5.03.2008 - Arrived after the 6 hour flight from Cairns, with very brief stop over in Darwin to SINGAPORE!!

Singapore airport has every shop restaurant and service you would ever need, not to mention the pool on the roof and the fact Ed can buy his cigarette brand here (Regal) - it is massive and SO clean I think we could have quite happily spent our entire trip here!! During our week here - that was originally only meant to be 3 days! We managed to get ourselves booked on SIX tours - City tour and Heritage tour buses continuously drove round the city everyday with commentary on everything which you could hop on and off, an amphibious Duck tour, a river cruise, the moonlight trip over to Sentosa Island to watch the Songs of the Sea show and finally the Red Lantern tour to the red light district area which we didn't realize but we were actually staying in.Next day moved to the Inn Crowd Hostel in Little India - where Kate stayed on previous trip so knew it was good! (Apart from the exceedingly loud snorer we had to put up with in our dorm for three nights!!) We loved staying in Little India which is a bustling little with market stalls and arcades - full of colour and aromas - although we didn't manage to find a decent curry here!! And still havent found one to beat the Rajpoot!We are thoroughly enjoying the cheapness of the food from the hawker centres here, especially after Australia where we lived on a diet of pasta with butter and salt! Now we're in Asia we can afford to eat twice a day - it's a real treat - Here's to the next four months of rice and noodles!! Woohoo!It didn't take us long to fall in love with Singapore, hence the fact we stayed twice as long as we originally planned and wanted to do every tour going….but there is so much to see! The famous shopping district of Orchard Road, colourful Chinatown, the man made island of Sentosa, the Singapore Flyer, the Night Safari, various Temples and Mosques, the Merlion, so many shopping malls and markets, there is even a 24 hour shopping mall!!! These Singaporeans love to shop!The one thing we definitely had to do whilst in Singapore was go to the Long Bar at the beautiful Raffles Hotel and order a most outrageously priced 'Singapore Sling' each! At $24 a piece we just had the one, but definitely got our moneys worth through the amount of photos we took and monkey nuts we threw all over the floor! Singapore is certainly as clean and safe as everyone says it is. It is so easy to get around on the MRT train/underground system and everyone speaks English, we can see why lots of English people move over here! It is a beautiful and vibrant city and although you can travel from one side of the country to the other in just over an hour there is certainly enough to keep you entertained for a very long time! This is one place we have still not seen enough of and will definitely be returning one day!!