Saturday 21 November

Breakfast was included in our stay and there was a good and large selection of dishes, including porridge and chicken porridge, noodles and chilli sauce.

Peter's toe was much worse this morning and was causing him pain when he walked so we went to see a doctor. He treated the toe and gave Peter an injection and some tablets to take. He was very friendly and gave us brochures of Singapore and told us places to visit. This took almost the whole morning so we didn't do any of the walking we had planned.

We had arranged a bus trip for the afternoon and were picked up from the hotel at 1.30.

The trip took us along the road we had driven down from the airport and we learned that the spreading trees were called rain trees. One section of the dual carriageway had flowers in containers in the central area and palm trees at the sides. The huge naval base was beside the road. We were told that in the event of war the flower containers could be removed and the dual carriageway would become an air runway. The rain trees had been removed because it would take too long to cut them down and the palm planted as they did not spread. Very ingenious. All of the land by, and including, the airport was reclaimed from the sea.