches. It does feature the most southern point of contintental Asia and a long zip line though! The southern most point is a little island just off the main Sentosa Island, accessible by rope bridge. The zip line goes from a point up in the hills on the main island to a little beach at the end, so we were zipping right above the trees. We also witnessed the biggest storm either of us had ever seen. At one point the lightning cracked right above us (it's okay, we were indoors!) and the thunder clap from it was deafening!

In the evening we went to Singapore Night Sarfari, which is a purpose-built nocturnal zoo, separate from the other zoo. This was really good as there is hardly any lighting (obviously) so animal enclosures seem to sneak up on you through the dark, and as you wander around all you can hear is creatures rustling about.

Firday 4th March - Bird Park and Raffles Hotel. The Bird Park would would have been more fun if we hadn't had to make a hasty retreat from as Lindsay got mobbed by mosquitoes! She got bitten ten times in a as many minutes - not fun! Chris has just pointed out how he didn't get bitten once. Yeah, thanks Chris. Otherwise the Bird Park was really nice. There's one section where you can pay for some sugar water and got and feed the parrots. The parrots know the score though, and it's not long before there are several off them queueing! The Park also has the world's largest aviary apparently, but we didn't get to see it because of the mosquitoes.

Right, time's up for now. Till the next time!

Lindsay and Chris