We just had one quick overnight in Sydney. The flight we had to go to Singapore was at 3.45pm, so just one morning really. We walked to the Opera House – one of the icons that never fails to catch my attention. I can walk around this building time and time again. I wanted to get a guided walking tour around the Rocks area – something I didn’t manage to fit in last time in I was here – but the timing just didn’t work out. Instead, we bought a little guide book that gave us a self guided walk and we did about three quarters of it. It is a very historical part of Sydney, and I am sorry that we couldn’t get guide to elaborate on the areas with stories and facts that would have brought it more to life. But it was good in the short time we had anyway. As usual, we bought our presents at the airport – and Paul bought a new hat!
We flew to Singapore with Lenny Henry, sort of. If I had been Annette I would have had him telling me his life story, but being just me I just smiled when I went past. I am sure he gets loads of random people annoying him. But he did annoy Paul. He say behind him, and kept kicking his seat – even in first class you can feel people kicking your seat. He had a friend in business class that came and chatted for a couple of hours, and Paul could hear them over his ear phones. He is rather tall though – he didn’t have to go on tip toes to get his hand luggage out of the overhead locker. He had apparently been on a sell out tour of Australia – I googled it! This flight didn’t quite come up to the standard we had got used to – none of the entertainment systems worked in the whole aircraft, so they had to put a few films on a loop. No movies on demand! This was the only long flight we had that wasn’t a night flight – typical!
We had a transfer arranged with the Shangri-La Hotel in Singapore, so had a little man waiting for us to take us the twenty odd minutes from the airport to the hotel. It was 11pm when we got there, 1pm on our body clocks. We had a delightful lady waiting for us at the Valley Wing entrance, who immediately took us to our room and completed the check in there. Perfect! We were given a beautiful orchid that will hopefully make it all the way back to the UK. The room is stunning – there is even a TV in the bath room! The curtains are opened and closed with the push of a button – Paul was not in a good mood but there wasn’t a button to close him down! The flight had been a bit bumpy as well as getting his seat kicked, and the transfer man played the radio too loud – and it wasn’t his type of music!
The morning came, and so did the clouds. We had a beautiful, serene, fantastic breakfast in the Summit Room – the staff here really do go the extra mile. It started to drizzle, and then rain, and then pour. By the time we got back to our room it was monsoon weather. Bearing in mind that I hadn’t got any waterproofs, it was a bit difficult to decide what to do. There is a complimentary shuttle bus that takes you to the MRT station on Orchard Road once an hour, and from there we could find the hop on hop off bus that we thought would be a good idea. It was still coming down in buckets as we left. The bus dropped us off virtually in the middle of Orchard Road. I know this place is known for its shopping, but I really didn’t expect what we found. All the shopping was in malls, and all was under cover. Which was the order of the day for that moment. Paul went to take a picture of the torrents of water coming off the roofs but his camera card said it was full, so we decided to do some shopping and get a new one,
We went into the first mall that we came to, and passed shop upon shop of designer clothes. At the end was a department store that sold electronics. We had to go in through handbags – I had never seen as many handbags in one place. He went up to the fifth floor to get a camera card, and I just wandered round the handbag department. My purse broke a few months ago, and I spent ages looking for a new one, as the selection at home was pretty poor. There were racks upon racks of purses here. I could have spent the whole day here – Paul came back and said that the electronics department is as good as the handbag department.
It was still raining really hard. He had found out that the Lucky Plaza Mall was good for cameras – each of the malls seem to have a theme, although I think you can probably get a little of something in all of them. This was just across the road from where we were – pedestrians crossed via an underpass so we didn’t even have to get wet crossing the road. I had been looking for a new lens for my camera before we came out, but the zoom that I wanted was too heavy to carry so stuck with what I already had. We came across a small booth type shop that stocked Nikon lenses, so went in. This is where we met Joe – the salesman – who knew everything there is to know about Nikon lenses (I hope!). He showed us a small 55-300 lens – at the moment my lens goes up to 200 – that was only as big as the one I had on the camera now. But, I really wanted more zoom than an extra 100, so he pulled out a lens that triples the zoom – ie 900. Paul had not heard of it – and they both pontificated about things that were going over my head. We took some photos, put them on his computer to see the quality, but as it was raining it was hard to tell.
