Day 2 in S'pore

Well, I'm pleased to report that the weather improved, everybody went back to work and the shops and hawkers all opened up again on Tuesday after Monday's holiday. According to the Straits Times, about 6,000 sheep were specially imported from Australia to be slaughtered as part of the festival which commemorates Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Ishmael as an act of obedience.

On Tuesday I visited Chinatown and did a walking tour of some of the main sights in that area. Like most major cities' Chinatowns, the area is absolutely buzzing with ethnic Chinese and tourists alike but I got a real feel that the buzz, the smells and the sights were not just for the tourists' benefit. For lunch I had a real Singaporean delicacy, chilli crab, in a local Chinese street restaurant. Delicious !

The next three photographs were all taken from the same place and show the streetnames of three parallel streets in Chinatown (you should be able to enlarge the photos by clicking on them):



After retrieving my bag from the hotel, I made my way to Changi Airport by subway for S$1.80 (€1.00), and am writing this using the free wireless access available throughout the airport (Dublin, please note). My flight to Brisbane is at 2105 and will arrive there at about 0700 local time (GMT +10 hours).

I then have just one day in the city before taking the train up the Queensland coast to Proserpine, near Airlie Beach.

[By the way, apologies for the rather random way in which photographs appear on these pages. They are supposed to be carefully positioned and sized but that tool doesn't seem to work very well. I'll keep practising...]

PS The Irish pork recall has received much publicity in Singapore with long newpaper articles on the subject, some of which contain reassurances for Singaporean consumers. I suspect that, even if the immediate problem is resolved swiftly, the long term consequences in terms of loss of confidence could be significant. And now it looks as if beef is involved too......