Singapore, Mumai magic, home to Heathrow

I spent Tuesday to Saturday in Singapore staying with my friend Cara, husband Sam and newish baby daughter.

It was good to get to the condominium after my flight. I was more than a little delicate on Tuesday. I retired straight to bed on arrival and pretty much did not emerge until 6pm.

We then headed out for some food at a local Chinese venue (the Chinese make up about 70-80% of Singapore's population). I had 'chicken-rice' - it is no more exciting than it sounds, but after a day of not eating tasted delicious.

The days that followed were a nice mix of sightseeing and normal activities.

We visited the old colonial part of Singapore and the thriving Central Business District (CBD). We took the elevator up 56 floors to the top of Marina Bay Sands - this is a newish (opened June 2010) complex comprising three high rise buildings (supposedly in the style of a deck of cards) with a 'boat' on top. The boat includes a viewing deck known as the skypark and a 150m pool for residents of the hotel. The view was pretty cool and the pool is amazing. It is apparently the largest sized pool in the world found at that height

The complex is designed for rich Chinese. It has designer stores and an expensive hotel and a casino to rival those in nearby Macau.

After our day of sightseeing we retired to the Singapore Cricket Club, a truly ex pat experience. It is quite prestigious, but my friends Sam and Cara have managed to get membership. Typically sophisticated we drank beer with our dinner.

We decided to have a sports day on Thursday. This involved tennis at the apartment block in the morning followed by an 8km jungle run (for me) in the afternoon. What sort of nutter runs at 2pm in 32degree heat? Me apparently. I didn't stop sweating for an hour afterwards. Dinner was take-out from the Thomson Plaza, one of the many indoor food centres that sell an incredible range of foods which are cooked fresh for a mere 3-$5 (about £.250).

Friday began with tennis again and then I was booked in for a full body Javanese massage. She was not a shy lady and happily pummelled every area imaginable. She certainly exerted herself and belched twice over the course of my hour session (I think my appointment coincided with lunch). I left greased up with oil and floppy.

In the afternoon we went to the urban planning museum. Very interesting to see how well you can plan on a micro scale -Singapore is a city-state and really not that big an island (smaller than greater London) and when they run out of land they simply reclaim more from the sea! It was all designed according to a visionary masterplan - transport links are excellent, there are food outlets pretty much everywhere and green spaces are valued. Water is supplied by means of 15 man-made reservoirs which also serve as recreational spaces and waste is shipped out to an offshore landfill site.

Following my bus-man's holiday I took a hot and sweaty tour of some temples and sat in Raffles Square watching the workers start their weekend and contemplating the human condition. It was then time to head to the famous Raffles restaurant for dinner.

What a buffet! It was a culinary delight and I had six plates worth of the food. Very enjoyable.

On Saturday we fawned over orchids at the botanic gardens and then it was time to fly to Mumbai.

I arrived into Mumbai around 9pm Indian time to find out that my visa was not valid. The rules had just changed (you have to leave 2 months between re-entry periods). I sucked up to the immigration man who took me off to an office full of jobs-worth and I was rewarded with a re-entry permit form. Not before I had been well and truly grilled on why the hell I would travel via Mumbai and not spend a decent amount of time there. Fair question.

I took a cab to my pre-booked 3 star Best Western Emerald Hotel.

On arrival, I had an interview with the manager who informed me that several rooms were unavailable due to electric failure. And lucky me I was upgraded to the 5-star Sea Palace across the road.

Several more interviews later and I was escorted to room 108 by a grinning bell-boy (although boy is not quite correct as he was at least 50). He took great pleasure in showing me how everything in the room worked (including pulling back the covers of my double bed) before I shooed him off with 100 rupees.

I left to fly home the following afternoon.

It was a long flight and Heathrow welcomed us with chaotic queues at immigration. I waited one hour to enter the UK.

Still the cab ride home was entertaining. My driver's best friend is the some of Idi Amin! Apparently he had around 50 children. In case you're wondering how we got on to that subject it was the Scottish connection - Idi Amin loved Scotland. See the film Last King of Scotland if you haven't already.

And so endeth one great trip.