We've made it to our third country, Singapore! Although not sure it really counts since we saw all the main sites in a day!

Had a fantastic time in Kuala Lumpur, staying with Kristina's uncle Richard... much more luxury than we've got used to! We managed to see all the sites and also became well acquainted with lots of the local food! We visited many many shopping malls and learnt that people in KL LOVE to shop... Chinatown had a huge market full of various fake watches, trainers, handbags etc and was fairly manic. We paid a visit to Putrajaya, a huge man-made area containing all the major government buildings, a mospue, man-made lake and shopping mall (of course). Then of course we saw the twin towers, very impressive site! Although we didn't get to go up the towers themselves, we had a meal at the top of the KL Menara tower in its revolving restaurant and had the most fantastic view of the whole city as the sun went down and all the buildings were lit up. A great experience if you ever get the chance!

We moved on from KL to a town called Melaka further down the coast. At various times it was taken over by the Portugese, Dutch and British and we spent an afternoon looking round all the old buildings... Very continental feel to the city. From Melaka we caught a bus to Singapore, getting off and on again at the border for immigration control and then found some of our friends from the Highlands at Bugis Backpackers Hostel, which is fairly cheap for Singapore but nice and clean.

We spent another day's sightseeing, taking in the old colonial district, which was very British with its own cricket pitch and cathedral, Fort Canning Park, Boat Quay for lunch, Chinatown and lots of skyscrapers. In the evening we did the Singapore Night Safari, which was great although very very touristy! A tram ride takes you around the zoo and the animals are lit up so you can see them. Our tour guide was a great Lloyd Grossman soundalike and our favourite part of the evening was when he got rather confused by a pair of apparently homosexual male lions! Really good fun...

We visited Sentosa the next day, a strange small island off the bottom of Singapore with a man-made beach and a lovely (?) view of all the huge tankers and ships in the port! We did some sunbathing and then in the evening headed to Little India for dinner. It had a great atmosphere with loads of Indians (men only!) chatting on the streets and doing their shopping and we had a marvellous meal served on a banana leaf. We ordered loads of rice, curry, popadoms and naan and then you eat it all with your fingers off the leaf... they are still a little yellow!!

Anyway, today has been our last (very lazy!) day in Asia and we are flying to Australia in about four hours so had better get a move on!! Bye for now.