So, here we are in Singapore, with our return flight (into Sydney) in about 2 hours. We arrived in this morning at 6am from the 4-odd hour flight from Bangalore. Due to the time difference (we gain 2.5 hours coming back) and the time of departure we've effectively had no sleep now since the day before last in Bangalore.
Arriving in we went through immigration (trivially simple) and then followed directions to the Singapore Airlines counter that would resolve our day usage for a hotel (given by the airline because they had cancelled one of our connecting flights). After about 20 minutes we were given a bus ride to the hotel we would be able to use for the day. Several things became clear - Singapore is *humid* (as soon as you leave the terminal building you are "hit"; and that was 7am in the morning), we'd be picked up again from the hotel at 5pm (giving us some 10 hours), Singapore and India are "worlds apart", and Maria was very, very tired - she was asleep on my shoulder by the time we'd pulled out of the parking lot, and hard to rouse when we arrived at the hotel.
The hotel was fairly basic, and while it was tempting to crash on the bed for a "short" rest, we knew that would be the end of any plans for the day. So I quickly grabbed a shower, Maria another short nap, and then we headed back to reception to arrange a half-day tour of Singapore City. We'd also arranged to meet Simon at the hotel at 1pm for lunch. This turned out to be somewhat of a problem because the tour would extend to about 2pm. In the end it was resolved by the tour guide who arranged for us to miss the final part of the tour (botanic gardens), and be driven back to our hotel.
{Back again: These machines are on a 15-minutes oer session timer, and quite slow, lets see if I 
can wrap this up quickly} In a separate post I want to talk about the various contrasts between India and Singapore that occured to me throughout the day. As to the day tour it was quite interesting, though most of the time was spent on the bus, rather than witnessing/exploring sites. Not only was this quite a contrast with the India guided tour experiences we had had, so was the price - in Jaipur we had paid 200 rupees (about AU$6) each for a full day guided tour, here we paid S$30 (about $30 oz) each for the 3.5 hours we spent on the tour. Maria continued to be exhausted and sought cans of coke at each of our stops so as to employ the caffeine hit to stay awake. For me the highlight of the tour was visiting the oldest Chinese temple on the island (I'll dig up the name another time) - it was very beautiful and well maintained and I liked the array of gods that were represented and worshipped (which included Guan Yu - the martial hero). A very surreal experience was the visit to the Tiger (Beer) factory. They used a weird multi-media presentation (Australian made based on the voices and actors that were seen) structured that included live commentary, as well as polarised stereoscopic vision on a movable stage floor (hence they moved us around, blew wind on us etc.) to tell a comic-like story of the brewing process. The tour culminated with a visit to the bar where they pulled each person a beer and toasted to Tiger. On the way our we were each presented with a bag with a tiger beer glass - so now I'm carrying a bag with 5 (friendly other passengers) beer glasses in it as well as my backpack - lets see if that gets through security and the flights home unscathed. The last part of the tour for us was the "jewelery factory". Some aspects of tourist exploitation are universal - there was a *horde* of saleswomen (about one per member of the tour) following us around and hoping we would buy the clearly very expensive jewelry (Maria says: $2,800 for a necklace). They were promoting stuff like saying we have 50% off watches, or this new stone (Lavender something - they called it the Millenium stone because it was "the stone for the 21st Century - lol!) was said to be lucky by the Feng Shui masters. Needless to say we bought nothing, nor did most of the other toursists.
Then we were whipped back to our hotel and in a matter of a few shorts minutes there was Simon arriving in a taxi. Of course, the years had had their way with all 3 of us, but it was clearly Simon, and a joy to see him again. We quickly decided on going to the nearby Japanese restaurant for lunch. A good move as the food was delicious and quite authentic, and despite our troublesome tums, Maria and I both ate well (Maria Oyakudon, and I Katsundon, plus some 
yummy Agidashi Dofu). Most importantly it was a great venue for sitting and chatting about life the universe and everything with Simon. Before we knew it the restaurant was empty and we were eventually shown the door (after further long chats). Simon had to return to work, but it was 2:30pm - we had 2.5 hours before our return trip to the airport. So we grabbed a ride with Simon to Chinatown to do some impromptu shopping at the markets there. Thats when the humidity and our fatigue really hit us. We felt rather disappointed at the apparent poor quality of the goods and before long decided to high tail it back to the cool, airconditioned environs of the hotel room for a shower (my 2nd of the day). We both accidently crashed on the bed and it was lucky the TV controls dropped out of my hand and awoke Maria (Maria: it literally fell onto my forehead). 
By this time it was 5pm and our bus was already visible outside reception. So now here we are.
The day in Singapore has felt a bit "unreal" for which I attribute our fatigue and the fact that we were just "skimming the surface" - aware we had to leave shortly and hence just doing the simple tourist highlights and not feeling engaged or a part of the movements of the city. Well, we'll be back in oz in 10 hours or less (7am oz time) - I wonder how we'll feel then - no doubt *extremely* tired - here's hoping we each get at least a few hours sleep.
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