So now we are home! The flight was uneventful , the four hour wait at Heathrow to get the first bus back to Exeter was endured. The drop in temperature from thirty two degrees C to minus two degrees C was a bit of a shock and we were forced to change out of shorts and t shirts at Heathrow.

Our bus journey back to Exeter was also unremarkable and our friends, Geoff and Mary were waiting for us at the bus station when we arrived. It was only in their car on the A30 that we realised that had left our duty free in the luggage rack in the coach.

Geoff pulled in and the tour director having made sure that I was duly told off, phoned the company to report our stupidity. They said they would look for the carrier bag once the bus had returned to its depot in Plymouth. I felt absolutely awful about it.

Geoff and Mary had prepared a wonderful lunch for us which we enjoyed and having finished that we rang the bus depot who told us that had our carrier bag safe and sound. We were more than grateful and arranged to pick it up the next day.

We eventually returned to our house at three thirty both of us glad to be home but at the same time sad that this adventure is over. I feel all homecomings like this contain a real mix of emotions and that feeling is really difficult to describe, there is a novelty about being back in your own house tempered with a degree of melancholy. Our family tour has allowed us to spend time with family members we would not normally see, let alone spend time with. We have returned with an abundance of memories, all of them comforting and all of them happy. Whilst we have our health we need to travel, we need to learn from other people and we need to widen our horizons so that we remain rounded individuals with our feet on the ground, happy with our blessings and the life we lead. To see poverty in Vietnam, which is absolute in cases, makes you realise how very lucky we are.

Thank you to the five thousand one hundred and sixty people who have bothered to read this. I will keep an eye on it in future, but until the tour director and I decide to travel again there will be no more entries.

Wednesday and we have now got ourselves into a leaving mind set. The morning was filled with the tour director taking charge of packing. My role is only to offer moral assistance and to provide carrier bags when asked. Neither of us want to be doing this and the atmosphere is somewhat charged. 

However, by midday the task is more or less finished and we can sit back somewhat glum in our approach to the afternoon. We headed off to Clarke Quay fro lunch to have food in the food court there, but before that we went to get a refund on our MRT cards which amounted to three dollars each. The tour director had told me this would be all we would get back but David and I were sure that we would also get back our seven dollar deposit. I had to admit that we were wrong.

We did have lunch in the food court where I made a slight mistake in adding fresh chilli to a dish of black pepper and ginger beef. It was incredibly hot.

As we returned to the flat the rains came down, in what was almost a proper monsoon. We took refuge in a bar and had a beer whilst we waited for the rain to abate. There was something rather depressing about watching th rain on our last day, at one point we couldn't even se clearly across the river.

In the late afternoon the tour director went for her last swim and then it was time for a shower and after that the cases had to be locked and we were ready to leave. 

David came home from work early and we head out for our last meal in Simgapore, a Mexican meal which was very good. Back to the flat the car turned up at eight thirty and the three of us headed off to the airport. The car couldn't find the address and so we had to move our cases out into the pavement and to flag him down as he drove by.

Airports are generally soulless places, there was no chance of an upgrade even though we had travelled right around the world with them, this is a little unfair as we were offers an upgrade to premium economy for the small sum of thre hundred pounds each. We didn't feel we could afford it.

Sad farewells were made and then we were through security and immigration to enjoy a gin and tonic in a bar whilst we waited for our flight.

We had been told to go to the gate at ten twent five so that is what we did, only to find our flight was boarding, the time we had been given was the latest we could turn up!!!

Before we knew it we were on the plane and heading back to Britain.

Tuesday, our penultimate day and it feels a little sad. We are not facing up to our departure with any great bravery, there is something about travelling which we really enjoy, and once you are on the road, you really want to stay on it.
One of things we had wanted to do was to visit Coney Island , a small islet on the river facing Malysia. We had read an article about it and it sounded like a pleasant day out. So back on the tube we made one of our longest  journeys to the end of the Northern line.
Having alighted we then had to find a bus which we managed with the minimum of fuss. The bus took us to the end of its run and there were deposited in a car park overlooking a major river.
We had to ask two women on bikes for directions and they helpfully pointed us in the right direction. Twenty minutes later we reached our destination and set off to walk around it. The beaches were wonderfully sandy but spoilt by a collection of rubbish floating on the beach and floating on the edge of the water.
We walked for about two hours and enjoyed the experience.the government has let the island revert to its natural state so it really is like Singapore was in the beginning. So our walk was basically through wooded jungle, however all the tracks were clear,ly marked and we walked about eight kilometres in total.
As we returned to the bus stop the heavens opened and luckily for us the bus arrived within two minutes. It returned uS to the bus station and we decided to have lunch in the shopping mall Waterpoint, which had only just opened. The food court was mainly Japanese and we had Ramen, a soup with slices of pork, noodles and bean sprouts in it. We thought it was delicious.
we returned to the flat and Rosemarie went to the pool for a swim.
As it as David's birthday we went to a Thai restaurant beside the river and enjoyed a meal there.
A great last day with a variety of activity.

