We spent this weekend doing the tourist circuit. A highlight was lunch on Mt Faber followed by a cable-car ride to Sentosa (previously Pulau Belakang Mati - 'island of death behind' - referring to a malaria outbreak or possibly its pirate heritage) and a tour of Fort Siloso - a British fort unsuccessfully employed to defend the harbour behind Sentosa from invasion. It fell to the Japanese early in WWII because they first captured all the British airstrips in Malaysia and then could bomb it (and the rest of Singapore) at will. The guns were not used to sink japanese shipping trying to invade Singapore, rather to shell Singapore itself, because the Japanese had came the other way. Fort Siloso was then used as a POW camp. Just 60 years later it is a wax-works museum.
