Firstly, we'd like to thank all those who sent on emails of concern to us when news filtered out about the recent disaster in this part of the world.

At the moment of the earthquake, we were sleeping soundly in our hotel unaware of any seismic activity in the vicinity. It was reported that the tremors were felt here in Singapore, but luckily, due to it's sheltered position from the sea, the devastating tsunamis that followed the quake never arrived here.

We spent the day before this tragedy, which was Christmas, relaxing in a nice hotel. We started our day with a nice swim in the pool and later went for a stroll to find something to eat. A nearby Irish pub had a menu with enough things to tickle our appetite, so we were even able to celebrate the day with some tastes from home. All in all, it was great to relax like this and the only thing we were missing from home were our friends and family.

As it's reputation suggests, we found Singapore to be a clean, safe city with an amazing public transport system. One of the things that grabbed our attention in the central business district was the feeling that the streets were for cars only, which meant that pedestrians had to use the walkways and passageways connecting all the commercial zones and malls. These, in themselves, were like a cavernous city.

Imagine being on one side of the street and seeing something on the other side that looks interesting. You can not simply cross over to see it up close because of multiple lanes of fast moving traffic. To investigate further you have to enter a shopping mall, follow the arrows pointing to places near to where you want to go and eventually (after perhaps getting lost on a few occasions), you should find yourself outside on the correct side of the road. That's if everything has gone according to plan of course, and you haven't ended up way off course or forgetting where you wanted to go!

Besides this commercial aspect to the city, it was also an interesting place, containing a lot of history and a great introduction to the Asian cultures. The Asian Civilizations Museum brought to our attention the amount of cross cultural influence there was in this whole region (mostly due to trade between India and China). To this day, this small country of 4.5 million people, crammed into the size of a city, continues to have a "melting pot" feel to it.

Chinatown was one of the areas that we enjoyed spending some time; simply because it was so different to anything we'd seen before. It was originally a ghetto for recently arrived immigrants from China and had quite a seedy reputation. Nowadays though, it has been cleaned up and is like being transported to a different part of the world.

The language, signs, food and smells all change when you enter Chinatown. Some of the older houses in the area have very distinctive designs with roofs that turn upwards at their edges. There are independently maintained covered walkways in front of many of the premises, which are higher and lower in a strange way as you move from one of the street to the other. No chinatown would be complete without a few red lanterns hanging around the place either!

A few stops down on the MRT (the train system here) was the Little India area, where you would think you were in India. There was food of the country, clothes of the country, temples of the country, descendants and immigrants all from the country. With the efficient public transport system in place, we were able to move pretty much effortlessly from area to area.

On the outskirts, was another of the things that we were very impressed with; the "Night Safari" (more like a "Night Zoo"). Avoiding the heat of the day, it was pleasant to be able to move around seeing the animals when they were most active. The Asian tiger, pacing about his enclosure, had us in awe. He was so close to us that you could see the bulging muscles around his legs as he moved. In fact it was pretty eerie being near to these powerful beasts in this light.

To sum it all up, Singapore was a pleasant surprise for us. Everything was different and new which made a nice change from the more western influenced areas we'd been until now. Even though English was widely spoken (as well as Malay, Chinese and Tamil), at times we felt like we understood nothing around us!