Here’s the thing, I’d told everyone about the brilliant cruise terminal in Singapore, the two dentists, the hairdresser, all the shops. And guess what – we didn’t go there, in fact I’m not even sure if it’s still there!

The new metal hangar of a cruise terminal is devoid of character or facilities with a paltry couple of shops, the MRT station is over half a mile away, however once you get there you don’t need to buy a day ticket any more just tap your card on the turnstile and as long as you use the same card each time you won’t pay more than the daily rate

I was on an afternoon tour so I headed off early, through the fun of customs planning to visit Chinatown for paintbrushes and hopefully to catch some of Yip Yew Chongs work. I’m a bit of a fan girl, we studied his toy or puppet seller mural in class, and I luckily bumped into Gary from class who had already found a mural and directed me round

Mural seen, paintbrushes bought, plus another couple of nik naks, I nipped back on the train and round to the food court in Little India for a Mango Lassi & one of those pancake things which was very delicious, a quick wander round some stalls being tempted by the Sari Silks and it was time to head back to the ship for my tour

My panoramic tour involved a river cruise and a trip to the top of the Marina Bay Sands where I treated myself to a non alcoholic Singapore Sling for $8. Basically I paid $8 for a slush puppie, but when in Singapore…

The river cruise was fab, it’s a great way to see the city, we took in a lot of landmarks such as the `merlion and the art gallery, plus these cute, playful children jumping into the water in one of my favourite sculptures. We were even lucky enough to see an otter

A short visit to a Chinese Temple was also part of our tour, this particular temple was very old and perhaps not as ornate as some but was very interesting

From one temple to another, we drove through Little India on our way to the Marina Bay Sands (one day I will get to stay there!) where we headed up to the outer deck to admire the city views

You can see from my first photo that it was a little breezy up there, hair everywhere, but it was warm, and amazingly dry. Every time I’d been to Singapore before it rained

We’d quite a bit of time up here, so I enjoyed my expensive slush puppie and chilled before it was time to move on to the next port!