For once we had pre booked our hotel as our flight would land late afternoon and we only had three days, in which to cover Singapore off before we were on our way again. Trains ran from the lower level of the airport and turned out to be fast and on time which was a welcome change, so it didn’t take us long to get to our hotel as it was less than a five minute walk from a nearby station.

Scratch the surface of Singapore and you will uncover a treasure trove of diverse cultures living here in their own communities, splitting Singapore in to segments enough so that you are unsure what country this actually is.

We first explored the ‘Arab street’ area which is really just a row of shops run by Arabs selling Arab things, with a Mosque at the end of the road. We were allowed inside the Mosque but only on the lower level, here is a huge hall with pillars creating a centre area covered with carpet which is the area for kneeling at prayer times.

Following on from Arab street the road runs into ‘Little India’, here you are overcome with the smell of Indian food and shop fronts full of gold jewellery and rainbow coloured saris and other traditional clothing. The main attraction here though is the quite magnificent ‘Sri Veeramakaliamman temple’, which is dedicated to the goddess ‘Kali’. We believe Kali to be the image in most of the statues we took pictures of but also in some of the coloured carvings making up the roof coverings.

The temple had a constant flood of Indian people passing through to pray to the state of Kali and light candles and in exchange for flowers of some type. Some of the rituals they performed and such absolute belief to us were, shall we say “interesting’. But as we were visiting them as always we respected there ways, but were some what unnerved by some of the statues, which you can work out for yourself when you see them.

Next on the Agenda was the Esplanade and bridge which we wanted to see as it would be one of the fastest straights in the Singapore Grand Prix, which is also the only night time F1 Grand Prix in the world. Sadly we weren’t going to be around for this as everywhere had got greedy in view of the race and accommodation prices had tripled, but at least we got to see the track and walk on sections of it! Oh and near by to the bridge was a spotlessly white Cathedral named St Andrews, but you wont see the inside of that as it was closed when we went. Which pretty much closed off our first day as we had walked the entire way.

Our second day was a little more relaxed with a later start, firstly taking us through what would be a nice park had the F1 teams not taken over it. Instead we took a free visit to the nearby Fire Station which had a through the ages look at how the Fire & Rescue service has developed in Singapore. Some of their most prided members are the Canine division which do work in the wake of an earthquake that no human could, they scurry through tiny spaces in the rubble of collapsed buildings to find survivors, enabling the concentration of a rescue operation.

En-route to ‘China town’ is the grand new ‘Clarke Quay’, this old riverside dock has been transformed as so many others in the world have, to be a prestigious nightlife spot with the towering apartment blocks and hotels to match. This place is good to look at with its colourful surrounds but a little pricy for our budget.

China town was really not much different to most others we have visited, which makes it a not so desirable place. It was a bit better kept than some of the others but overall these aren’t the best places around, so we didn’t stay to much longer than a couple of pictures. We were however confused why there was another Indian Temple bang in the middle of China town! But no Indian community to be seen.

This day we decided on a train to get us back to the hotel as more walking just was not appealing to us and once back we took to relaxing by the pool. The evening as with everyday since we had been in Malaysia and Singapore brought great torment in finding decent food and by this we aren’t joking, we have had all sorts of stuff around the world and our stomachs will now stand most things. But in these two places for some reason the meat of any variety, really didn’t agree with either of us in any of the places we had it.

Our final morning was one of re-pack ready for the weight restrictions of a flight followed by a train journey back to the airport and then an early check in, followed by none other than what was likely to be our last flight anywhere before our flight home! Now that’s scary!!!!!!