Next stop, Singapore.... we arrive and take a long train journey to Chinatown, where we have booked a hostel for 2 nights.The train is pretty packed so a bit of a mission with our bags, plus at first we didn't know how long the journey was, so we kept our bags on our backs... bad mistake as the journey ended up being long and then we found it hard to get bags off as it was packed!!

Luckily the hostel was easy to find and the owner helpful and friendly. We're staying in our first hostel, and one of the biggest room shares of 16 people, although we only counted 14. Luckily the hostel is very tidy and clean and looks pretty newly refurbished so we're off to a good start. A quick dump of our bags and shower and we're off into chinatown to the tourist info centre. I wrote up a load of notes in a great travel book Kat gave me from Australia but bloody left it at home, picking up the new one she gave me and James for this trip instead, thinking it would be nice to take a fresh new book on the trip. Whoops! Never mind, I think I can remember the majority of the info from our research and some we have saved on PC in messages to each other.

Singapore is smaller than we thought, and we book onto a Hop on Hop off tour to find our feet started the next morning.We have a good walk around Chinatown in the evening, James enjoying some locals food from a massive indoor area with about 25 stalls and canteen style tables and chairs packed with locals. I wasn't sooo adventurous as to be honest the place didn't look too tidy or clean with lots of messy tables and people everywhere but we found a freshly cleaned table and James went and picked up some food, me requesting plain rice so that if I didn't like the other dishes he chose or they were too spicy at least I had rice!! Overall the food was good and James felt it was excellent but a little hard to order from diferent places and then take back to your table. All the stalls sold different things we wanted so he had to go to 3/4 places and then get drinks from somewhere else. I'm sure there was an easier way the locals managed it but hey ho!

We slept pretty well in our hostel for the first night, it was a little noisy to begin with but once we got to sleep we slept well which was needed after our overnight flight from Dubai.

We started our hop on hop off tour and enjoyed how clean and airy the city felt compared to the dusty and hot dubai. One thing I didn't say about Dubai is that the city, although very beautiful with its amazing buildings, it's being developed all the time so there are lots of road works and the pathways are unfinished in places and of course desert sandy like. Singapore was grassy, finished and super clean with the b=amazing buildings too!

During the evening we headed to Gardens by the Bay, which is basically a massive garden centre, but VERY poshly put together, a little like Eden Project but better! The entry price is free to look around the grounds and the Supertree Groves... massive trees that light up at night and present two evening light shows with music. We decided not to go inside the conservatories thinking they would be blooming hot inside but looked inside and it looked beautiful with waterfalls and great theming. Plus they were about £30 each to enter.

The supertree grove light and music show was lovely, we lay back on the grass and watched as the trees lights came on as the sun went down and then feeling a little hungry and seeing others by us eating pizza, we treated ourselves to a pizza and sat back enjoying the show. It was really beautiful.

We then crossed the road, through an amazing hotel to the Marina side and watched another light and music show but with water. This was amazing too, the fountains squirted water high and wide into the air and then a projector projected images onto the water. It was like nothing we'd seen before and really very clever.

We're sure we could have fit more into our trip of Singapore and proberly did the most relaxing things to do but enjoyed our brief stop off for the day. We slept really well on the 2nd night, until 10:45am the next morning which spooked us a little as we had an 8 hour train journey ahead of us to Kuala Lumper. The train left at 2pm and we had to find it first, so we set off on the train again, remembering this time to take our bags off at the beginning of the journey!