SINGAPORE

I'm not entirely sure that my three-day stopover in Singapore on my way back to London is really deserving of its own blog post. My stay there consisted of little apart from eating and sleeping. And then eating some more. Singapore knows how to do cheap and delicious food remarkably well.

I had spent the last couple of days of my Australia trip dreaming about how great my first laksa in Singapore was going to taste. As it turned out, I didn't have the chance to eat a laksa until my very last day, when I had it for breakfast. But that's only because I was so busy shoving as many other divine delicacies into my mouth as I could.

I stayed at a really nice hostel in Chinatown, which was situated directly over a dim sum restaurant. Yum. There was also a food center directly across the road, so it was quite an effort to promp myself to move further than 20 metres every day. For those who aren't familiar with Singapore, food centers are like a food court, except instead of McDonald's and Oporto and crap, you have  informal hawker stalls. It's like Singapore picked up all it's street food vendors, and plonked them indoors. In fact they may well be the actual origin of food centers. I was too busy eating to do any research.

When I wasn't eating, which wasn't often, I explored the rest of Chinatown, walked to and around Little India, and discovered some very trendy boutiques on Haji Lane in the Arab quarter. Well, I wasn't eating while I was walking, but I have to admit that I did sample some Indian food in little India and middle-eastern food in the Arab Quarter. It would have been rude not to.

The closest I got to a shopping centre was a trip to the famous Mustafa Centre in Little India. Known as "the shopping mall that never sleeps", it offers twenty-four hour access to just about any piece of crap that you have the urge to buy. I hate shopping, so I don't know what possessed me to enter the maze. I got out as soon as I could afterwards, having purchased only two things that I didn't know I urgently needed until I saw them.

This was my third or fourth trip to Singapore, and once again I didn't get myself over to Sentosa Island. Oh well. Next time Gadget, next time.