Had an interesting journey to Singapore as one of the guys I was travelling with got stopped at the border as immigration thought he had a fake passport! They took him into a small room and interrogated him for about an hour before they finally decided he was who he said he was and it was ok to let him through. Meanwhile we had no idea what had happened to him, and there was a bus full of people all waiting to get into the city, so one person stayed behind to wait for him and the rest of us carried on to our hotel, hoping that they'd soon be there to join us later.

Luckily after a few hours we were all reunited and all was well with the world again. We took an afternoon stroll through Chinatown near our hotel and up to Ann Siang hill. As this was our first day we decided to go on a short river cruise to get our bearings in the city and find out where else to explore. We saw a lot of the sights from the water, including the famous merlion statue.

The next day I headed off to Sentosa island by cable car. It's a great journey across to the island, although given my fear of heights I decided to go for the standard cable car and not the one with the glass bottom. I'd have spent the whole time with my eyes shut!

Sentosa is good, but probably more suited to families than your average traveller. I spent a few hours wandering around, doing a few of the walks but then headed back to the mainland to see some of the other areas in the city, such as Little India. Found a great night market/hawker food court for some food and had my usual feast for less than 3 pounds!

One bad thing about Singapore is the amount of rain you get. Every night we had a massive thunderstorm with a deluge of rain that soaks you right through. It always seems to happen around 5pm and lasts a good few hours before you can brave it back outdoors without looking like a drowned rat. But I was determined to get to the night safari while I was in Singapore so waterproof on I braved the wet and headed for the train and bus to get me there. Fortunately the journey takes about an hour so by the time I arrived it was both dark and dry again. You can take a buggy ride around the park to see all the animals in their habitats. It's actually pretty well done for a zoo-type park and there's a great range of wierd and wonderful animals to see. You get the usual giraffe and elephants, but also some others that I'd never seen before like the bearded pig, very attractive, not! I also decided to walk a couple of the trails, but it was pretty scary on your own in the dark; there were all sorts of animal noises surrounding you and rain dripping from the trees that kept making me jump. It was better when you could follow a few people in front of you, but after a while you begin to look a bit like a stalker!

One final day left and this was a big one. I started off at the Botanic gardens, a really beautiful place just to stroll around and relax, with several different areas, such as an evolution garden, an eco lake, the ginger garden etc. I then walked the length of Orchard road, and it's a long long road. Stopped in a few shops along the way but luckily for me I'd decided to leave my credit card in my room so I wouldn't be tempted to splash out! There's a few British shops to be spotted along the way too, including trusty old M&S and Topman?!

I then left the shoppers dream to walk through Fort Canning park and over to Raffles hotel. It's much smaller than I imagined it to be but it's great to watch all the comings and goings, standing outside like a pauper while the rich all arrive in their mercedes to be greeted by the doormen! After a shower and change I returned in my smartened state to enjoy the customary Singapore Sling in the Long Bar. At $21 a drink (about 7 pounds) it's not exactly a cheap experience, but there's plenty of peanuts to munch on to help make up for it! Plus you even get to throw the shells on the floor. It's fun to watch people arrive and casually start to keep there first few shells on the bar in front of them before they realise what's going on and then it's just shells galore all over the floor!