The flight from Cambodia was short and pleasant. Upon taking off we got a bird's eye view of the extent of the flooding, which was worse than we'd realised. Huge areas of the countryside were covered in brown water, with only the roads and the odd cluster of buildings rising above. We partook in some snacks and juice and in an hour and a half, had landed at Singapore.

The imimgration process at Singapore was one of the quickest and most efficient we'd ever encountered, and we were through and reuinited with our bags in no time. At a desk near the exit we arranged a shuttle bus to the hostel we'd booked, then waited by the exit for it. Soon we had our bags on the bus and we set off towards the city.

We were immediately struck by the clean, neat orderly atmosphere of the city. It provided quite a contrast to the chaos of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, which we had become quite used to. We drove along a highway between wide green areas, with colourful tower blocks, the government-built HDB flats, beyond this.

Soon we were in amongst buildings and found ourselves in Little India. Colourful two-storey shop houses with wooden shutters and arched, covered porch areas in front lined the streets, and brightly patterned arches saying 'Happy Deepavali' were erected along the length of the main street as it was just prior to that Hindu festival.

We were dropped off at our hostel, the Mitraa Inn and checked in. The place was brand new and undergoing a 'soft opening' so we had got a reasonable rate for our room. We were shown to a clean 6 bed dorm where we found a big one-armed guy snoring away in a lower bunk. We dumped our bags and then headed back down to reception, where we'd arranged to meet a former colleague of my Dad's, Moh.

Moh was waiting for us in reception and we all greeted each other, before deciding what we would do that evening. Moh had a few ideas and we surrendered to her local knowledge, asking her to take us anywhere. We then left the hostel, walked up Serangoon road, the main street in Little India, to the nearest MRT (subway) station. Inside the impeccably clean station we bought our tickets then waited at the well-ordered platform, in front of glass doors for our train to arrive.

We took the subway to the most south-westerly stop, near Sentosa island which has been developed as a theme park. We emerged from the station, walked past a big shopping mall and then across the road to the Food Republic Beer Garden. This was a big rectangular area with tables and seating in the middle, a stage in one corner and a vast number of food stalls around the perimeter.

We browsed the various stalls, checking out all the food on offer, then ordered a variety of fried delights from one stall. There were prawn crackers, spring rolls and various other things including some sausages that were like a spicy cross between pakora and white pudding. We also had some BBQ stingray from another stall. To wash it down, we took advantage of a happy hour deal and ordered some Singapore slings.

We ate our food and chatted with Moh over a few more cocktails, while some local bands performed on the stage, then set off to head back to our hostel. We went through one of the many huge shopping malls Singapore is famous for to pick up some toiletries, then said goodnight to Moh and made our way to the MRT station. We rode the efficient subway back to the station near our place then walked back, under the bright Happy Deepavali signs blinking above us.

In our room we found the snoring one-armed man, still snoring in bed. There was also an African guy who spent every waking moment on his laptop, and most of that time talking on Skype. Despite these disturbances we managed to get to sleep, albeit an occasionally interrupted one.

In the morning we got up and went down to the new, clean but tiny kitchen in the hostel, just a bedroom that had been retrofitted with some counters. We had some toast, boiled eggs and tea then booked some tickets for a trip to the famous Singapore zoo and night safari the following day, before heading out for a look around the city.

We walked up through the busy streets of Little India, along the covered pavements in front of the colourful shophouses lining the road, until we reached a main junction. We were looking for a stop for one of the open-topped tour buses which we hoped to see the city from. At the junction, we spotted one waiting at traffic lights opposite us, waiting to turn right. We sprinted down the road in the direction it was going to go, making it to a bus stop just as it pulled up. We hopped on and bought a ticket which would let us ride any of the three different sightseeing bus lines throughout the city.

We ended up only going a bit down the road before we stopped outside another huge shopping mall at the foot of some huge skyscrapers, around the 'fountain of wealth'. This was the main terminus for the tour buses and we had to wait on the bus around 15 minutes before it set off again on its route. We stayed on the bus as it drove through the forest of spotless skyscrapers in downtown Singapore, past the Singapore Flyer big wheel, along the side of Marina Bay with a view across to the striking Marina Bay Sands hotel, through Chinatown with more pretty shophouses and towering pastel-coloured HDB flats, until we reached the famous Orchard Road.

