A journal of my travels in Singapore...

Singapore 3rd - 6th February

Wow, it's good to be back to "real travelling". It's been just too easy in Oz. Not since we left Central America have we been able to experience so much culture. Singapore (an island, city and country) is smaller than London and has 4.5 million people. 77% of the population is Chinese, the rest Indian and Malaysian with smaller communities from Europe and Americas. We stayed in Little India so soon got to grips with the the huge variety of food! Curry...for breakfast, lunch and dinner! We also had an evening visit to Chinatown, which was buzzing since the Lunar New Year was only a few days away. And it was fascinating to learn a bit about the Chinese history in Singapore at their Heritage Centre too.

A city bus tour helped us get orientated and to highlight which shops to visit! Despite Singapore being the shopping capital of the world I managed to resist ... just not enough room in the backpack. In fact Jason managed more shopping than me - a new Liverpool shirt and underwater camera case!

Aside from shopping we managed a couple of other activities whilst in Singapore ... an night time river cruise and dragon boat racing. But we took part! The British ex-pats (British Dragon Boat website) meet every saturday afternoon to race their boats and have a bit of fun. It was great to be welcomed as visiting novices! Blisters and sore shoulders not to mention 2 defeats in the races meant that we shouldn't have enjoyed it, but it was great fun and the regulars looked after us in the boat and the bar afterwards.

So time ran out in Singapore but before we left we couldn't resist to have our fortunes read by a parrot! Strange but true. What did it say? That would be telling! On to Malacca in Malaysia now.