Day three

Today shall be know as "getting to know the laws (or lack) of the road".

We went sightseeing today; walked all the way to Little India and saw some fantastic temples and Mosques. It was really cool there actually as it gave us an impression of what "real" Asia is like; away from all the shiny malls and high tech stuff. The area was quite run down, but that added to its charm. From there we walked to Raffles Hotel and were told by the concierge in no uncertain terms that shorts and t-shirts were NOT suitable attire for men to be wearing in the hotel. No plebs allowed, thank you very much. Stupidly though, only Mark's clothes were considered unsuitable - even though I was in a vest top and 3/4 length trousers, I was fine to go in. From what we saw though, it was a lovely place and it was kinda nice (in an ironic post-colonial way, of course) that the staff all wear full Indian outfits still.

We then tried to go to the New Asia bar on the 73rd floor of the Stanford Hotel - and guess what? Dresscode. This was at 3pm. It was 34 degrees - who wears full length trousers?! Failing this then, we hailed a rickshaw and headed to Clarke Quay. This was the first part of "learning the laws of the road". We asked the driver how much before we got on - he said $20 so off we went. It was clear within seconds that rickshaw drivers obey neither traffic lights nor common sense - hurtling over traffic lights into oncoming traffic. Nevertheless, we arrived in one piece. When we arrived, he produced a card saying $35 per person and said "I give you discount see, I already give you discount, twenty dollars each not in total". We argued back but he wouldn't have it; and given the severity of the punishments for law-breakers in Singapore we decided that it wasn't worth the hassle. Slightly irritating but our annoyance was pacified by a lovely walk along the river by all the old colonial parliament buildings.

This evening we got room service for dinner then headed off to the Night Safari. It was a fantasic experience. We had a tram ride through different landscapes and saw so many nocturnal animals; bears, tapirs, lions, tigers, leopards, giraffe, elephants and bats. It was great :-). After the tram ride we went on walking trails around all the habitats and saw all the animals up close. It was really amazing, particularly the bats because we got so close to the massive fruit bats - they're actually quite cute. The seconds part of learning the laws of the road was seeing, on the 100kmph motorway, pick up trucks with up to twenty men sitting in the back. Some were sitting on the floor of the pick up, others were perched precariously on top of building materials and upturned buckets.

So tomorrow is shopping day - yay! Have to decide which of the 72 malls to go to!

Love from us xxxx