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Mia has been a superb guide and help for us in Singapore and has managed to get us free passes to the Jurong Bird Park and the Singapore Zoo which is regarded as one of the best in the world. On Thursday, after spending the morning nursing our still slightly sore stomachs we went to meet Mia to pick up the passes. She then came with us to the Bird Park in the afternoon as she hadn't been for a few years. Unfortunately we got there only an hour or so before it closed but as it wasn't too big we didn't really need much more than an hour. There are dozens of species of exotic bird there and they have an excellent night-birds section. The whole park is full of really colourful flowers too - Nan, you would have been in your element! We also got a mono-rail around the park which was cool as we got to see some of the birds from the air.

After the Bird Park our stomachs had finally settled down to normality and we jumped in a cab with Mia to Holland Drive, a nice small upmarket area of Singapore for some dinner. As usual, Mia recommended some beautiful food for us, this time in Honk Kong Dim Sum style at a popular restaurant called Crystal Jade. Dim Sum is lots of small dishes, similar to tapas and it was great as it meant we got to sample a lot of different things. Our favourite dishes were century egg porridge and steamed pork dumplings. Century egg is an intimidating deep black colour and tastes very strong. The rumour is that is gets its colour and flavour from being soaked in horse urine but Mia thankfully assured us that this isn't true!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_egg

After dinner we went for a beer at Mia's favourite bar, Paulaner before heading back to the hostel.

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