Sing a song for Singapore...

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"With every generation, there's more to be grateful for..."

Singapore is gearing itself up for its National Day Parade on August 9th... the flags are a-flying and we just can't get that (obviously not at all government propaganda) song out of our heads.

We have just spent 4 days in Singapore to finish off our South East Asia trip - a good place to end as it's so easy. You could spend whole days here without going outside (we haven't done this, honest). There's a great metro system and almost every single station emerges into a giant shopping centre or some other gleaming, air-conditioned building.

Steering clear of the malls to save our few remaining pennies, we have been pounding the streets of Chinatown, Little India and the Colonial District instead, enjoying custard tarts and other baked delights to keep the old energy levels up.

Highlights have included the Singapore National Museum, which was amazing once we got over our technophobia. There's no written text - everyone is given an mp3 player which you type numbers into as you walk around, and you hear different people talking to you. All very interactive - some of the audiovisuals were amazing - at the start there's a film telling the story of the first civilisations to live in Singapore - the screen pretty much surrounds you and all the video images fade into graphics styled like old-fashioned paintings. The museum tells the story of Singapore's history and the difficulties of being a small nation made up of diverse groups of people.

We also went to the Singapore Zoo which is without cages, and mainly even without fences, so the animals seemed quite happy and it all looked very natural. There were great animals including lions, white tigers, elephants, zebras, baboons and - our favourites- orang-utans. All of the monkeys were great to watch (Alice says especially the baby ones) because they were real community groups.

Enjoying some good food (there are almost more restaurants here than people), alcohol is way too expensive though so that has stopped us from overindulging.

Heading home tomorrow, sad to be ending our travels but really looking forward to seeing everyone and having some home comforts! Hope you've enjoyed reading our blog if you have made it this far with us! We'll add some photos to the last couple of pages when we get home.

A and J xxxxxx

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