Friday dawned and the tour director still had no shoes to go with her dress for Christmas Day in Raffles. This meant an urgent expedition had to be mounted to find the requisite items. We walked to Orchard Road the centre of shopping in Singapore and set about the task. In the first mall we found a giant department store and after looking at at least two hundred and fifty pairs of shoes she found a pair she liked.
The next item needed was a clutch bag and after a little searching the appropriate item was located and purchased. This truly should have been the end of the matter but Or hard Road is a bit like the West End of London you come out of one mall back onto the road and straight into another mall or large department store. To be fair we did spend a little bit of time looking for a frying pan for David, but we looked at more shoes, dresses and tops, this was all fine as we had done what I wanted to do when we had been to the museum.
We had lunch in a food court in an Indonesian cafe which we went to because it was full of Indonesians and they should know if it was good or not. We came out from lunch to find the heavens had opened and the rain was so hard we had to don our raincoats, before entering another department store. The rain had put paid to our plans to go on a river cruise so we just mooches around the shops. At about three thirty the tour director announced that she was sated and we set off to walk home.
In the evening the three of us went to a delightful restaurant called" T he Chop Suey House" where we had a great meal, infact one of the best Chinese meals I have ever had. During the taxi ride home we were able to marvel at Singapore's Christmas decorations and lights, all of which seem just a little bit over the top, eight feet high snowmen and leaping golden deer Spring to mind.
On our return we sat in a bar by the river and had a beer and spent a pleasant hour just chatting.