Like all affairs we’ve had some moments of doubt.

Earlier this week we had a bit of a shuffle on Sorrow St when Jim realised his precious and valuable acoustic guitar had been splintered and shattered down one side and this despite being cradled in the hard case by undies and packs of tissues. I’ve written to Jetstar and although they told tell you that they will contact you within 48 hours it has been four days and to date I have heard nothing.

So, the repeated rhetoric of “it is only a guitar and nobody died” and “we’re not going to let this spoil our holiday” appears to be working. The fact that I said “We’ll leave this one in Singapore and buy another in Spain if we see one you like” seems to have helped too!

Tim and Jen have been excellent hosts. We have driven around Singapore through forests, farms, industrial estates, past military bases and jails an informative and amusing commentary provided by Tim with his practised ironic humour. We’ve driven around the commercial consumer excess that is Santosa Island and had a paddle at the manmade beach but all this was easily eclipsed by the more natural sight of a peacock and her (?) pea chicks crossing the road at a Zebra crossing and two white cockatoo denuding a tree on the island.

Singapore is a city made for eating out. Hawker centres have an enormous range of fresh delicious food for between $3 and $6 a plate, and delicious. We have had Indian, Thai, Malay, Chinese and Singaporean and they are all delicious. We have walked and walked and walked. We have seen the wonderwash Laundromat the Happy Joy restaurant and the thunder rock guitar school. The suburbs are littered with coaching schools for students who sometimes attend before school or after school or both for extra tuition in every subject. There appears to be the belief that if you haven’t made it into an academically selective school by middle school then your life is over. So despite fantastic play equipment in every suburb or area, you rarely see school aged children using the equipment. Private schools are expensive with many charging more than $50,000 a year for tuition so maids look after the kids, take the dogs for walks and pick up the food from the hawker centres because the parent are working to pay school fees. Australian children are very laid back by Singaporean standards.

We have had hilarious encounters and interesting moments.  Yesterday on our way to a hawker stall we came across an ancient toothless crone by the side of the pavement selling mangoes. When we asked her how much they were she said “Three dollar”, (more than they are in the shops) When we showed interest she said we could have “three for 10 dollar” Now my maths isn’t great but we couldn’t resist the bargain!! So we gave her $10 and she looked so smug at hoodwinking the foreigners and we laughed all the way to the Hawker Centre. Today we are off to two nearby islands, Kusu and St John’s and tonight we bard the plane for Istanbul. More later.