After over a week at sea, we finally were able to touch land. Today we were let off the ship to run riot in Singapore. It was hot and it was humid.

There were a couple of things on our hit list for today – go out to the Changi Museum, use public transport, see the Merlion, drink a Singapore Sling and go on the Singapore Flyer .

After catching the ship's shuttle bus into town and a couple of false starts buying our MTR tickets, we boarded the train towards Changi. After going as far as we could on the train we braved the Singapore bus system (which is quite organised). It took us a lot longer than planned to get there, but we got to go on a train and a bus, so it was worth it for the experience.

Audio tour in hand we worked our way around the Museum. What was quite a solemn exhibition was slightly ruined by a school tour group who decided the no photo rule didn’t apply to them and the arrival of a tour group from the ship.

The Museum is quite well set up and guides you through what life was like before the invasion, the invasion itself and then what happened afterwards. Like most things related to war (and not wanting to gloss over the issues), bad things happened but the human spirit never gave up and regardless of what is going on, given the chance we can find the positive . What I think was good about the museum was that it showed both the negatives (like the rationing and the treatment the POWs received ) and the positives (like the quilts sewn by the women who were held in interment camps to let the men know they were ok and the ingenuity of people to create anything from nothing).

After this we decided to catch a taxi back into town to try to see the Merlion and get some lunch.

As the streets in Singapore a very busy there are quite a few that you can’t cross at street level, but instead need to either go underground or via a footbridge. This concept works well, except we kept making wrong turns and having to retrace our steps. In the end (and because it was ******** hot) we decided to catch another taxi to the Merlion. Best idea ever!

Photo op done, we once again tried our luck navigating the city on foot. This time we were a little more successful . We eventually found a shopping mall and a food court. As we needed to be at the Flyer quite soon and were very hungry, we inhaled a pork bun each before taking a quick walk towards the Flyer.

We arrived at the guest lounge on time. After some waiting around, it was time to get on the Flyer. As we had paid to do the Singapore Sling on the Singapore Flyer, we were escorted to our special pod. There were lots of other people waiting to get on as well but we were special and got to jump the queue.

Best of all we were the only two in the pod, so we spent the next 30 minutes taking photos and sipping our drinks. As the Flyer goes quite high we got a really good view of the harbour and other attractions.

After our Flyer loop we were still hungry and headed down to a food court area that was set up to look like a series of old Singapore street food vendors. I discovered a lovely fellow that was selling food on sticks – he had quite a good set up, you pick the sticks you wanted and he fried them for you. Mum had some spicy sauce that was very spicy.

By this time, we needed to head back to the ship. Once on board we headed to our cabin for a quick refresh that turned into a lay down. We didn’t want to but felt we had to make our way to the restaurant if only to let the others on our dining table know we had made it back on board. Needless to say, we are tired and more than ready for sleep.

Fun fact:
The Singapore Flyer is the largest observation wheel in the world.