Dear STA Travel Journal Website: WHY oh WHY oh WHY do you insist on forcing me to choose a photo for each country from YOUR file photos, and then offer NO BLOODY PHOTOS from that country? Here's a picture of some elephants for ABSOLUTELY NO REASON. Never mind, back to the travels. The bus journey from Cambodia, as expected, offered turbulence undreamed of by even the most nervous flyer. After crossing the border we returned to Thai roads (and switched back to the left hand side). After another four hours, we were back at the Grande Ville Hotel in Bangkok, with time to freshen up before our final dinner. We ate at the same place we had our first group meal, and drank at a pavement-mounted bar (then moved onto a dire "Irish" pub with a Thai band performing cover versions (some of which weren't actually all that bad, they did a surprisingly good Nirvana). Breakfast on Wednesday was officially the end of the Great Indochina Loop, although there were still some of us left in Bangkok that night, so we had dinner in the same place and ended up in a bar way out from town (eventually) - how I had missed taxi drivers who don't know the first thing about the city they work in. So we drifted apart gradually rather than ending in one giant splat, which was a nice way to leave it. This morning the hotel organised a taxi to the airport, which cost me less than 300 Baht - much less than I was expecting. I don't know if it was because they liked me after I swapped their Bank of Scotland 20 Pound note for Baht (quite how they got it remains unclear). I knew the drill when it came to filling out the arrival card in Singapore, though - they ask for the address you'll be staying at. In my case, it could roughtly be translated as "nae idea". Remembering my experience on arrival in Thailand the first time (I didn't know the name of the hotel, so just wrote some random crap) when I was third in the queue to go through customs, I randomly settled on the nicely ambiguous sounding "Grand Hotel". True to form, the customs bloke didn't even bat an eyelid. I was sure that as long as you write something, he won't actually bother to read it. After I had reclaimed my baggage, I went to a tourist information kiosk to book a hotel for tonight. Guess where I'm staying? Go on, you'll never figure it out. The Grand Central Hotel is part of the Grand Hotel chain, which operates in Asia and the Pacific, and I had never previously heard of. See? I really AM psychic. I have tonight and tomorrow until my flight at 8pm to explore Singapore. I've picked up a few leaflets and a map, and the public transport system seems to be excellent, so I should be able to fit a few sights in before I have to get back to the airport. As for tonight, I had a wander around, and resisted the temptation to see the Pirates of the Carribean sequel (I have one night in this country, I couldn't really spend it in the cinema - even though I spent the flight here with Johnny Depp saying "clearly you've never been to Singapore" from the first film rattling through my head constantly). One word for Singapore is: clean. Quite a change from Bangkok. People seem to take more notice of traffic lights as well, which makes crossing the road slightly less hazardous. On the downside, there doesn't really seem to be a Singaporean culture as such - it's all cobbled together from everywhere else. Perhaps I'll be proved wrong tomorrow when I see the sights. Had the most surreal dining experience of my life, though. All the hotels around Orchard Road seem to be combined with shopping centres and restaurants, you go past reception to visit a bewildering array of shops trying to sell you random stuff. My hotel has shops, the Crazy Bar (which certainly is crazy, it's so crazy that it seems to have been closed all evening on a Friday night), a Japanese restaurant, a Chinese restaurant and a Szechuan restaurant. See, all good local food. I decided to go for the Szechuan restaurant. I walked in, and was taken aback by what was in front of me. A massive room (which would seat at least 400) full of tables and chairs, all draped in flowing white covers so you can't even see the chairlegs. An eerie sight, reminiscent of an old haunted building where all the furniture has been covered with dust sheets as the spirits and ghouls dance their mischevious jig around the tables, startling the clientele. I suppose the ghostly feeling was amplified by the fact that when I walked in, there were only four other people in this 400+ seater restaurant. And they were the staff. It did feel a bit strange asking if they had a table for one, when they clearly had at least 80. Still, they were very welcoming and my food arrived astonishingly quickly. I asked if it was usually this quiet, and they told me that it was busier earlier and it would get busier later. While there may have been an element of truth to that, the whiff of bulls*** still hovered over the words like a hungry cloud of flies. (I've had a few drinks. Can you tell?) After that I went down Orchard Road to see if there was any discernible nightlife within walking distance. At the first bar I came to, I ended up talking to a middle-aged Inverness bloke who lives in Indonesia and is obsessed solely with how much prostitutes cost in all the countries around here. Charming man, especially when he boasted about how he now didn't have to wine-and-dine women (he didn't actually use the word "women", it was another word beginning with a letter closer to the beginning of the alphabet) but how life was so much simpler when it was understood that you had to pay for certain privileges. After 20 minutes of this, I decided to leave and use the internet. At least we parted on good terms, I reckon he thinks I'm a naive tourist, and I think he's despicable slime. Hi, George, if you're reading this! Australia next...