Rider'S Lodge Singapore

... and most importantly, it allowed these geniuses of street cuisine to keep their trade going for generations.

When rolling around town, you see very few chains. Sure, you can find McDonalds, KFC, and Starbucks, but I bet the per capita numbers are astonishingly low. That is because food courts are dominated by owner-operator specialists in local cuisine. So the guy that has been making Prawn Mee for the past 30 years…probably has the ...

Ci vedete nella foto? E' già siamo proprio noi e ce la stiamo godendo un sacco!
Qui all'albergo MARINA MANDARIN, la piscina è aperta anche di notte illuminata da un mucchio di luci potentissime che rendono l'acqua ancora più chiara e cristallina e così naturalmente ne abbiamo approfittato!
Ma c'è un particolare che rende questa piscina ancora più speciale ...

... band of musicians playing music to go with the ceremonies.

Next we walked on to towards Thian Hock Keng temple stopping for a rest in a nice park nearby to the temple. The temple was quiet and after looking around for a while we walked back towards the Chinatown MRT station, had some lunch then caught the train back to City Hall for a rest at the hotel.

After our rest we caught the train out to Orchard Road and had a look around the shops for a little while before returning to ...

... Sparks!

We sat in the hostel that night to get ready for a flight the next day......then realized we had screwed up our dates and had another day in Singapore - wooooooooo!!! We took full advantage of this and went around Singapore's Chinatown looking at endless market stalls and eating delicious authentic food ordered by picture cards!!!

We also walked around Little India...which currently has a bazzare in place as it's Deepvaali - Indian New ...

Saturday, 8th August

Time to leave the paradise island of Tioman and return to the mainland. This time the ferry crossing seemed not only calmer, but quicker, and we were sooned berthed back at Mersing. Our meticulous planning had discovered that there was a virtually immediate coach to either Singapore or Johor Bahru. This, of course, hadn't taken into account the whim of the local coach company, who had decided in their infinite wisdom and logic to delay ...

... two but the left over fat from having two kids and the fact she looked to be in her early thirties, didn’t help her attempt. One would assume she would, in a way, see her children as no more than an accessory to show her yuppie friends at the middle class barbeque every fortnight. She was small and rotund with this huge air of pretentiousness around her as she would liken herself to the celebrities in the hello magazine that she would read cover to cover, like a priest and ...

... her children educated here, so she was equally keen to learn of our stories of earlier times here. What was really interesting was to know that they’d had reunions for pupils of 30, 20 and 10 years ago!! I told her that since many would be my age or younger, she should consider trying to suggest a reunion for those of 40 year ago!! She was extremely keen to learn all about our school exploits.

She told us a lot about what the kids do at the school. They all go ...

... lost in the woodlands and had to turn back - disturbing another group of schoolgirls preparing to go canoeing! Pausing briefly to look at a giant black and yellow spider, I got a boat back to the mainland to rejoin the guys for a night out of karaoke!



After the obligatory shower and meal, we met Shan at Orchard MRT. We walked up Orchard Road (basically a huge shopping district popular with younger Singaporeans) passed a few megamalls. We stopped to watch a ...

... with the original Mojo Alpha force, lovely Mr Paul. We choked on the local beer prices, bought some anyway and chatted until I could no longer keep my eyes open after no sleep for 36 hours. Since then we have been doing a lot of mooching around Chinatown. The Hawker Stalls are a really cool place to eat, so much choice for reasonable prices (you can get a really good meal anywhere between 1 and 4 Singapore dollars - 50p to 2 quid) and visiting ...

... from steamy Singapore, although I think I am gradually getting used to the climate. Not to the extent of doing what Andy did and going for a 12km walk though! There's been the usual major shopping and the fulfilment of another ambition, Tiffin at Raffles - tea and cake in Ah Teng's coffee shop for the grand sum of $6.80 or less than three pounds.

You might wonder what ...