Hello Singapore! Funnily enough our friends Prodge and Alex who we travelled with in Indonesia happened to be passing through Changi airport at the same time as us. They were leaving to fly back to Jakarta and we were just arriving. So we took the opportunity to have a quick lunch and catch up with them at the airport which was nice. 

We met Mum, Dad and Matt at the hotel. What a lovely hotel it was too! We were being super spoilt. We had a fantastic room with literally the comfiest bed we've slept in in nine months as well as the biggest softest duvet and lots of cushions, amazing! We had a huge thunderstorm in the afternoon with the heaviest rain possible for a good few hours. Fun watching the lightning and listening to the thunder though. We hoped this wasn't a sign of the weather to come. Matt was due to fly back to the UK today as he was only staying with us for a week so we chilled out at the hotel until it was time for him to leave. Bye Matt!
 
After a good nights sleep the four of us decided to head to the Botanical Gardens the next day. The gardens themselves were huge! We spent a lot of time walking attempting to cover most areas. The highlights were the wildlife and the orchid park and centre for me. Upon wandering around one of the lakes we noticed that it was full of terrapins. Both in the water and quite a few sunbathing on the banks. Quite funny to watch. Then a huge splash of water and an enormous monitor lizard comes swimming straight past us. When you see them up close these guys really are massive. The terrapins dived for cover, I think he was looking for his next meal! We saw Kingfishers and pretty coloured dragon flies too. The orchid centre was just amazing. It held the largest collection of orchids in the world covering a good area of the park itself. Just so many beautiful orchids of all shapes and sizes. I was considerably annoying with my photo taking! We were all completely pooped by the end of the afternoon. So tiring walking for so long in the Singapore heat so we headed back.
 
My Mum had wanted to follow in my Grandad's footsteps and visit the Kranji War Memorial. He was able to come back to Singapore in 1985 as part of a trip organised by central government for ex POWs and war widows. He visited Kranji while he was here as part of his tour. We spent an hour or so here. Just so many lives lost. Very moving and emotional for us all. 
 
We spent the afternoon at Changi museum which is near the site of the old Changi jail where my Grandad was held during the war. The original jail was actually only demolished in 2000 and they rebuilt a new one which is still currently a jail today. The museum was pretty good with lots and lots of info boards to read which took a while to get around. We even think we spotted my Grandad's coat of arms for the regiment he served under. 
 
Busy day the next day! We headed to the Marina Bay area with the huge Marina Bay Sands hotel. One of the coolest buildings I've seen, very impressive and very tall! A five star luxury resort, Tom and I said we will stay there one day ;). There is a viewing platform at the very top where you can see some incredible views over Singapore. There is also a Sky Garden up there. Beautiful gardens including lots of palm trees which you can see from the ground. We intended to go up and take a look until we found out the Sky Garden is for guests only which is fair enough I guess. It was therefore considerably expensive just to go up to take a photo. So we took lots of photos from below instead. The hotel itself is an integrated resort with lots of top end expensive shops below it as well as a casino. Definitely worlds away from what we've been used to. It was linked to another shopping area called The Shoppes which was like a big shopping mall which had a canal and boats running through it! Lots of amazing restaurants and food too. We took a wander through drooling at all the crazily expensive stuff we weren't going to be able to afford ha! 
 
We wandered through all the shops and out the other side to where the Gardens by the Bay can be found. We thought we'd have a walk around there until we arrived and realised that it potentially could take us four hours to do. After half an hour walking to get there we were absolutely boiling as it was as it was such a hot sunny day. So we decided against it and stopped for lunch there instead. Next stop was down at the jetty where we set off on a 45 minute guided boat ride through the central business district. Some pretty impressive sky scrapers here plus lovely areas along the waters edge like Clarke Quay and Robertson's Quay which were lined with lots of lovely places to eat. Beautiful in the sunshine. We headed back to the Bay and past the famous Merlion. A strange lion-fish hybrid creature designed in the 80's as a tourist attraction! We did then have to escape into some air conditioning for a coffee as the heat was getting a bit much. With a bit more time to kill until the afternoon was over we visited the beautiful St Andrew's Cathedral and WWI War Memorial. 
 
Time for dinner and another food court/hawker centre type scenario near the bay. Always takes ages to decide what you want as there is always so much to choose from! A tasty dinner was had by all though. Lastly we went a picked a nice spot in the bay to watch the laser and light show they put on every evening for around 15-20 minutes. They light up the Marina Bay Sands Hotel in different coloured lights and have huge laser beams of different colours shining down into the bay. We got some nice shots as well as of the Singapore skyline in the evening. A lovely end to the day.
 
On our last day in Singapore Tom and I wanted to go off and explore the city some more as we'd enjoyed being in the bay area so much yesterday. Mum and Dad wanted to go and investigate the large shopping malls near our hotel. Tom and I went for a nice walk in Fort Canning Park. We walked along the river and headed to Clarke Quay as we wanted to check out all the restaurants there and have some lunch. There was so much choice as well as some impressive huge huge lobsters and king crabs in tanks. We found an Irish pub and I was very excited to be able to have ploughmans for lunch and Tom had sausages and mash, yum! We also had our first pint in a pint glass since we'd been away, a momentous occasion! Mum and Dad enjoyed their shopping trip though noted how much more expensive things are compared to the UK. Mum spotted a top in M&S she'd wanted back home. It was £50 here and £30 back home. 

In the evening we headed back to our hotel to get dressed up nicely for our long awaited visit to Raffles Hotel. My Mum had especially been looking forward to this. What a beautiful building. Just pure luxury. We walked all the way around the outside and around to the very grand front entrance. You can imagine that it hasn't changed one bit, very colonial. We headed to the Long Bar to have our obligatory Singapore Sling. This room was lovely too with a beautiful bar and peanut shells covering the floor. They also had rows of fans on the ceiling that wafted from side to side. You can imagine back in the day someone having to do this by hand all day long for the people that frequented this room. This was the first time I'd ever had a Singapore Sling too and it was absolutely delicious! My Mum was beaming from ear to ear the whole time we were here :). Think she enjoyed it what? After drinkies we took a wander downstairs and out through the courtyard. There was a nice gift shop selling all sorts of Raffles memorabilia. I was going around wishing I had room in my back pack or just some way of transporting numerous items home! I overheard a couple discussing with a member of staff the cost of flying two £200 tea sets back home, eek! We had a lovely time here. Perhaps Tom and I will add Raffles to our list of places we'll stay at one day! Hehe! 
 
Overall, a definite thumbs up for Singapore. What a great city! There is just so much to do here we'll definitely be back soon. Five days was just not long enough :). Though very expensive it was just so nice to be somewhere where everything is just so clean and everything runs so smoothly for a change.