Singapore

Apart from the temperature, Singapore was a bit of a shock after Sri Lanka... for a start, the cars have suspension and a full set of seat belts, there are huge buildings, Starbucks everywhere and nature is almost completely contained in parks.

We arrived at about 6am, so went straight to our hostel for breakfast and slept until lunchtime. This left us with a day and a half to explore. We started with a delicious and super-cheap (relatively speaking) lunch at a local street stall style restaurant then headed off for a walking tour of Little India, the Indian equivalent of Chinatown. We enjoyed wandering in the backstreets, which have a lot of character, visiting the Hindu temple and doing a little shopping. We popped into an Indian restaurant for an early dinner; the thick Indian curry made a nice change from all the Sri Lankan curries we have eaten in the last few weeks.

An early night set us up to wander further afield the following day. Chinatown is a bustling area with a great market and yummy Chinese food. We aren't ones for choosing our seafood still alive in a tank, but had we been, we would have had plenty of opportunity! Poor little buggers.

We explored the streets lined with amazing modern architecture, joined the bulk of tourists photographing the Merlion, then stopped at the beautiful Raffles Hotel for a Singapore Sling. The Long Bar at Raffles is tick-box tourism at its best, but the drinks were good, if dreadfully over-priced.

We concluded our Singapore culinary tour with Mexican before heading to Changi airport for our flight to Sydney.

Singapore feels like a very liveable city, although you would want to have a good income to make the most of it. If our tiny hostel room was anything to go by, you would also want to be comfortable living in a confined space!