Well it had to be done really. The promise of a decent cup of tea and some delicious cakes was too much, as well as the opportunity to try the Singapore Sling at the place where it was created, and we headed off to the Raffles Hotel for High Tea. On the way, we stopped to take a look at the statue of Mr Raffles himself and also for a quick visit to the Asian Civilisations museum.

High Tea consisted of tea (obviously), cakes and crustless sandwiches as well as a hot buffet. We decided to have a Singapore Sling with ours, not exactly traditional, but it was the last  day of our trip afterall.

After High Tea, we did a short boat trip on the river before returning to the hotel to prepare to be transferred to the airport.

So that’s it. It’s all over. Back to reality and English weather tomorrow. Boo Hoo.

Arriving in Singapore at 7pm, we were struck by the humidity (This is not good hair weather). By the time we had got to the hotel and checked in, there was just enough time for a quick wander before bedtime.

The following morning, we had been booked on a sightseeing tour. This took us to various places including the Marina…

Chinatown…

the Botanical Gardens…

and Little India.

We decided to stay in Little India for a very [Tom: very, very] nice Indian lunch at The Banana Leaf [Tom: where you eat your food from a banana leaf rather than a plate] followed by a Mango Lassi before heading off to the Singapore Flyer.

The flyer is like the London Eye but 30 metres bigger making it the biggest big wheel in the world. This experience would have been improved if we hadn’t had to share the capsule with 5 or 6 irritating children. We could barely hear the commentary.

Then it was back to the hotel for a quick rest before heading out to the Night Safari, which is basically a zoo with animals that come out at night. First we went round in a tram seeing rhino, giraffes and lions amongst other things and then we walked around the walking trails. It is quite frightening how close you can get to these animals without anything obvious to stop them from eating you! [Tom: In places they have things like moats to stop the animals from getting too close but in other places there is nothing and you're not in a powerful 4x4 with a ranger armed with a shotgun in case anything goes wrong! In places there were animals right next to the tram (which has no sides) and we were warned not to use flash photography. That's my excuse for the rubbish photos].

Today we’re heading down to the colonial district for a look round, high tea at Raffles and a ride in a boat before returning to the hotel to transfer to the airport. They say that “if you haven’t been to Raffles, you haven’t been to Singapore”. We’ve a long flight ahead of us before we get to Heathrow.