Founded in 1819 by Sir Stamford Raffles, Singapore is a British influenced country but much cleaner and warmer than the UK. The name means Lion City and is the smallest country in South East Asia located at the southern most tip of the Malay Peninsula.

Singlish is the language spoken in the streets and everyone we met spoke good English. We were expecting some rain showers, but they never came and we had a lovely warm sunny day.

Singapore is very clean and it sometimes feels a little too clean, security cameras are everywhere and the street police issue fines for litter dropping, chewing gum and more rule breaking.

We took a taxi to the Singapore Flyer which is like the London Eye, however it was closed for maintenance and we were recommended to go to the Marina Bay Sands Hotel just a short walk away. The hotel looks like it has a boat perched on top and has a fantastic viewing platform on the 56th floor. The hotel has amazing views and was much higher than Singapore Flyer, the infinity pool on top of hotel looked very inviting in the hot sun.

We took the Original Tour bus for a hop on hop off trip throughout the city. Our first stop was at Little India where we had lunch. We're not sure how the people in Singapore keep so slim, we had fried fish balls, fried bread, samosas and onion in fried dough! We looked around the shops but the prices were quite high and we'll save our Indian shopping until we get to Cochin.

The tour bus stopped at Raffles Hotel, a Singapore institution and we alighted for Stuart to have a Singapore Sling at the Long Bar, at $30, we decided to keep the glass as a souvenir! Very touristy!

We called at Merlion Park, here are statues of the half fish and half lion, the singa or lion represents the animal Sumatran Prince and represent the ancient sea town.

A short taxi ride and we were in Chinatown, a very busy area but so much cleaner and neater than the Chinatown we had experienced in Hong Kong and Bangkok. We headed to Absolute Bar to socialise with the locals. We couldn't miss up on the chance for some Chinese dessert. The Traditional Dessert shop served shaved ice, Stuart had green tea and red beans and JB had raspberry. Very refreshing, we feel this needs an Orlando franchise!

Our last call was at the Hindu Temple near Chinatown, the oldest in Singapore.

Back on board we heard about another earthquake at the Thai and Burma borders, we do seem to be making waves as we go along, the quake was felt as far away as Bangkok. On Sunday we will find ourselves at Patong Beach in Phuket, a lazy day by the sea is what is planned, we'll see what happens, Phuket was famous for it's Boxing Day tsunami!!