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As normal, after breakfast all regrouped together and split up in our 3 taxis to go and visit the poignant Raffles statue adjacent to the Boat Quay.
Got out of the taxi to be met by a black statue of Raffles, Shane said "is this it"? the reply was "No, we need to find the big white one". Thankfully one of the taxi drivers had given Andy the directions. We found some willing passers-by to take a group photograph with the No 2 pose, which is a copy of how Raffles stands. A short walk over the bridge led us to the restaurants in Boat Quay, where it would have been rude not to call for our final beer, well b***** us it was the cheapest jug of beer we had found all week.
Taxis back to China Town for our final shopping spree, where we all split up into small groups and shopped. The meeting time was 2.30 in our "local restaurant", this was going to be a light meal but oops we over ordered and had enough food for half of China Town, suffice to say it was all eaten, all this food and NO BEER !!!!! mango smoothies all round.
We returned to the hotel, after pre booking a room as we weren't leaving until 8, so that we could all get showered and changed and feel refreshed for our homeward journey.
The girls got ready first, followed by the lads and we made our way across to the air conditioned Vivo centre again to waste time until our transport was to pick up us. Jackie decided she wanted a cigarette so Rose and Gary, waited with her while the others jumped in the lift and said they would meet us on the next floor. That sounds really simple, but isn't at all !!!! Rose, Gary and Jackie got in the lift on the ground floor and pressed No 1, as that is usually the next floor. After standing still for a few minutes and the lift not moving, Gary pressed level 2, where we got out and realised it was the car park, so got back in the lift and pressed down, this took us back to where we had started, so pressed it down again and got out of the lift and then went down a moving staircase to find we were back where we had started 10 minutes ago. This was very funny but by now we had lost everyone else, panic starting to set in, we text everyone asking where they were - but no reply. Decided to just keep walking round and round the centre until we spotted Diane's bright yellow Aikido t-shirt, which all the ladies were wearing home.
Fits of laughter erupted as we relayed our escapade to find out that the same had happened to the other group. So after wasting loads of time trying to find each other it was time to make our way back to the hotel.
Our transport arrived, along with Annie Goh, who had brought us all parting gifts, bbq pork all round in beautiful presentation bags. We arrived at the airport to be told that our flight was delayed 30 minutes but this worked in our favour as we met Philip Lee Shihan as his family along with Frank Burlingham, so gave us another opportunity to bestow our grateful thanks and well wishes.
All got through passport control without any hiccups (that's a first) found a table as we all needed coffee and Shane treated the whole group to a donut, hmmmm yummy, OK Rose, Jackie and Diane had to try eating a whole one without licking their lips - YEP Jackie won !!!, Rose was a close second and poor Diane had never done this before.
We spotted a beautiful, tranquil water feature with koi carp in and a lovely Japanese bridge going over it. This was the ideal place for Gary to be awarded his black belt, which had come from Philip Lee Shihan's hombu dojo. Big beam on Gary's face.
Flight was called and we all proceeded to our seats for the long journey home, only to find that there was a fault on the plane and we were sat in our seats on the runway for over an hour while they rectified the fault.
Some of the mature adults (who by this time were getting a tad bored) decided to use their flight socks as hand puppets and tormented the people in the seats in front.
Eventually when the fault had been repaired, we took off for our long journey home. Most slept although the seats weren't really that comfy and woke up for the meals. Some looking forward to our arrival in Munich to be able to stretch our legs properly and have a cig.
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