Well, we are now officially calling ourselves backpackers! We refused to pay the 70 quid for one night at a hotel in Mumbai near the airport, so we decided to spend the 19 hours we had free in the airport. Not a great idea since you were not allowed to sleep and there was only one food stall with awful food! Oh well we survived, and what a change Singapore airport was. We liked it immidiately, it was clean, organised and so quiet. Very orderly, just what we like!

So onto Singapore, what a contrast from where we have come from. I don't think there could have been a bigger contrast. We managed to get to our hostel no problem...It was called the prince of wales and was in little India, and it did feel like India. We dumped our bags and had a couple of pints before having a curry! can you believe our first meal in a different country was curry!!!!

On our first day we went to Sentosa Island, which was gorgeous, with a man made beach and loads of things to do. We first went to underwater world, an aquariam that has a travelator built into the ocean. We both really enjoyed this, especially the sharks. Thats until one went for Matthews hat when we were stood next to the glass chatting! We then went to a dolphin show (with pink dolphins). We really enjoyed it, the dolphins are so clever, but we prefered it when we saw them really close to the shore in Varkala(sorry we forgot to mention this in our blog). Next up was the carlsberg tower which gave us stunning views of Singapore and Sentosa as the sun went down.

One of the stangest things we found about finding our way around Singapore was that nearly every underground stop finished with a shopping centre. Trying to find the exit to the streets was a nightmare, particularly when most of them looked the same. The second day was spent sightseeing. This is definately a cosmopolitan city with the financial district intermingled with old colonial buildings and the odd bit of greenery. Fed up with the shortcomings we have been finding with our camera we decided to price them up. Technology is cheaper to buy than the UK and within no time we were adding more weight to our already over burdening backpacks with a semi professional one with a better zoom. I hope you can see the difference in the photos as some have been taken with the old one and many more with the new one.

The buildings are very tall and are kept immaculate. Outside lots of them were modern sculptures and fountains. Raffles place just a small patch of grass now in between dozens of skyscrapers. This is where we sat and watched people rushing around on their dinner breaks. God it is good to be out of the rat race! However it did seem different as most people seemed happy and not so glummed faced, maybe Singapore is a place that is actually nice to work, well we thought that anyway.

We also went onto to see the Cavenagh bridge and to the Raffles hotel for the customary Singapore sling. We chose the billard room to take ours instead of the long bar and got a few stares when we got the mini tripod out to take a photo of us both with the slings. It cost us $50's but was worth it to have a quick look around the hotel. We tried to make some of this budget back with a bit of street stall eating later in Chinatown.

The main attraction in Singapore is the shopping and Orchard road takes the mickey out of Oxford street. Every major designer seems to have a boutique here and you could spend a whole day in one shopping centre. There are even whole places designated to a particular need like an IT centre. Jacks you would love this place.

We had 4 nights in Singapore and on our last day we decided to do a dry run to find the bus station for our departure the next day. Once we found it the heavens opened with a big storm which lasted over an hour. We both got drip wet through getting back to cover. Actually we should have been abit more canny as the previous day it rained at exactly the same time. This was the first rain we had encountered so far, not bad 11 weeks until rain. We dried off in guess what a shopping centre!

We liked Singapore that much and partly because we fly out of here to Hong Kong in April, we have decided to stay another 4 nights. So we may add more to this blog when we return.