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The last stop before Oz was Singapore. We were there for two days and they were both great. Coming up in this blog season finale.... we ride a duck, have a close encounter with a leopard, rendezvous with the world's greatest yo-yoer and get our photo taken with John Lennon. Will we have to pay excess baggage fines at the airport?! Dont delay, read on to find out....WE hadn't booked any accommodation for Singapore and assumed that we'd just turn up and stumble across cheap available rooms as we had done for the past few weeks. Error. After speaking to the helpful but scary lady at the airport desk we found out that she wanted us to pay about fifty quid a night for a room a few miles out of the city. We turned her down out of hand and told ourselves that we'd have no problem finding a room ourselves if we just got a taxi into town. Error. The next few hours were spent traipsing around the city until eventually we got a room in a backpacker place (quite scummy) for pretty cheap. Fortunately Singapore is really clean and really safe so wandering around nativity style wasn't too bad.The next day was wonderful. We got up fairly early and went to go and see the world's biggest fountain. It's big but wasn't turned on so it was a bit anticlimactic. Next to the world's biggest/driest fountain was the start point of the Singapore "Duck Tours". You climb onto an amphibious sort of vehicle, drive round the city for a bit and then drive into the river and complete a circuit around the city. This was good fun itself but we also managed to shower ourselves in glory by winning a small musical instrument which makes a duck quacking noise. Happy days. Just when we thought the day couldn't get any better, who should we bump into in one of Singapore's hundreds of shopping centres, but the world's greatest yo-yo-er (spelling?!)! We watched her and her yo-yo mates perform the 'sleeper' and 'walk the dog', then the novelty wore off - pretty quickly - and we went to the zoo.Singapore zoo is easily the best zoo in the world ever ever. It's built into an already existing rainforest so all the habitats are natural. Personal highlights include the baboons, sloths, orangutans and manatees. Probably the best bit though was the night safari. This is unique to Singapore zoo, you can go round the zoo at night and watch the nocturnal animals. We got right up to the front of the leopard enclosure, knelt down in front of the glass and were about 6 inches away from this leopard that was prowling his territory on the other side of the glass and kept stopping and looking right at us. Pretty scary but brilliant.We left the zoo and headed into the hip happening city centre and immediately found a Beatles tribute act in a bar and settled in for the night with several Singapore Slings. The Beatles were well good, John in particular was class, and Paul even managed to return to the changing room with a groupie (sadly his wig fell off while he was running off the stage).The next day was spent with both of us feeling a bit rough and wandering around Singapore being a bit lost before going to the airport to find out that the combined weight of our luggage was now around 60 kilos (or Rois). But seeing as Singapore Airlines is as brilliant as the country they represent, they allowed it all on for free. Next stop Australia…
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