Singapore

God I love Singapore. Let me count the ways. There are footpaths, it's clean, the street food is safe, no one cares if I buy anything, they have trees, and grass, there are no wild dogs or cows, they have public transport, they have a functional government, most people speak good English, clear signposting, nothing smells bad, no one urinates in public, the zoo doesn't make you feel guilty...

So anyway suffice to say Singapore is the anti-India, and long may it continue. We landed early in the morning and after retrieving some cash and filling the void with some Mickey D's we took the metro into town. We checked into a wee hostel next to Chinatown, just three strip-mall shops joined together, but very well run and terribly clean.

We proceeded to wander the streets of Singapore which are of course terribly clean and more tree lined than you might expect. Although there was still a lot of leftover barriers and light scaffolding around from the recent Singapore Grand Prix. Unfortunately the streets were also terribly hot so we tried to make as much progress as possible while wandering through the numerous gloriously air-conditioned malls scattered around town. We visited the famous Merlion statue on the waterfront, although as fas as icons go it is fairly underwhelming.

But of course Singapore is a bastion of not only good manners, but culture so visits to the Asian Civilizations Museum, and the Art Museum were executed. The Asian Civilizations museum in particular was outstanding with excellently presented displays from all over South East Asia, including the immigrant cultures that make up so much of Singapore and Malaysia. The Art Museum was good as far as my appreciation for art stretches, but I think our favourite display in the whole place was the enormous light fitting in the stairwell. Although we could tell it was definitely an installation as every time we tried to get a close look at it a loud buzzer sounded and we had to jump away lest we earn one of the infamous Singaporean instant fines.

Actually fine posters seem to make up a large percentage of the modern Singaporean psyche, not only were they everywhere: No Littering $500, No Smoking $1000, No Chewing Gum $1000. But they got quite specific: No Durians (on public transport) $1000, No Urinating in the Elevator $1000. And of course then every tourist that wasn't wearing an OK-la T-shirt was wearing one with the full set of fine posters so it was actually pretty easy to remember to behave ourselves.

We got a chance to head out to Singapore Zoo which we really enjoyed despite the afternoon drizzle (it was a British colony remember). The zoo was incredibly lushly planted with tropical vegetation which went a long way to making it seem much more like a well-organised jungle than a zoo. The highlight for me was the proboscis monkeys which were much bigger than I had expected, and even managed to maintain some self respect despite their ridiculously large floppy noses. Obviously I have a thing for animals with odd noses as we also spent quite a while peering at the shy Malayan tapirs. Unfortunately pygmy hippos seem to be just slightly too large to keep on in the bath-tub so I may have to get a spa. They also had a walk in enclosure with a large family of bats, strutting brightly coloured birds, ring-tailed Lemurs, and the odd large rodent which all took turns darting out across the path or appearing a few feet away at head height.

Food in Singapore is incredibly cheap, both absolutely and relatively, with most people seeming to head to one of the hawker centres for every meal. The hawker centres are just large low rent food courts decorated with innumerable ceiling fans where you can buy pretty much any 'Asian' food if you look hard enough. There were two right besides our hostel so I don't think I actually managed to digest my way down to hungry before it was time for another meal (although the heat did certainly help to suppress our appetites).

Chinatown itself just seemed to be a collection of small street stalls and restaurants with nothing much to differentiate it from the rest of town, but it did host a beautiful, and very popular Buddhist Temple which was ridiculously clean and shiny (all Buddha's should be shiny) despite the bus loads of Chinese package tourists (complete with flag-waver and identical baseball caps) who arrived throughout the day. Its always hilarious for us to creep round one of these temples trying not to disturb anybody only to have a bus load of full volume Chinese tourists tramp past us occasionally pausing to light incense.

After our long delay in India we were feeling the need to move onward, so after just a couple of days we took the bus the oh so convenient (and fast) bus up the coast to Malacca in Malaysia.