Everything we’d ever heard about Singapore was true – it’s incredibly clean and green.  There’s a minimum $1000 fine for littering here and it obviously works – there’s very little rubbish and definately no graffiti.  Although, I’m not sure what you could graffiti on because everything has plants growing all over it.  They certainly take their streetscaping seriously – every road verge is like a park, even the overpasses have vines covering them!

Orchard Road is the main shopping precinct  and it was decked out in Christmas lights.  It is absolutely amazing – there are so many shops and not just shops but shopping malls.  Multi-storey malls with millions of shops and they seem to be on every street corner – it’s completely insane.  (Marrissa you are never allowed to come here!) 

We didn’t do much while in Singapore – we deliberately chose a better hotel with a pool and the kids made good use of it.  We walked up Orchard Road and checked out some of the countless multi-storey shopping centres.  Obviously we can’t shop so none of that was of any interest to us.  The kids were very disappointed when they discovered that Maccas was twice the price it is in Australia!

We also discovered that with 6 of us, it was far cheaper to jump in a taxi then take the MRT.  Of course, being sticklers for rules the drivers wouldn’t allow us all to ride in the one taxi so we attempted our first separate journey in our teams.  Paul, Caitlin & Michael were in the taxi in front and I was feeling like I was in an episode of The Amazing Race – telling the driver to “Follow that taxi!  Keep it in sight – don’t lose it!  Faster!”

We caught the Sentosa Express monorail from yet another shopping centre  to Sentosa Island which has numerous family oriented activities including a contstruction site for the next Disneyland.  Our goal was the skyrail and luge.  The skyrail was quite good, if a little bit scary – but the luge which I had been quite looking forward to was really disappointing.  The tickets were quite expensive and you don’t get to go very fast or for very long before it’s all over.  A bit of a let down all round and so not worth the exorbitant fee.

 I’ve decided that Singapore could be a good starting point or not depending on how you look at it.  You could say that it is a good place to ease yourself into what is sure to come in Asia or on the other hand (as I think it was with the kids) it can give you a false sense of security that if this is Asia then this is going to be a piece of cake!

That illusion was shattered when we went to catch our bus to KL and the bus station is like little Bangkok – everything is Thai.  Naturally we had to do a toilet run and the girls were faced wit their first squat toilets.  It was quite funny – Ashlea was quite puzzled as to what you actually do, Georgie just got on with it while Caitlin preferred to wait until the 1 western toilet became vacant.

Next stop the real Asia.