We got off on Orchard Road, and looked around at the long street lined with shopping mall upon shopping mall stretching seemingly endlessly in either direction, with flashy designer stores left and right. We wandered around some of these malls for a while, eventually ending up in a food court on the 5th level of one of the smaller ones. These food courts were everywhere in Singapore, and seemed to be where most people ate. It was easy to understand why, as each one had scores of counters serving every kind of cuisine imaginable, at good prices and in our experience of good quality, with a huge central seating area. We decided to go for some Hainanese chicken rice, a typical Singapore dish, which we ordered from one counter. We were served a plate of rice cooked in chicken broth, as well as some clear chicken soup and sliced steamed chicken. We sat and ate this, finding it very tasty, then left the mall.

We wandered back down Orchard Road, stopping to have a look in the Vertu mobile phone shop where some of the phones were priced at around £65,000, then into the entirely different Lucky Plaza mall. This was a grubby, warren-like collection of shops, 90% of which seemed to be money exchanges or courier services, with the rest being cheap clothes shops. The whole place was completely packed with who we found out later were the city's Phillipine housekeepers, who congregated there on a Sunday and obviously sent money and other things home. We were in the place to try and find a post office, as we had some stuff we hoped to send home. However, after a fruitless 15 minutes searching we got frustrated and left, to try and reboard a tour bus.

We waited at a stop in Orchard Road for ages until finally our tour bus turned up. We got a seat on the open top deck and just relaxed as the bus took us through more of the city centre and through Little India back to the Suntec hub. Here, we hopped off and grabbed a fruit shake inside the nearby mall before trying to reboard a different tour bus. We were told we weren't allowed drinks on board, so had to practically inhale our fruit shakes, resulting in acute brain freeze. We managed to finish in time to get on the bus though.

We rode this new bus along a different route through the city, taking in some more sights including both the old and new supreme court buildings, some more epic skyscrapers and other great buildings before we stopped in Kampong Glam, the Malay area of the city. We got off here and had a brief walk around, admiring the beautifully preserved colourful shophouses with their wooden shutters and pastel-hued facades, and the Masjid Sultan, an impressive mosque building with big golden pointed domes atop its towers. We completed a short circuit of the district, in time to get back on the next tour bus that passed.

The bus continued through the streets, back through the CBD with its soaring glass towers, eventually driving out around Marina Bay and stopping at Marina Bay Sands. We decided to get off here to have a look around, and walked over to the main doors of the hotel, craning our necks to peer up the three huge towers topped with a curving, ship-like structure. We walked inside the first tower to find the interior just as impressive. We were in a gargantuan atrium, stretching high up into the tower and hung with a massive sculpture of interconnected metal wires like some kind of molecular model. When we managed to stop staring around us, we took a walk through the towers. On the way, we stopped at a box office desk to make an enquiry, on a whim, about the availability of tickets for the upcoming performances of the Lion King musical, which we'd seen advertised everywhere in the city since we arrived and which we'd both always wanted to see. We found out that there were actually two seats remaining for that night's performance and that we'd be able to take advantage of some special offers to get a discounted price. Although the seats were in different areas of the theatre, we decided to go for it.

With our tickets bought, we decided as it was already mid-afternoon we would just hang around the huge Marina Bay Sands complex until the show in the evening. Therefore we walked through the three massive, interconnected towers of the hotel, before taking an underground walkway across the road in front of the hotel, to 'The Shoppes'. This quaintly named retail centre was in fact a gigantic 4-level glass-ceilinged tunnel of every imaginable type of store, with canals running through it, huge fountains, an ice rink and a massive food court. We had a look around some of the shops, then ended up the food court where we had some tasty Malaysian food.

After eating we made our way out from the mall, under the impressive lotus-shaped exhibition centre building down to the water's edge. From here we had a great view towards the downtown skyline, which we watched as the sun set and the lights came on on the various skyscrapers. Eventually it was time to head in and find the theatre, which was actually one of two built side-by-side just off the shopping mall. We entered into a striking white lobby which was a bit like the Guggenheim museum in New York, bought some expensive Marina Bay Sands water and popcorn, then split up to go and find our respective seats, at opposite sides of the theatre up in the balcony.

