Bon soir bon soir, comment allez vous mes cabriolets? Mange-tout Rodney, mange-tout. That's right my friends, we are in Singapore. Which has absolutely nothing to do with badly spoken French, but I've got to reach my word count somehow. Only kidding, I swear that this will be a nice and short entry. Our flight to Singapore from Cairns was pretty uneventful - we are much indebted to Rich for the lift to the airport....once we had eventually found his car (it makes a nice change that he lost his car - normally it's just his keys). Anyway, back to the journey - for some reason the air hostesses and hosts kept on bringing me rum and cokes on the flight (Farida says it's because I kept on asking for them, but I think she's just part of the big conspiracy to ruin my liver), which made the in-flight films, "Failure to Launch" (a truly shocking romantic comedy...) and "The Pink Panther" (by this time, after a few rum and cokes, I was actually wetting myself at some scenes, but still a shocker of a movie), slightly more bearable. We eventually stepped off the air-conditioned 'plane at about 7pm local time - after a 6 hour flight - into a cooling 29 degrees Celcius evening breeze. Sweeeeeeeeet. I think that maybe, Sam, that should be entered into the Interesting Facts Book. Singapore is an awesome city - we're staying in Little India, just north of Chinatown, and not too far from the colonial center and everywhere else here. I could definitely stay longer than the two nights we've decided on, but equally it's going to be nice to head up to Kuala Lumpur tomorrow morning and start checking out some other incredible places. First, the footy. A midnight kickoff I believe - can't wait! Anyway, what else... Oh yes - we went to the Raffles Hotel this morning to check out the museum there - back in the beginning of the 20th century Mr Kipling (he makes exceedingly good cakes) wrote about the hotel, "the food at the Raffles Hotel is as excellent as the rooms are bad ... when in Singapore, feed at Raffles, sleep at the Hotel L'Europe!" ... the marketing team, such as it may have been back then, shamelessly decided to quote good old Ruddy's words to promote their business - "the food at the Raffles Hotel is as excellent as the rooms are good ... when in Singapore, feed at Raffles, sleep at Raffles"! Good job plagiarism laws back then weren't quite as stringent as they are nowadays...or whatever that would be classed as - libel? Moving on. Next was the rainforest in the middle of the city - turtles in the lakes and squirrels, spiders and all manner of other little critters in the forest, and thirty steps away from some of the busiest roads - though you wouldn't know it. Pretty special anyway. Then back to Raffles with a couple of guys we met, in the city for an overpriced Singapore Sling and some throwing of monkeynut shells on the floor. Apparently it's tradition, but the waiter who was going to be clearing up after us didn't seem so impressed. I think that's about it. A nice itemised bit of bloggage for you. Hope it was as interesting as you've come to expect....mwahahahaha. Oh yes, I forgot to mention that other thing that happened. At around 11:30am this morning, standing in the Singapore Marina, I decided it would be a great idea to put a python around my neck. A live python. That must have been 6 feet long (well....maybe). And heavy. And it felt so incredibly weird when it started moving in my hands... Well, anyway, never thought I'd do that - twas an experience. And I'm still here to tell the tale. Hope you're all well and happy, lots of love to all, xxxx ps- apologies for the photos that go with this bit of blog - they don't seem to have any of Singapore - and while a Bengalese tiger is very pretty, I've not seen any here.