Sleep was not forthcoming - I would read for a bit, doze over my book and then get jerked back awake by something - the noise from the traffic, the building site next door, the phantom door slammer & all his friends - anything. Eventually gave up sometime mid afternoon, had a shower and hit the Club lounge for another cup of tea. It had stopped raining sometime mid afternoon, but it was still very overcast and humid.

Basically killed time until my pick up for the Night Safari tour at 6.30pm. We were taken to the Singapore Flyer (same as the London Eye - I'm guessing most large cities have one, as they had one at the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town) where we were re distributed to the correct buses (oh the bliss of a proper air conditioned coach and not some cruddy nissan minivan with no suspension).

On the journey to the Night Safari, our guide told us a bit about Singapore - which as I had done little or no research (yes, shocking I know!!) was very useful to me - honestly, I know so little about Singapore I didn't even realise it is an island!! Anyway, as there had been a traffic incident on the main route, we were going a slightly scenic route, so the guide filled in some time and told us a bit about the island.

Barring traffic incidents, you can drive around the island in a day, which explains all the skyscrapers and high rise and that about 91% of the island is developed and they import virtually all their food and about half of their water. There is virtually no farming. Then he told us a bit about the Night Safari, which is essentially a zoo for nocturnal animals and is apparently one of the top 3 zoos in the world and has a whole bunch of awards and recognition etc.

I had chosen the tour which included dinner, and to be honest it was okay, but not necessarily the best option. We had an oriental buffet at the Zoo, which was alright, but nothing to get terribly excited about - the smells coming from the burger restaurant at the zoo were much more appetising.

Anyway, the tour was on those electric tram things you see at all the theme parks, with a guide and although it's cool to see all the nocturnal animals, it was a bit of a let down for me. I suppose that after you have done a safari in Africa, any zoo will be something of a let down. The tour guide had raved about how no animals except the cats were kept in cages, all were in enclosures and that there were free ranging areas, all of which is strictly true, but it paints I think a more symapthetic picture than the reality. Yes, the animals are all in enclosure, but they are all fairly small and set up so that you can see the animals from the tram road. Many of the animals are obviously distressed, with lots of pacing going on, due to the small size of the enclosures, and there are very few animals in each enclosure, which for the pack animals was also a cause of distress. What is better is the walking trails you can go along, and I went on a couple after the tram ride to try and catch a couple of animals not visible from the tram ride.

All in all, it was cool to see the nocturnal animals, as they are ones you wouldn't normally get to see in the course of a safari or a zoo visit. I got to see some animals I haven't seen before, like the cloudy leopard and the striped hyena, but one of the downside of it being a nocturnal zoo is that you can't use flash photography, so I didn't really get any usable photos. It's definitely worth a visit, but I wouldn't take the dinner option again!

Back to the hotel by about 11ish and tried to get some sleep, which again was not happening. Really struggling to adjust to this timezone. My ear was hurting again, so took a painkiller around 2.30 and double checked my alarm set for 6.30am for my pick up for the Round the Island tour the next day.

Finally got some sleep, which included sleeping through my 6.30 alarm and was woken by reception at 8.30am asking me to come down for my tour pick up!! Took about 3 mins to throw on some clothes, splash some water on my face and grab my bag (which I had fortunately packed the night before) and belt down to reception.

Got taken to the Singapore Flyer for re distribution again and set off. Our guide was really good and told us alot about the history of Singapore and how it works today.

Singapore was founded by Sir Stamford Raffles as a port for the British empire when it was an undeveloped and sparsely populated island. When Malaysia was given independence by the British, they hung onto Singapore as a port and military base and life here revolved around the British military and their camp. The Japanese invaded in WW2 and Singapore surrendered, thereby subjecting the local populace and ex pats to an horrendous couple of years under Japanese rule. The Brits came back after WW2 and then eventually gave Singapore it's independence (mostly due to cost cutting) but made it part of Malaysia, then apparently after a couple of years, Singapore gained it's independence from Malaysia - something of a problem child I believe - and decided to go it alone, with a certain amount of disbelief from the Malaysian government. Actually you can understand the disbelief, this is a small island, with no resources, no agriculture and no water, but they did have one thing - a very smart and determined president.

There are no beggars in Singapore - because they were all basically rounded up and given jobs and the government embarked on a huge building programme and built masses of social housing blocks. Everyone pays into a Central Provident fund, which supports the social housing - to get an apartment, you simply submit your fund number and you get an apartment and the monthly cost is deducted from your fund contribution. There appears to be virtually no unemployment - only the old & the sick do not work. School is compulsory - there are no kids running around during the day - until you are 18, then the boys have to do 2 years of military service, to teach them discipline. Teachers are well paid and contracted in for 6 years and are totally held accountable for the kids in their classes and the system works to weed out unacademic kids, who are then filtered through technical or vocational schools.

The social housing is far superior to the set up in the UK - okay there are huge tower blocks, but as virtually eveyone in Singapore lives in one, it is not the kind of second class living you see in the UK, and each housing area - as there are no villages here, simply one giant city - has large green areas, shopping areas, hospital, school and great transport links, regular buses and underground railway. There is no littering, no graffiti, no burnt out flats and no abandoned buildings. Other countries could learn a thing or two from this place!

How the president started all this was to invite investors to come in and invest in Singapore and pay no taxes for 5 years - which I think virtually guaranteed the banks would come and where banks go, business tends to follow - especially for 5 tax free years and cheap local labour. Since then, Singapore appears to have gone from strength to strength and it's a pretty great place to visit - though it's very expensive. I was told that I wouldn't need Singapore $'s, that US$ would be fine, but soon discovered that's not the case, so I got about 40$ out of a cash machine for incidentals. It's about 2 Singapore $'s to the pound and I bought an ice cream, which was 10$ - so £5 for 2 scoops of ice cream - ouch!!

Anyway, we learnt a quite a lot more as we went on our tour, which will be in Part 2.