Singapore

We arrived in Singapore yesterday morning after a straightforward flight from Manchester. Despite testing jet lag we managed a pretty full day yesterday with a trip to the amazing botanical gardens which is a UNESCO world heritage site founded in 1859 by Sir Stanford Raffles and developed by botanists from Kew Gardens. The site is free to enter but the orchid gardens (which were astounding) cost $1each! The gardens are one of only three to be awarded world heritage status and that includes Kew itself. Having left the gardens we went to Chinatown (the Chinese are the largest ethnic group in Singapore, so Chinatown isn't small), during which we had a fantastic storm that finally drove us to a local restaurant/cafe! It was full of locals and worked out really well.

Today we walked about 11 miles going from a local river walk to Little India and finally to Fort Canning Park. The Malay dynasty ruled Singapore from this vantage point in the fourteenth century but more recently its acted as a site for a fort and military base. What remains now has been developed into an Arts centre/hotel and the National Museum. We visited and took a tour of the Battlebox which is an underground bunker constructed in the late 1930's. It ultimately became the HQ for Allied Armed Forces as Japan invaded Malay and Singapore in 1941/2. After 55 days of the Japanese invasion, British command surrendered from this bunker, leaving 5,000 allied forces dead and 80,000 captured including Australians, Indians and British, the largest surrender of British led forces in history. Sadly we weren't allowed to take photo's but Maggie did win a little competition at the end amongst the visitors and came away with a copy of the surrender document!

We ended the day (as we do with most in truth) with a beer and a gin.