Monday and we are now heading towards the end of our trip. Both us realise this and and both us refuse to discuss it openly as we are both sad about it. We had decided to visit the gardens by the bay again to see the dahlia exhibition. Our trip there was uneventful we are now totally at home on the MRT system and know what we are doing.
The dahlia exhibition was good but not quite as good as the chrysanthemum display we had seen earlier in the trip. However, we were able to spend about two and half hours ther and felt we had got value for money.
Back into the heat of the day we headed to Marina Bay Sands for lunch which we enjoyed in the food court, having fresh pasta and dumplings.
We then headed back to David's flat so that the tour director could go for a swim and both us relaxed. In the evening we went to a Japanese restaurant for a Shabu Shabu meal. This is basically a soup fondue, a bowl of boiling stock is placed on a burner on the table and you are provided with very thin slices of pork and beef to boil in it. In addition you are also provided with thinly sliced vegetables to add to the stock which not only improves the flavour but also gives you a vegetable course later in the meal.
All in all a quiet day but one that we really enjoyed.

Sunday stated quietly with breakfast out in a restaurant by the river. After breakfast we headed off to the harbour and walked along the esplanade crossing the entrance to the harbour crossing the helix bridge, so called as it was built to reflect the make up of DNA?
We then decided to visit the museum of science and technology which is housed in a building that looks like a lotus flower. It really is an interesting building very reflective of modern Singaporean architecture.
We spent an hour touring an exhibition about the hadron collider at CERN and all of us came to the conclusion that we needed to go away and read something more about it. Our knowledge of nuclear physics is sadly wanting.
We walked back to the tube and made our way home stopping first to pick up a carrier bag that David had left in the restaurant the night before. As it contained his birthday present from his friends it was rather important.
David cooked us a wonderful meal in the evening and we retired to bed.

On Saturday night we went out with three of David's friends for a meal to celebrate his birthday. David had chosen a Mexican restaurant in an establishment called Chijmes, which is fronted on the road by the remains of a church and its cloisters which are all painted brilliant white and floodlit.
The Japanese had bombed it in the Second World War and the nunnery that had been there had moved. As they left a selection of bars and restaurants moved in.
Aside from the history, we had a a great evening and everybody seemed to enjoy themselves.
Sunday seemed to come around too quickly and we were off out for breakfast before heading to the Esplanade where we walked along the harbour front to the Museum of  Science and Art which is housed in the Lotus building, so called because it looks like a lotus flower.
We paid to see an exhibition about the Hadron collider at CERN and soon became very clear that none of us had any idea about nuclear physics or the scale of the work at CERN, all of us came out determined to try and learn a little more.
The Lotus building was really interesting, another fine example of innovative Singaporean architecture, unfortunately although it is a fine looking building the petals are virtually useless, we found ourselves inside one which was basically a huge white curved space.
We returned to David's for our evening meal, and David cooked a Thai prawn dish that was excellent, this followed by the Manchester United game on television rounded off our day.
There has been a hint of sadness overhanging the weekend as we all know it is our last in Singapore, but the activities we have attempted, the things we have learnt and the enjoyment we have had made that sadness a little more bearable. Singapore really is an interesting city, it is certainly a place which deserves more than a day or two's stop when you are in transit. It is a city in flux, a space full of building sites, return in five years and it will be fundamentally altered. It is like no ther city in Asia we have visited run by a benevolent, right wing government which looks after the rich and the expats but is not overly concerned by the poor. However, it needs foreign labourers so on every building site you will find an army of Indian workers and most young expats have nannies or maids who are mainly foreign. So the government has in some ways to look after the foreigners it needs to fulfill the tasks its own citizens don't want to do.

David suggested that we went to the Chinese Garden and showed us a photograph n his phone of two pagodas beside a lake that looked quite beautiful, so we concurred and off we set. We travelled on the tube for quite a long time, in fact further than we had ever travelled before , heading for Malaysia.
David informed us that we were only about ten kilometres from the border.
We arrived at the appropriately named Chinese Garden station and stepped straight off the train into a huge park, admittedly there were four step down from the station but it front of us was a huge expanse of green at least the size of Hyde Park.
A few hundred yards away stood a huge solitary pagoda, and off we walked in that direction. On finding a map of the park, as usual we had done no research at all, we found that there was a Chinese Garden, A Japanese Garden, a Turtle and Tortoise Museum, a tea room and a Bonzai garden in the park.
It is the tour dirctor's firm opinion that pagoda are there to be climbed so we made our way to the seventh floor where the views were interesting. All around the park were tall tower blocks of flat's housing workers for the growing city, but the park itself was an oasis of tranquility.
Having explored the first pagoda we made our way to the Japanese garden, at which point it started to rain. We decided to avoid the rain by paying to go into the tortoise and turtle museum, which apparently is in the Guiness book of Records for having the largest collection of such animals in one building.
The first room was full of models of turtles and tortoises, hundreds of them in all sorts of shapes and sizes. The second room contained aquaria which contained a variety of turtles, some of them very nasty looking things indeed. I particularly disliked the snake head turtle, with the alligator snapping title coming a close second. As we were in this room the rain abated and we were able to go into an outside enclosure where there were several more animals in cages and pools. Whilst I had not generally been in favour of entering, it proved to very interesting.
As the rain had cease we walked to the twin pagodas which rest beside a large lake and which were very scenic. Again we climbed to the top and admired the view.
We then made our way to China town where we had du lungs for lunch before asking through several streets to look at the decorations for the Chinese New Year which was going to be celebrated that evening. The red and gold decorations were amazing. The crowds were there in force and after a little while we walked back to David's flat.