We took our seats and the show soon began. We had seen pictures and some TV spots about the musical, but watching it first hand was fantastic. The costume and stage design was incredible, with the the actors dressed as African animals, the giraffes and elephants being most impressive with the former walking on all fours on long stilts and the latter in a group inside a full-size elephant costume. All the set designs were wonderfully realised, with ingenious effects in numerous scenes. We both watched enraptured for the first act, met up briefly in the lobby during the interval, then returned for the equally enjoyable second act.

After the show we filed out of the theatre and out of the building along with everyone else, then made our way under the illuminated zeppelin-on-Stonehenge hotel building, across a bridge linking back to the main island and then found our way to a nearby MRT station. With a couple of changes on the MRT, we soon found ourselves back in Little India where we walked back to our hostel for a shower before bed. Once again our African roommate spent most of the night on Skype, including receiving calls at 4am, whilst the one-armed man snored away in his bed.

The next morning we got up, had breakfast then walked up the road to a nearby hotel where we waited for our zoo pickup. A bus soon arrived and we hopped in and were whisked out of the city on the efficient highways, to the Zoo along the banks of the Seletar reservoir.

We flashed our pre-bought tickets then entered the zoo, where we spent the rest of the day until just before closing time. We first made a beeline for the elephant show which was scheduled to start very soon. We got some great seats for this and watched the obviously well looked-after elephants following the commands of their mahouts as they performed graceful manouevers and displayed their strength and intelligence. After the elephant show, we headed to another nearby auditorium for a rainforest show with an environmental message, featuring an orang utan, otters, and some ring-tailed lemurs. After the show, we went to the restaurant at the centre of the zoo where we had a tasty biryani set to share, finishing just in time to start a circuit of some of the exhibits coinciding with feeding time.

We walked past the large island home to the zoo's orangutans, up and past a white rhino enclosure then watched the cheetahs, then African lions, then giraffes being fed. All the animals looked healthy and happy, and the enclosures were large and open which made us feel fine about their being in confinement. From the African area we hightailed it across the zoo to the primate kingdom, in time to watch various species of apes and monkeys being fed on their extensive, island enclosures. From there we headed to the large Rift Valley exhibit where a huge group of Hamadryas baboons lived. We spent quite a while watching these hilarious Tina Turner lookalikes as they did backflips and jumped up and down in the hopes of getting some bananas we bought to chuck to them.

From the baboons we walked past the gorgeous white tigers and through some other exhibits to the orangutan island to watch their feeding. Unfortunately the feeder was nowhere to be found but we spent quite a while watching these incredible primates as they swung around on their huge climbing frame, hiding in sacks and rolling around. The star of the show was a little baby orangutan who was exceptionally cute.

We did another circuit of the zoo after this, to see some of the other animals we'd missed. We caught the feeding of the incredible jaguar, then explored the 'fragile rainforest', an enclosed netted jungle area filled with butterflies, flying foxes, ringtailed lemurs and exotic birds, as well as a hilarious three toed sloth. After that we saw the feeding of the proboscis monkeys with their odd, big noses and then the mandrill and chimapnzees being fed. After that we watched a final show featuring an acrobatic sealion, before making our way to the exit just before closing time.

From the zoo we walked just a short distance to the entrance of the night safari. As the actual safari didn't open for an hour and a half, we had some time to kill so we ate a tasty but overpriced burger at a restaurant near the entrance, before watching a fire-eating and -spinning show on a nearby outdoor stage. I became a reluctant particpant in this show when I was dragged on stage and forced to remove my t-shirt, while the fire-eaters jumped around and breathed gouts of flame near me. At one point they made me lean back on my knees on the stage and cover my eyes, only to run off and hide leaving me alone looking even more of an idiot in the middle of the stage. After my 3 minutes of fame, I chucked on my t-shirt and we headed into the night safari.

The safari was basically just another zoo, with nocturnal animals and some of the same animals from the main zoo. You could take various walking paths through the exhibits dotted around the surrounding forest, and ride a tram which followed a route around the whole site. As well as this, there was a show with 'creatures of the night', which we made our first stop. The show featured a hyena, some recycling otters, and a big snake and was alright, but not great.

