December 18th

We'd booked ourselves onto a coach that was leaving at 11.30am and so made our way to the bus station earl y doors for some brekkie. It took us about 4 hours to get to Singapore once we'd left Malaysia and passed through immigration to actually entrer Singapore.

Hopped in a taxi to our hotel - we booked ourselves into a proper hotel for some comfort this time so at least we had our own bathroom. Managed to get in a quick nap before heading out for food and to explore the Christmas light displays on Orchard Road.

Thank god for Singapore - finally there were some proper festivities and it was starting to feel like Christmas. As all the displays were linked to some of the big malls they were pretty impressive and there were lots of choirs and performers along the way. I got a bit homesick listening to someone sing 'have yourself a merry little Christmas' but found it weird listening to jingle bells in the sweltering heat!

Took us a few hours to get down this road as it was rammed! I have never seen so many huge malls on one street all crammed with every possible designer brand. Managed to get lost a few times as all the malls are interconnected so you never know which bloody one you are in!

December 19th - 21st

The next few days were just spent trying to cram as much in as we could. Managed to wander round China Town before it started to chuck it town and so we took shelter in the Buddha Tooth Relic (a temple come museum) and tried to learn a bit about the origin of Buddhism.

Spent one day at Singapore Zoo, which was hands down the best Zoo I have been too (Australia has a lot to live up to!). The place was more open plan with moats build around some of the animals enclosures instead of high fences - bit hard to explain but it was more like walking through one big forest. Saw loads of different monkey varieties, Zebra's, Polar Bears…..the best were the Tapir's, well cool - http://www.tapir.org/about_tapir.html .

Managed to get out to the Science Museum another day. Paul was in his element as there were lots of hands on exhibitions. That evening we also got dolled up and went to Raffles and had a Singapore Sling in the bar where the cocktail was invented. They know how to target the tourists though - at about £13 a cocktail it was a tad pricey but still it was worth going to look round the hotel itself as it is a beautiful old colonial building.

The rest of our time was spent rushing up Orchard Road in and out of the numerous malls either sooping for me or buying last minute Christmas presents!

December 22nd

OFF TO SYDNEY!!!

Takes us no time to get to the airport as the metro system in Singapore is so efficient. We arrived with about 3 hours to kill but lo and behold, our flight was delayed by another 4 hours because there was SNOW in Frankfurt which was where the plane was taking off from.

Naturally I was a bit peeved - more so that snow was affecting our travel plans when I wouldn't even have the pleasure of playing in the white stuff! I dunno, you wait ages for a potential white Christmas and then it happens when you are away, still shouldn't complain really - we were waiting to get on a plane to the other side of the world!

So we checked in and were given a $20 meal voucher which was a bonus and went off to wait for nigh on seven hours!