Singapore

If it's Tuesday we must be in Singapore (again). Very hot (34°) and incredibly humid.

We went back to the Botanic Gardens, with the camera this time. We used the MRT (mass rapid transport) system which is excellent, cheap and clean. It's more like using the Gatwick monorail than the tube, in that you don't have platforms as such, but enter via sliding glass panels often in a shopping mall. There are notices posted forbidding the carriage of durian fruit, a delicacy locally, but said to smell of rotting flesh. Yummy!

The Botanic Gardens are divided into areas such as the foliage garden, the fragrant garden, the healing garden, and so on. (The healing garden carries a warning not to handle the plants as some are toxic; ironic, unless you wanted to be healed of living.) The showcase, and the only bit you have to pay for, is the Orchid Garden. This is really good. I've added a couple of pics to give the flavour, but they don't do it justice.

One of the most famous names in Singapore's history is Sir Stamford Raffles, who founded the city state of Singapore in 1819 as a base of the East India Company. It became a British Colonial possession iseven years later. Many roads are named after him, and we are, as I type this, in the Long Bar of the Raffles Hotel. It's a haven of cool after the heat and humidity outside.They do a Singapore Sling here at a very reasonable/outrageous $45 (£22.50 at Worthing prices.) The other thing is that there is a bowl of peanuts on every table and you are encouraged to chuck the shells on the floor. The picture shows Mrs A in this very place.

Singapore is very bustly, constantly modernising. There are five new MRT lines being built. Every other road features a demolition/construction site. Most of the new builds seem to be luxury malls, obviously catering for the transient visitor, of whom there are 11million a year.

If it ever comes up in a quiz, Singapore has the world's lowest birth rate. You need 2.1 babies per family just to maintain current numbers; Singaporeans can manage only 0.79. Anyway........

........tomorrow we have a 14 hour flight back home. Not especially looking forward to that, but it will be good to get home and see everyone again.