After the show, we went for a wander along some of the walking paths, seeing some fishing cats prowling around a stream and little mouse deer foraging on the forest floor. One of the paths went through a fiberglass cave full of bats and across a prettily lit suspension bridge across a dark gorge. After this walk, we got on the tram for the first part of the circuit, where we passed various enclosures with the most interesting inhabitants being the hyenas and lions.

Halfway along the tram route we got off and had a drink and snack at a rest stop, before completing another walking trail which took in some netted enclosures containing flying foxes and flying squirrels, of which the latter were sadly not to be seen. This trail also allowed us to see beautiful cloud leopards and gave us a good view over the large lion enclosure where we watched the majestic cats prowl around.

After the trail, we got back on the tram for the last part of the circuit where we saw numerous types of exotic deer and cattle as well as elephants and tigers. When we returned to the start of the tram route, we decided to call it a night and left the safari to wait for a bus back to town. We'd thoroughly enjoyed our day but were pretty tired out after all the walking around in the heat. When the bus arrived we piled on and rode it to the last stop, at the hotel where we'd been picked up that morning. It was nice cruising through the streets of the city on the way there with everything lit up but we were glad once we'd walked back to our hostel where we relaxed for a while before getting to sleep.

The next day we got up, and after breakfast asked about changing rooms in the hostel as we were sick of the noisy and inconsiderate guy in our room, not to mention the one-armed world snoring champion. Once we had shifted our stuff, we headed out to a nearby bus station to try and buy tickets for a bus up to Mersing in Malaysia the following day. We were annoyed to find that the bus was fully booked for the next day, so we decided we'd just stay an extra day in Singapore although it was expensive, because we were enjoying it. We booked tickets for the day after, then set off to see some other parts of town.

We walked through some backstreets of Little India that we hadn't seen, until we arrived in a central area of large buildings. One of these was Sim Lim Square, a shopping centre famous as a place to buy electronic goods. We went into the large, open building where electronics, computer and gadget stores spanned some 6 levels around an open atrium. We looked around the shops for a while, at cameras and underwater camera cases, but in the end didn't buy any as nothing was any cheaper than back home. We did, however, buy some memory cards for our camera as we were onto our last one thanks to our itchy shutter fingers.

After making our purchases we left Sim Lim square and walked through the centre of the city. We passed numerous shopping malls, seemingly the most common type of building in Singapore. The next place we checked out was Bugis Street, a covered market area filled with stalls selling the usual Southeast Asia tat, and therefore quite fun to look around. There were also some food stalls here, one of which we stopped at to have some chicken chop with spicy sauce and some fruit shakes.

After our greasy but delicious lunch we caught the MRT to Chinatown, which we hadn't had a proper look around. We walked from the MRT station up one of the main streets, then stopped at the modern, but traditional-looking, Buddha Tooth Relic Museum and Temple. We entered this large complex which contained on its lower floors a large and beautifully decorated Buddhist temple, and on its upper floors a Buddhism museum and a rooftop garden and shrine. We looked around the place for a while, brushing up on our Buddhist history before leaving to see more of Chinatown.

The next place we stopped was, oddly enough for Chinatown, a Hindu temple which we wandered around the grounds of, admiring the very colourful and elaborate statues adorning its rooftops of the various Hindu gods and characters.

From here we walked through the streets lined with more colourful shophouses, as usual with the towering modern HDB flats peeking above the top of them from a distance. The streets here were filled with hawker stalls and markets, and had red lanterns strung across the width of the street. We looked around some of the stalls and stopped for a beer on one street, before continuing to another MRT station where we caught a train back to Little India.

We were really tired after a lot of walking about so had a nap in our new, quiet room then got up to head out for some dinner. We walked to a nearby shopping centre and had some cheap and tasty indian food at a grubby little food court in a building across the road from the mall. From there, we cut through the streets of Little India in an effort to find the park where that night a Deepavali countdown concert was taking place, with the next day being the Hindu festival. We eventually found the park, fenced off with a large stage erected and lots of plastic chairs arranged facing it. We made our way through the gathering crowds of Indians, 99% men, who had all come out for the show. When we got to the fence for the concert, a security guard told us that as we were tourists we got free entry, so we passed through and took a seat in some of the plastic chairs facing the stage.

