Oh boy, are we pleased to be in Singapore! After all that is India, it’s so super clean, relatively speaking there’s oodles of space and everything works! Most people who have told me about Singapore have said things like “it’s too clean”, “you can’t even chew gum”, “you’ll be bored in two days”. Now that I’m here and sipping my Californian-style latte, I can wholeheartedly respond: “Well, not me mate: I blooming love this place!”

The airport is lovely and it’s got free Wi-Fi internet. The MRT (akin to the Underground) is clean, air-conditioned and spacious — even at rush hour, compared with London. One Florence Close, the hostel in which we stayed was stunningly clean, tidy, homely, had the most adorable scantily-clad Persian cats and the young girls running the place were super nice. And, once you engage the Singaporeans in conversation, they are fabulous too. Oh and after travelling through mostly conservatively-minded (and conservatively dressed) countries for most of the last seven months, I’m very pleased to report that, here in Singapore, guys wear shorts and the girls mostly wear miniskirts or hotpants!

After catching-up with our blogging duties, we mooched around the city and its various shopping malls, delighting in the supersize Christmas decorations and ate at the finest cafes and restaurants that we could afford. We took a free open-top ‘Hippo’ bus tour down Orchard Road (think Oxford Street in London) to see the fabulous Christmas lights. We even pushed the cruise liner out to chomp our way through posh sarnies at Raffles’ high tea and then pulled up a couple of stools at the Long Bar, which is the only place in Singapore where littering won’t get you a hefty fine. In this very bar, the Singapore Sling was invented and it’s very nice too. We shared one though; they’re priced at S$25 (about £12) a cup!

Any bad points? It is quite hot (32 degrees) and very humid (65%). It rains–hard–for about thirty minutes every day at just after four o’clock. Compared to India, it’s unnervingly expensive. But then again, compared to India I’m sure that we’d find everywhere expensive.

For me, right here, right now, it’s perfect. “Now waitress, please would you fetch me another latte?!”