It's fun to stay at the YMCA

---

With literally the whole of greater Tokyo booked out over New Year's Eve, we took the opportunity to head on to SE Asia, and our first stop there, Singapore - where we could at least find a bed, even if we had to pay more than I think we've paid for a room anywhere on this whole trip just for the YMCA. It was all very clean and nice, though - just a bit galling handing over the money, but that's our payback for lack of forward planning, I suppose!

It was just a very short stay for us here, so we don't have a lot of photos, but we had a very enjoyable couple of nights, and I can see why Singapore is a popular stopover choice, even if it's not a destination in its own right. The most surprising thing for us was that English is the first language, and not only does everyone speak it, but all the road signs, most of the newspapers etc are all in English. And,language aside, the British influence in general was everywhere, from the old colonial sights like Raffles hotel, to branches of Topshop and Dorothy Perkins! Other nationalities have made their mark as well, however - eating and browsing in Chinatown was great fun as ever, and getting off the MRT in Little India was really bizarre - like being teleported to Mumbai for the afternoon (not that we've ever been there, but hopefully you get my drift...).

And you can't finish a blog on Singapore without mentioning the price of alcohol!!! Every bit as expensive as we'd heard it would be

---