I arrived in Singapore at about 6pm on Tuesday, having taken 13 hours to fly from Heathrow and lost seven hours because of the time difference. Never having flown long haul before, I was totally unprepared for the amount of background noise in the cabin of a 747 from air conditioning and so on, and must have had about three hours' sleep maximum. Took the MRT (the Singapore underground) to my hotel, but having made myself comfortable on a half-empty train, found that I had to get off in two stops and change to another one, so ended up standing for half an hour and then walking to the hotel. It was a Japanese chain hotel, so everything worked quietly and efficiently, except that it had a strange arrangement where the reception was on the 7th floor, above all the function rooms, and the ground floor only had a basic front desk. I took a walk around for a couple of hours to try and find the cybercafe in my guidebook, failed completely (as I was later to find that the map in the guidebook had put it on the wrong block) and went back to my hotel. Not feeling like going to the expensive main restaurant, I nipped into the 7-Eleven next door on the way back and had Spicy Cajun Pringles and a Cadbury's Roast Almond Bar instead.

Tuesday was my only full day in Singapore and began with a trip to the Rice, Roll and Porridge cafe in Killiney Street for a bowl of Chinese porridge and some very sweet black tea. Faced with a choice of flavours for the porridge which included Pig Intestine, Chicken and Fish, I settled for Pork, and it came within a few minutes- a steaming bowl of what I assumed to be rice porridge with bits of spring onion chopped into the top. Delving in a little with my spoon, I found pieces of pork further down. These however deteriorated in quality the further I went, and I started to cherry-pick the good bits. I stopped completely when I found two small spherical items at the bottom of the bowl and wasn't prepared to take the chance that they were dumplings.

Singapore's Chinatown is recommended for the quality and variety of the Chinese food to be found. What they don't mention is the constant smell of burning incense, sometimes outside the cafes themselves, and that the cooking smells themselves can be vile. I don't know if it's the oil, the flour or what, but there's an all-pervading odour which is sickly sweet and disgusting- it completely put me off the hawker stalls in spite of the variety. It may be more authentic, but as far as I'm concerned, Chinese food comes in metal trays from the takeaway or plastic containers from Marks and Spencers. One or two interesting exhibitions showed the history of the Chinese community, and I briefly walked around a Chinese temple until I though I was going to pass out with the incense. On my return to the hotel, I popped out to have a raspberry frappucino and a doughnut in Starbucks- sometimes you just need something familiar.

In the evening I saw my friend Angie for an hour or so, then had a browse around Orchard Road, the main shopping and nightlife district. To be honest, I was starting to get fed up of shops- airports offer them to you as an alternative to sit around doing nothing, particularly Heathrow, which has sub-branches of the main London stores for the tourist who didn't actually get to Harrods or Hamleys but still has money to spend. It's fundamentally depressing that in the absence of anything else to do, people will shop- I think it's a self-esteem thing, because of the attention you get from shop staff and the sense of your own worth which you get from having things. But at this stage in my trip, I didn't need things to weigh me down, so I only bought one novel by Hwee Hwee Tan.

Thursday was my last day in Singapore, and I started with the Philatelic Museum. I've had a stamp collection for ten years now, although I neglect it for years at a time, but I have to say that if there was something like the Singapore museum near me, I'd probably keep it up more. An interesting exhibition, particularly displays telling the story of the Japanese occupation through letters, and a good shop at the end with all sorts of stamps and accessories. Then it was on to the Empress Building of the Asian Civilisations Museum, which sets out to use artefacts to explain the different cultures which exist side by side in modern Singapore. As it was, I just had time to take the guided tour, but it was an unusual collection of items, some historic and some tribal, and it made sense of a complex set of items and cultures. And then it was back to the airport.

Before I finish, a couple of things. One, I hope I can get back to Singapore for at least a week sometime soon, and get to do some of the things I missed. Secondly, there's a word "kiasu" in Singaporean dialect, meaning roughly "afraid to lose". It's used of the person who hares across the station platform to be sure of a seat, or the person who fills their plate at a buffet with more than they could ever hope to eat. I thought it was a myth until, emerging from Raffles Place MRT on the Thursday, I found a queue about fifty long- of women waiting for free Nivea samples from a stand. Oh well. But it remains a fascinating place and, most importantly, a safe place to investigate the cultures of south-east Asia without fear of crime, disease or beggars. I have very mixed feelings about Singapore, but I think once they've settled down, it'll grow on me.