We had dramatic thunderstorms yesterday and more are due today. In between it will be either cloudy and around 30 Celsius or sunny and around 30 Celsius. The temperature is constant, no matter how changeable the weather.

We spent yesterday at the Tanglin Club, which we are allowed to visit on a reciprocal basis due to our Hurlingham Club membership. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours – you get to visit other clubs around the world as long as they can visit yours. We’ve done so in Sydney, Bermuda, Paris and Hong Kong. It is an opportunity to observe the locals at play.

Geoff learnt to swim at the Tanglin Club when he was 2 years old in 1955 (yes that makes him 63). Tony and Eve, his parents, relocated to Singapore from Accra, Ghana, where Geoff was born and spent three years here. Tony was Regional Secretary of the Commonwealth Development Corp. (which was like a British government backed investment bank). He was part of the colonial age. His older brother, Tim, and his younger sister, Rachel, were also with them. The older two, twins Jonathan and Miriam, had been sent to boarding school in Britain. The younger bookend twins, David and Patrick, were yet to be born. They were born in Lagos, Nigeria. It is a family setup that I could never contemplate, given that as a child, I was never more than 10 miles from my parents.

The Tanglin Club in the 1950s was a British expat haven. Its formal dining room is still called The Churchill. Geoff can remember floating to the bottom of the pool and seeing Eve coming down to the depths to retrieve him. He is not sure to this day whether he was actually drowning. Eve obviously thought so! It is striking, over the period we have been coming to Singapore since the early 1990s, how diverse the membership of the club has become: Chinese, Indian, American, Australian, Kiwis, but still a few Brits. The Chinese take tea inside in the cool. The Brits sit outside sweating like pigs in the sun. What is the saying, “Mad dogs and Englishmen stay out in the midday sun…”

The Japanese occupied Singapore during WW2. After the war, it reverted to British colonial control, with increasing levels of self-government being granted. It became an independent republic in August 1965; 7 years after the Wilmots had left by ship (through the Suez Canal) back to Kent in England, before onward travel to Lagos.

Singapore is an unadulterated success story in economic terms. When the British handed over the reins it had a lot of social problems, but it has gone from strength to strength, growing 9% a year according to one source. Every time we’ve visited, something new has appeared on the landscape, more land has been reclaimed from the sea, another monster skyscraper is up, a grand prix track has appeared where there was water, a casino, a nighttime safari, another  ‘London Eye’. The shopping is on a stratospheric level. What you see above street level is the tip of the iceberg. There are floors upon floors underground of cool, air conditioned retail outlets.

Is it charming? In a word, NO. Most of the colonial buildings have gone. Some have been turned into hotels like the Fullerton, Goodwood Park Hotel and Fort Channing, but the tigers that once roamed the city and the monkeys that swung from trees when the Wilmots were here are long gone. As are the smell of spices on the hot breeze. Sentosa Island is like a pretend film set. The sand has been imported and the infrastructure looks rather synthetic, like a toy city.

Nevertheless, as a stopover, it is unbeatable for comfort and efficiency. Within an hour of the wheels touching the tarmac at Changi Airport, you are in the swimming pool of a very nice hotel.

Today we will go to Raffles, the grandest old hotel of them all.