And so our 'South East Asian Adventure' began with a massive culture shock. It took us three hours to arrive at the hostel after we landed at Singapore airport. After finding a taxi driver who recognised the name of the hostel we drove around for nearly two hours before realising that he, in fact, had lied! Luckily, we weren't that far away and we were able to find our lodgings within an hour by foot. By this time it was 11pm and we were exhausted. We rang the doorbell and were informed we had to remove our shoes before entering the guesthouse. I kicked my flip flops onto the mountain of footwear piled at the door and went inside to find my bed as quickly as possible. Down a narrow hallway, crowded with locals smoking sheeshas and drinking beer, while eating their dinner off of the floor, we closed the door to our room and slept soundly 'till morning. Unfortunately, when morning came we started all over again as our hostel didn't have room for us to stay that night. After another hour spent walking the streets of Singapore looking for somehwere to stay we found a quaint little builidng with cheap dorm rooms and room for the next four nights. If that didn't sell it for us, the free breakfast and laundry did!

We spent most of our time in Singapore resting and trying to prepare for the long journey up through Malaysia into Thailand; we knew it would take atleast three days to get there and we had no time for breaks if we wanted to be in Thailand for Christmas. Most of our time was spent walking through endless indoor markets or having a beer with the staff of the local brothel next door. For meals we always frequented the indoor food courts where hundreds of individual stores are selling whatever you want at very low prices. Here, though, there is limited english speaking and so it is generally pot luck as to what you get for dinner. Although I was occasionally unsure what meat had turned up on my plate I didn't ask any questions and enjoyed the local cuisine, whatever it was!

The night before we were due to leave Singapore we agreed that we needed to be cultured and do much more sight-seeing. So, we went to the zoo! Singapore's Night Safari is a one of a kind with thousands of tourists flocking to visit it every year. In an open set surrounding, hundreds of animals can be seen including lions, elephants, leopards and bush babies. We hopped on board our train and set off into the jungle. It was particularly dark and the sound of thousands of crickets snapping together was almost deafening. We had great fun spotting animals as we drove around the zoo and, of course, had to make the hour trek on foot to see the leopard, where Dan spent half an hour trying to get the leopard to stick his tongue out at him! We had dinner at the zoo, caught a traditional Singaporean dance even saw three dancing Christmas trees before we got a local bus back to the hostel to get a good nights sleep.

That, of course, did not happen. I slept for about an hour inbetween Singaporean parties, crying babies and a rooster who was obviousl putting in overtime and who did not shut up from 11pm until we got up to leave to 6am. We got to the train station an hour early so I managed to catch a few winks before we boarded. After getting on the train Dan and I soon fell asleep before the conducter told us we were on the wrong train and had three minutes to get to the other side of the platform before the train going to Malaysia left. We made it, just.

The next two days consisted of trains, buses, tuk-tuks and boats. We travelled up into Malaysia by train and caught a second train to take us over the Malaysian border into Hat Yai, Thailand. From Hat Yai we took a very unpleasant local bus, transporting rice and wood, to Krabi where we took a tuk-tuk to the harbour. Once there, we jumped on a boat which took us from the Thai mainland to the tiny Island of Ko Phi Phi just in time for us to unpack and join the Christmas Eve party.

Thought of the Day: Big cats do not like Dan.