Oh well who needs sleep anyway? Set off for St Andrews Cathedral and Canning Park/Fort Canning Hill. Drissle started about 11am torrential rain, thunder and lightening ended about 2.30pm! Wasn't too wet by the time that I got to the Cathedral, and found the plaque that I went to see. My interest in all this stuff? My father was on HMS Prince of Wales which was sunk along with HMS Repulse on 10th Dec 1941 just off of Singapore, which meant that he was in Singapore when it fell on 15th Feb 1942. Yes he was one of the survivors, he was told to either stay and be a P.O.W or run for it, he along with others ran. I came along 13 years later, strangely enough on the anniversary of the surrender of Singapore to the Japanese. After the cathedral I walked to Canning Park, by this time quite wet. Canning park is very green and the landscaped gardens are fantastic, but with LOTS of steps again!! had it not been raining I expect that it would have been very busy, but I had the place to myself. Headed for a place called "The Battle Box" which is an underground bunker consisting of a series of rooms and was completed in 1938. I had an hour tour, there was a few others who had walked through the rain to get there, the room were restored to thier original state with the orinal equipment being used by animated wax figures of the people who were there at the time of the finals days including the surrender. I was very, very impressed by the whole set up (apart from the gift shop which was pathetic and could have been made alot more of and could have been a good money earner) but I learned a lot. Was not allowed to take photos in there which was a shame, and there was no book of the rooms that I could bring away.

Just one word of advice for any interested in history, get the oldéns to talk before they pop thier clogs, I wish that I had found out more from my dad but its 20 years too late now!

From there I wandered back via a couple of shopping malls (just for a change!!) I forgot to mention in yesterdays log that I have arrived in Singapore during fashion week - lucky me !!!!!! - others seem to think it's important.....ummm ?

By the time I got back to the hostel my feet was killing me, but the walking is doing me good so they say.  I tried to put photos on the site but failed again .............. the picture attached to this blog is Toyko as there is not one of Singapore in the site library - but it looks like this