A funny thing happened last night: we were on a night bus from Kota Bharu to Singapore and James was asleep while I was awake. This almost never happens, since I am narcoleptic (NOT lazy) and James is a night owl, plus I could have slept through the Titanic going down whereas James is a more delicate flower and needs gentler conditions. As I tossed and turned and cursed James for being in the land of nod I suddenly identified the problem: I was too comfortable.

The bus was air conditioned and had large, padded seats and blankets. When we boarded we were given a free burger and a bottle of water so I was neither hungry nor thirsty. We’d been on the move for the last 6 hours and my arse had been in continuous contact with the seat, while my head hadn’t hit the ceiling once. I know I keep harping on about this but 8 weeks of fatalistic terror on Indian transport has had a lasting effect, and Malaysia is so civilised by contrast that it’s almost unsettling.

Anyway, back to the journey…vaguely wondering when India was finally going to bugger off and let me be complacent and Western again, I curled my spine into a more painful position, shook off my blanket and fell into a peaceful, shivery sleep, waking up at the Singapore border (”Welcome to Singapore. Drug trafficking punishable by death. Have a nice stay”).

Singapore is a candidate for the most organized, technology loving place in Asia: it scares me to death and James is in love with it. Things got freaky at the border when I flushed the toilet and turned on two taps without using my hands (I don’t know how) and then they took a turn for the down right terrifying when James sniffed out a six-storey mall devoted entirely to electrical items. I had to keep checking his pants for dampness as we walked round. Everything is sparkling clean, there are high rises popping up everywhere and it generally has the air of a city on the rise in every way, with a bit of Asian randomness thrown in for good measure.

The food is delicious and cheap but everything else is hideously expensive – trying to stick to a budget is like trying to become a monk in a brothel. So we’re not. We’re in a sexy hotel with a proper shower, and this afternoon our exploration of the city centre included a Singapore Sling at the Raffles Hotel, where it was invented, which cost as much as the bus ride down here.

We like Singapore a lot but our bank account will disintegrate if we stay for much longer so we’re limiting ourselves to one more day before we ship out to Kuala Lumpur – time for a night of karaoke and a day of…well, probably not a great deal.