Off the ship and into the Shangri-La, which after twelve nights in a cabin felt approximately palatial.

We walked Orchard Road, which is Singapore’s shopping street and was fully committed to Christmas — decorations up, music going, every mall doing its best. The angsana trees along it are the only reason any of it is bearable in that heat.

The thing that gets you about Singapore is the green. It is everywhere and it is deliberate — up the sides of buildings, over car parks, threaded through the whole city. They call it a City in a Garden, and for once the slogan is doing real work.

Back to the hotel pool in the afternoon, towers on every side of it, and we got away with it — this is the rainy season and we had sun.

Dinner at the hotel, because by then we were done. It turned out to be Kagoshima wagyu — the same beef we had been eating a fortnight earlier a few miles from where it is raised — and they poured a wine we love and can almost never find at home.

A nightcap at Origin Bar downstairs, and that was day one. More of the city tomorrow.