Check out time at our hostel is officially 9am, so having woken up at 9:06am, I packed leisurely, accepting the inevitable late-checkout fee. As it turned out, I avoided the fee anyway, so that was lucky.

Walking out of reception after checking out, I was stunned to find Tamara (from King’s Canyon) was sitting on the veranda. We talked for a few minutes – she still hadn’t done any interviews – and then I left for town to get some breakfast. The world seemed to have shrunk overnight though, for when I found a suitable café for breakfast, Sophie (from Kakadu) was there. This was becoming a fine last day. I went to the cinema and had lunch with Sophie, and said goodbye just before 2pm, to go catch my airport shuttle.

I was arriving ridiculously early for my flight (3 hours, in fact), but I wanted to be sure of a good seat, preferably exit row. I was out of luck – the flight had actually originated in Cairns and all the exit row seats were taken by people from Cairns. I did manage to get a fairly good seat near the front of the plane though.

In the end, I didn’t notice the lack of legroom. I was sitting next to an Australian couple from Darwin, and we talked for the whole flight, which was great, because it passed the three hours in no time at all. One of my new friends was in the Australian army, and told me some of the stories that the Aussies tell the Americans when they are stationed together. These are 1) The Sydney Harbour Bridge was modified during the second world war so that if the Japanese invaded the harbour, the removal of one rivet would cause the bridge to collapse, crushing the invasion force. 2) if you leave you car door open for more than a few seconds a Kangaroo is likely to jump into your car. 3) Koalas get drunk on Eucalyptus leaves and frequently fall out of their trees as a result, so people walking through forests in Australia should always beware of falling Koalas. 4) There is a native Australian snake called the ring snake which kills humans by encircling their neck and then swallowing its own tail until it is small enough to strangle the victim.

All of these stories are, of course, absolute rubbish – but the American servicemen are often convinced. Actually I was almost convinced by a couple of them – he told them so well.

On arrival in Singapore, we had to decide whether to go to a hotel for the night. We decided against this on the basis that we could use the late evening and early morning hours to explore the city, at least to some extent. We got directions from the information desk to the zoo, which was open until midnight, and got a bus to the MRT (mass rapid transit) station.

The zoo turned out to be further away then anticipated, and we ended up just returning to the airport on the MRT and by taxi, but at least we had thoroughly reviewed Singapore’s public transport system, if nothing else.