Singapore...

Ok so i am in love with Singapore although it is VERY VERY depressing when people look at you pityingly for asking for a size larger than a 30" waist when buying jeans!! Apparently that is the largest size most of the shops sell here, doesnt shock me too much - unfortunately all of the women here are TINY which makes me feel like a beached whale!!

The city itself is amazing - the shopping (all we have done so far) is incredible. On both sides of the road the whole way down are shpping centres that are (at the smallest) 5 or 6 times as big as St. Georges and sell everything from Gucci and Armani to Topshop and random foreign clothes.It's taken almost 2 whole days for us to get through about half of the shopping centres. That doesnt include being right next to singapore's largest street market which is unbelieveable as well as chinatown and little india. Tomorrow is another day of shopping (i could spend SO much money in this place!!) then on Thursday we are going to Sentosa Island - an island just of the coast of Singapore where we can go to the beach, view singapore from the country's highest viewing platform and do random other fun things. Friday we are going to singapore zoo which should be cool :-)

Sorted out our visas's for Thailand so they will now let us in the country!! They cost 50 singapore dollars which is approx 17 pounds - in England it would have cost me 50 punds to get the visa!!

Singapore is so cool and vibrant and I love how modern everything is as well as being immaculately clean. Even down to the MRT - the underground. It is beasically a cleaner, safer and generally better run version of the London Underground!

McDonalds is EVERYWHERE!! literally every building has one. Also they have something called McCafe here, pretty explanatory by the name but this is also on every street corner! For lunch today tom and i had noodles, some meat (no idea what it was) and a fruit juice drink for 1.50! its great! and this is singapore, can only imagine hoe cheap the rest of malaysia will be! Obviosuly there are some spectacular restauants. We tend to go somewhere nicer for our evening meal - we splash out and spend about 15.00 for the two of us :-P

the heat here is so different to that of Africa. The temperature is still the same (around 30 celcius) but it's really humid here rather than just HOT as it was in Africa. Finding the heat ok though, will be much much hotter in Thailand as we will be there at the hottest point of their year. We go to Thailand on 16th APril so watch this space fo the weather report!

Missing my Maasai friends - after seeing them everyday for 3 months and learning to live with their endearing wierdness it's strange when they are gone. Keepingi n touch with the other volunteers though - already had several updates from them about where they are and what they are up to so not missing them as much.

Anyway shall update more when i can - going to upload photos tomorrow (for some reason this computer won't allow it) and also will be posting a CD with my photos on back home.

Missing you

lou

xxxxx