Our trip from KL to Singapore was possibly the best ever!!!!! Scrap what I said about the nice mini-bus from Penang to the Cameron Highlands! We turned up at the bus station and went down to the platforms and waited for a while as we were early. When the bus turned up we loaded our stuff and got on. I literally could not believe my eyes - full on lounging arm chairs which massaged!!! yes...when the driver was coming through checking tickets he pressed a button and the chair starting vibrating!!!! I was also literally in the lying down position - the journey was so comfortable!!! Arrived in Singapore (begrudgingly as wanted the journey to last longer!) after going through a painless border procedure. We went on the hunt for cash and then got a taxi to our hostel in Little India. We were staying at the 'Inn Crowd' and after checking in we went for some lunch at a ....you guessed it....Indian Restaurant. It was possibly THE best aloo ghobi (potato and cauliflour) i have ever had!!! Then went back to the hostel, did some chilling, drank some beer and then went out for some food.

The next day we walked through China Town down to the marina but on the way found the most amazing building which kept us entertained for a good few hours!!!

http://www.lasalle.edu.sg/cgi-bin/WebObjects/LASALLE.woa/wa/page?pid=113

There was also another one which I don't know the name of so will post some pictures asap. We walked through Raffles (although we didn't hang around as we weren't suitably dressed in our flip flops!!! We Went to the Concert Hall (pic above) and looked around before getting some food at Starbucks (as it was the cheapest place to eat at the marina!!!). Afterwards we headed up to Norman Foster's Imperial Court building which is much more impressive inside than out and then onto a mediterranean looking area down on the marina front. We walked along the row of bars and restaurants and then went back to the hostel. Back there we relaxed for a while before getting the Night Safari bus at 6.30. We got chatting to a couple of Aussie girls whilst waiting who had booked flights to Vietnam from Perth (with Singapore as a stopover) and not knowing they needed Vietnamese visas were stranded in Singapore until they could get them!! The night safari was really good. We started off going to the show which was basically an over the top exhibition of some of the smaller animals there. Afterwards we got the train round which takes you on a circuit of place taking in loads of animals - lions, elephants, cheetahs etc etc. You could get on and off taking in different animals and I was particularly disturbed to see grown adults banging on the glass to get a cheetahs attention. The cheetah was just pacing which to me said it wasn't happy. In the end I just had to walk away. Overall though the safari was really good and definately recommended, as the animals are in open enclosures and not badly treated (like I have heard is the case in most Asian zoos).

The second full day we had in Singapore we spent doing a lot of random stuff! We went over to Sentosa and laughed at how over the top and 'theme-parkish' it is. There was a a nice area though called 'Sentosa Flowers' which had some parts reminiscent of Park Guell in Barcelona. Other than that there wasn't much to see - the man-made beaches didn't look appetising with the many container ships in view (the massive dock is right next door). Back on the mainland of Singapore we went to the Tiger Live Beer Tour which was so much fun! We were taken round the warehouse building being told the story of the history of the beer brand. There was a 4-D video which showed how corn eventually become beer....and some of the characters involved were known as hip-hops!!!! At the end we had a go at pulling a pint of 'super-chilled' tiger beer. We had to get a '2 finger' head and if we failed we had to down the pont. That's what the barman told the boys.....but when it was my go he told me I could just take a sip! The boys were having none of it, and needing no encouragement I downed the beer which was so cold it gave me brain freeze and made my eyes water! We got another pint free as well as Tiger Beer Glass! We then went back to the shopping mall (where the MRT runs to to get to Sentosa), grabbed some lunch and then got the MRT to the red dot design museum (which was shut!) so we went over the road to a museum which had exhibitions on the plans for developing Singapore which was really interesting and really well laid out. After that we went back to the hostel and spent the evening relaxing and we ended up staying up quite late watching a film with a girl from....Hayling Island! (Small world!)

Our last day in Singapore was spent wasting time really! We got the MRT to Orchard Road (the famous shopping street) and I sent a parcel home. After that we spent the day wandering to and fro along the road looking for PSP games for Sam, Lunch and then the Botanic Gardens which we think was incorrectly labelled on the map. After that we went to the cinema with 4 hours to waste but there was nothing on so we went back to hostel, had our tarot read (I asked a very vague question - what is in store for me in the next 12 months and got a very vague answer! The only part I can remember is that im very objective - wrong!!!) and then left for the airport.

We caught the MRT which seemed to take ages (an hour!) and then had to get a monorail to the right ternimal (1). We checked in, grabbed food and then went to the lounge where we boarded pretty much straight away! The way it worked there was that we didn't have to put our bags through a scanner until we got to the gate and they didnt ask for make-up to be put in a clear bag or anything and I accidentally even managed to get tweezers through!!! The flight was awful in terms of timing. We got on and were hanging around for about 30 mins waiting for god knows what. When we finally took off (about 11pm) we were served food within an hour and then landed in Darwin at about 2am, waited for about 2 hours because of an electrical storm and then flew on to Cairns where we arrived about 8am (having been served breakfast an hour into that flight!