Having been through Singapore already, it didn't come as such a surprise when we landed and got on the shiny and spotless tube service into town. If anything though, it was nice to feel something a bit familiar for a change! We decided this time not to book a room in advance as we were getting into Chinatown by mid-afternoon on a Saturday and figured we could just rock up and get a room. How wrong we were.

It turns out that this weekend was the Herbalife convention and there were an extra THIRTY FIVE THOUSAND people in town. No joke, 35,000 people and Brett and Stacey all looking for the best and cheapest rooms in Singapore. You can have a guess who won that competition. After a few fruitless hours we finally bit the bullet and paid US$87 for a 9ft x 6ft shoe cupboard with bunk beds and no window and bathroom shared with the whole floor. (It did however include help yourself cereal, toast and coffee of which we of course took more than strickly necessary.) The benefit really being at least that this place was right in Chinatown so we could be in the thick of things.

We had a good wander through the markets picking up a few presents for people and ate dinner at one of the main foodcourts and called it a day pretty early. We moved hotels to somewhere a bit cheaper and further out the next day as the Herbalifers had released their grapple on the accommodation and were shipping out in droves. That ate up much of the morning so we opted to keep it simple and do one cool thing instead of half-arsing lots of things that afternoon. The world biggest aquarium seemed like a pretty good option! Set on an island off the bottom of Singapore - that seems to be Singapore's very own entertainment island - the strole along the boardwalk past the harbour was gorgeous and we had a great time just getting there.

We won't bother trying to explain too much about what we saw, we will simply try to get the photos up when we get a decent internet connection!! Needless to say though, it was pretty spectacular and we saw some weird things we didn't even know existed. The little island it was set on had a Universal Studios and goodness knows what else, so it wasn't that strange to find an indoor foodcourt area that was mocked up to look like a regular outdoor foody street in Penang; strange but kind of cool and gave us one last chance to taste the Singapore food fusion of Indian, Chinese and Malaysian.

Next morning - after picking up a couple bottles of Duty Free Bacardi and Gordons -we were back on a plane, heading to Oz! ROADTRIP!!! REALLY REALY LONG ROADTRIP!!