Contrasts

Friday 23rd August - Here we are in a "boutique hotel" in Singapore. The room is very clean and comfortable and the TV is huge, but space is otherwise quite limited. Yesterday we went to the Angkor National Museum - new and very impressive with very interesting exhibits. We wished we could have spent longer there. But we had to get to the airport, Mr Marom took us in his tuk tuk and charged us $30 for the one and a half days. The flight was fine and we got into an air-conditioned taxi for Mr Ben Ali to take us to our hotel - the ride cost just under 30 Singapore dollars.

Singapore has some hugely impressive infrastructure - the road from the airport is designed to be used as an emergency runway, just by moving the planting boxes in the central reserve, and then we went onto the new Marina Coastal Expressway - 5 lanes in each direction and a 3.5km tunnel part of which is under the seabed. This morning we started using the MRT, much better than the London Underground, and visited the Singapore National Museum. We spent several hours following the history of Singapore from the 14th century through to the present day. The whole thing was superbly presented and fascinating to follow. Finished off with a walk round the old colonial part of town ending up going along by the river where we found statues of Ho Chi Minh and Deng Xiaoping, not what we were expecting to see facing the forest of bank skyscrapers on the opposite bank.

Singapore Art Museum, formerly a Catholic School:

The view across Singapore Cricket Club's ground (for Nigel - Madras CC fielding, Singhalese CC on 140 something for 6 in the 19th over of a 20/20 - they finished their innings on 156 for 8, and a six landed about 10 yards from where we were standing)

Do what you're told in Singapore - it's illegal to bring in chewing gum, and drug smugglers face a mandatory death penalty:

Uncle Ho's view across the river: