On the transfer from the airport to the hotel the temperature had already reached 25C. At lunch we ate at an Indian restaurant on the Boat Quay. Here for centuries trade with India and China had been conducted through settlements along the Malacca Straits by the Portuguese, Dutch and later the British. The evidence of this trade is still visible in the buildings along the quay.
in the 1920s Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles was installed as High Commissioner to the small Singapore settlement and claimed to be the founder of modern Singapore by modernising commerce through British colonialisation. Later we adjourned to the hotel.
