Singapore, an island state measuring just about 25 x 15kms (16 x 10mls) off the southern tip of peninsular Malaysia, is essentially a world transport hub. It’s the stopping off point for a huge amount of the world’s cargo vessels…

I’m tempted to say that this is our last full day in Singapore but, since our flight departs for Heathrow tomorrow at midnight, I suppose that isn’t really true. Nonetheless, spending several hours waiting at an airport, even the relatively…

Our hosts have been wonderful. Like myself, David is a keen cook and we’ve been well fed and watered on a regular basis. Wanting to repay their kindness and give them a bit of a night off, being in the…

Before we made plans to visit Singapore and Cambodia, I established contact with a Singaporean, Anthony, who maintains an excellent photographic blog dedicated to the Dragonflies and Damselflies of Singapore. I wanted to check my suspicion that Singapore, having a…

The first place on our Bukit List [see Forcing the TLA for an explanation] that we visited on arrival in Singapore was the renowned Singapore Botanic Gardens, or SBG for short. That being our first encounter with Asian dragonflies, we…

In 2006 Francine and I broke the winter monotony with a most enjoyable cultural trip to Thailand. Towards the end of it we visited Kanchanaburi, notorious site of The Bridge on the River Kwai, part of the Thailand-Burma railway, the…

I’ve already mentioned that the Singaporeans are wedded to TLAs – Three Letter Acronyms. The first sign of this obsession that a visitor might typically get is when they have arrived at Changi airport and they get whisked downtown on…

Being just a few minutes walk away from the so-called old market area in Siem Reap, where there are many choices of restaurants at reasonable prices, we’d wandered down there to eat on two of our three evenings here. Just…

As if eight temples yesterday weren’t enough to more than satisfy my RYA [Recommended Yearly Allowance] for 2013 of piles of old stones, today we were timetabled to see three more. The icing on the temple was a 4:15 AM…

Pardon the Americanism in the title; for those unfamiliar with yet another slip into Americanization, 101 refers to a starter class rather than being a count of the temples which are here. I knew we were coming to Cambodia mainly…