Geo: 1.28967, 103.85After breakfast in the Pacific Club we caught a cab to Kampong Glam in Singapore. I had seen on Samantha Brown's Singapore show how you could get perfume made, so I was heading straight there. The store was named Jamal Kazura Aromatics. It was a beautiful shop where you could choose from all types of Middle Eastern oil based perfumes or have one made to suit. You could also purchase divine crystal bottles to store the scents in. We both purchased a couple of different scents and I bought a lovely bottle for my jasmine perfume. We then spent an hour or so wandering around the area, before heading to Little India for a bit of a look around. I found Little India fairly disappointing, it seemed extremely dirty and tacky, but possibly we ... read more

Geo: 1.28967, 103.85We arrived in Singapore after a fourteen hour flight, divided into two by a three hour stop in Dubai. We had arranged a hotel transfer but unfortunately it didn't show up so we caught a very cheap ($19 AUD) taxi into town and arrived at our hotel Pan Pacific, Singapore. It was getting late and we were tired after the long journey, so we simply relaxed in the Club Lounge admiring the spectacular views, had a couple of drinks followed by a late dinner at the poolside restaurant and off to bed. ... read more

Geo: 52.3018, 4.86694On our final morning we got up early and packed and had breakfast before taking a walk to have another look at the flower market. We would have loved to have purchased some bulbs, but Australia has such strict rules we knew we would never have been able to bring them into the country, which was a shame. It was a lovely sunny morning so we had a look at the Majere Brug and finally went into one of the canal house museums, the Willet-Holthuysen Museum. It was really interesting to get some idea of how people lived in these beautiful houses.We finished up with a final coffee outside the Bushdoctor coffeeshop before checking out of the hotel and getting a taxi to the airport. We had booked into the Serviceair lounge at Schiphol, ... read more

Geo: 52.3018, 4.86694After yet another amazing breakfast, we were picked up for our private day tour by Ray from Private Holland Tours. Ray was a wonderful guide who showed us quite a few interesting towns.We started out in Monnickendam and Ray walked with us explaining what we were seeing. After that we drove to Marken and had another wander around, before stopping for some delicious apple pie and coffee. Next we headed to Edam, where I expected to find an array of cheesemakers, but there didn't seem to be any at all! We saw so many different types of houses and it was interesting to see how people lived in these small towns. Finally we headed for Zaanse Schans. We had lunch first at D'Vijf Broers, we all had ham and cheese toasties with some wine ... read more

Geo: 52.0677, 4.32697We got up and had another fantastic breakfast before making our way to the station for the train to Den Haag. A train arrived just as we did so we quickly hopped on and found two empty seats in a remarkably empty, comfortable carriage. We were almost into Den Haag and no one else was in the carriage when along came a ticket inspector. That was no problem as we had our tickets. Apparently we were sitting in first class with second class tickets! We had no idea that there even were two classes on these trains. When we purchased the tickets at the station, at a manned ticket counter, we weren't asked which class we wanted. No wonder the seats and carriage were so comfortable! Fortunately the ticket collector was quite happy so ... read more