We had been told the show started at 7pm, but hadn't arrived until around half past. However, we soon found out that the actual show didn't begin until 9pm, and lasted until midnight. Therefore, we waited as very little happened on the stage until the 'pre-show' began. This consisted of what appeared to be 'Little India's Got Talent' and a 'Miss Little India' competition, although we could only guess as all proceedings took place in Hindi.

We sat through this part of the show, which was interspersed by long periods of total silence and lack of activity on the stage (a theme which would run throughout the whole evening) until finally the acutal show began. By this time much of the plastic seating had filled up, but the majority of the crowd was actually outside of the railings, and comprised a giant crowd of rowdy mustachioed South Indian men surrounding the fenced-in park on all sides.

The show consisted of Bollywood singing and dancing (all dubbed) with the usual colourful costumes and upbeat tunes. It was fun for a while but, with all the long gaps in between the songs and the fact we didn't have a great view from our seats, we soon started getting a bit restless and bored. Apart from this, as the night wore on the Indians got louder and louder. Every so often there would be huge cheers and scores of the men sitting around us would stand up on their seats to peer off to one side of the park. This went on and on at intervals, utterly confusing us until we asked one of the guys what one earth they were all cheering about and looking at. It turned out it was people getting into trouble with the police for various reasons, and evidently provided far more entertainment than the show on the stage.

We persevered with the show until nearly 11, when things started to get a bit out of hand. A big group of Indian guys came rushing down the aisle beside us and started leaping about, spraying shaving foam or something similar all over the crowd, us included. We were less than pleased and, having seen enough of the show we decided it was time to leave. We got up and headed to the rear of the fenced-off area but found it completely jammed with crowds of Indian men trying to get in. The security guards were trying to hold them back and there was no room for us to get through and out into the streets. After much shoving and squeezing we eventually, somehow, managed to escape the stage area and thought we'd hang around in the streets until the firework show we knew was coming at midnight.

We waited for a while but soon got sick of the lewd stares Lucy was getting from the now universally drunk crowds of Indian men, so set off through the streets back to the main road in Little India. Here, we walked up the brightly lit, absolutely packed street until we found a spot where we could watch the fireworks, just before midnight. We watched the show, which was a little underwhelming, then made our way the last few hundred metres down the road to the hostel where we got off to bed, tired out after a very disappointing but memorable night.

In the morning we had a lazy start, as we had no plans other than to meet Moh again for some lunch. At around midday Moh met us at the hostel. Just as we were about to leave to get the MRT, it started raining, very very heavily. We changed our plans and instead hailed a taxi outside, which then took us to Clarke Quay, a redeveloped riverside area full of trendy bars and restaurants all painted in bright colours. Moh took us to the nearby Swissotel where we had a fantastic and overindulgent buffet lunch, to celebrate the new job she had just been offered. We took full advantage of the all-you-can-eat selection of food, trying almost everything on offer including the wide range of desserts. After lunch we were thoroughly stuffed, and went for a walk around Clarke Quay which was pretty quiet during the day. We stopped for a drink at a bar then we left Moh, who was going to do some shopping, and we caught the MRT back to our hostel.

Back at the hostel we relaxed in our room, browsing the internet and just taking it easy for a while. We chatted a bit to the German couple who were also staying in the room and had a nap, before we went out in the evening and once again caught the MRT to Clarke Quay where we met Moh.

The three of us wandered through the busier streets of Clarke Quay, under big awnings erected to cover the streets of the whole area, and stopped at a bar where we had some happy hour cocktails and watched the world go by for a bit. After a few drinks we went around the corner to a Chinese restaurant where we had some tasty food. We then said goodbye to Moh as she lived nearby and was going to walk home, while we walked back through Clarke Quay, now buzzing with revellers, to the MRT station where we caught the train back to our hostel and got to bed.

Once up the next day, we packed, showered and grabbed some breakfast before arranging for a taxi to take us to the bus station. Although it wasn't far away, it was roasting hot and we didn't fancy carrying our bags around in the heat first thing. As our taxi turned up, the German couple from our room were leaving as well so we offered them the other two seats in the taxi. We were glad we did because, despite the short distance of the taxi ride it was really expensive thanks to a booking charge of over half the total fare!

Once at the bus station we hopped into our bus, found two huge comfy seats and sat back to await our departure for Malaysia.