Singapore

Back street in China Town

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We arrived in Singapore next and had about 5 days to take in the city. We got off the plane and took the train into the Indian Quarter of town, called Little India in the search of affordable accommodation. After some walking around we found a Chinese run hotel which was quite suitable and settled in just as the heavens opened above us. Singapore does good rain!

And then, it happened. Our first bout of illness. A little bit of Indonesia must have been sorry to see us leave and gave Nic a souvenir to take with her. At first, she was good for nothing and we watched with interest as Indonesia was reporting an outbreak of dengue fever. We did very little until as the week progressed Nic regained strength and we could wander further afield than our immediate neighbourhood.

By the end of our time, we had explored almost every corner of the city, including China town and the Arab Quarter and had made a full inventory of the shopping malls. I am pleased to report that we were able to resist the lure of the neon lights and the flashing gizmos and successfully left the city without any new hi-tech toys in our bags or 64-in-1 games for our Nintendos as Singapore has cleaned up it's act in terms of finding alternatively sourced, more economically friendly versions of games.

The malls offered us much sought refuge from the heat during the days. It is possible to enter a shopping mall (or plaza as their called here) and the pop out one end in a hotel foyer, connect to an air conditioned underpass, then pop out in another mall and make your way half way across the city like that.

By the end of our time in Singapore we were back to full health and caught a sleeper train that would take us to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia where we would connect with a flight to Borneo.