We hummed and harred for probably over an hour, taking photos, looking at them on the computer, googling reviews on the lens etc etc. I was not sure, so left it up to Paul, who wasn’t sure either. He could probably see the sale walking out the door, so did us a really good price – including filters, a new bag and a converter so it can fit on Harriet’s camera as well. Done! The rain was then beginning to stop – Joe said that it wouldn’t rain anymore today. “In Singapore it only rains once a day, and for an hour. Today was a bit longer, but that is unusual”. I wondered if he was right. I decided that if he was right about that, he would be right about the camera lens. Time will tell. He pointed us in the right direction for the hop on hop off bus, so off we went with our purchases.
We bought tickets for the bus – 48 hours for $39 Singapore each (around £20) that includes three different routes and a river cruise. Not bad. The bus came shortly afterwards, and we went upstairs and sat on wet seats. I was sure we would dry off, because “it wasn’t going to rain again today”! The first route we took was the City route, that took us down Orchard Road, around the Singapore Flyer (similar to the London Eye) around the Marina, through the skyscraper business and commercial districts and then up to the Botanical Gardens. We got off here, and walked around the gardens. There was a huge Orchid Garden that we walked around – I have never seen as many different orchids in as many different colours and shapes and sizes. It was absolutely beautiful. We walked back through the gardens to the bus stop, and got on for one stop which dropped us a ten minute walk back to the hotel. Time to shower and change, and just about right for the complimentary cocktails and canapés. There was so much choice, that we decided to use that as our evening meal (skinflints)! We have eaten quite royally on this trip, so it is time to start being sensible again.
We then decided to go for a Singapore Sling in Raffles – it just had to be done. The hop on hop off bus could take us there – but it didn’t because we just watched the last one pull away before we got there. It had nothing to do with Paul turning the wrong way out of the hotel first of all, of course! We waited for half an hour or so, realised there wasn’t another one so got a taxi. Around £5 – don’t know why we waited so long for the bus!
We got to the Raffles Hotel, but couldn’t go in through the main entrance – that is for hotel residents only. Can’t blame them I suppose – they would have a myriad of tourists traipsing through the lobby all day long if it was open to all and sundry. We were directed around the side, through the Raffles Courtyard of shops to the Long Bar, which is up on the second floor. We were directed to a table, where I promptly slipped and ended up on the floor. There were empty peanut shells everywhere on the floor – it is supposedly in keeping with how it was in the old days. After being hauled up – that made everyone in the bar stop talking and look – I ordered my Singapore Sling at $26 + 10% service charge. At £15ish, I had just the one. Paul pushed the boat out and had a beer – plus added to the growing pile of peanut shells on the floor. Singapore Slings were definitely the order of the day – the barman stacked up the glasses time and time again on the bar. It was an experience not to be missed though. We treated ourselves to another taxi to get home.
The next day when we were having breakfast it started to rain again. “Oh good” I said, hoping that Joe was correct in his analogy that it rained once a day only for an hour. Let’s get it over with so by the time we would be ready to go out, it would have stopped. And it did! We walked down to the bus stop and got on the City route again until the hub at Suntec City Shopping Mall. This one comprises five huge skyscraper towers – does anyone ever manage to get to every shop in town? We then changed to the Heritage Route, which took us through Little India, Chinatown, as well as a couple of areas we had already been to. We got off at the Marina, and went to the Marina Bay Sands Hotel – the iconic new hotel with three large towers and the ship shape resting on the top of all three. We bought a ticket to get to the 56th floor, and up in the lift we went fairly quickly. The views from the top were amazing over the whole of Singapore and even over to Malaysia. The weather was dry, but there were still huge dark clouds hovering overhead, which made all the pictures quite grey unfortunately. But it was worth the trip up to look at the vastness of the city. The middle of the “ship” was the swimming pool for the residents of the hotel. Wonder if it is the highest swimming pool in the world?
We then walked over to the Marina Bay Shopping Mall (another one!) and through to the Singapore River and the stop for the River Cruise. The sun then came out, and it was really hot. The river trip took just under an hour, and like the hop on hop off bus, you could hop on and hop off this as well. We didn’t, as we were running out of time, but the cruise itself was very sedate and we could see the other sides of buildings that we had seen on the bus.
We got on the bus again, and the last stop we made was to Fort Canning Park, and The Battle Box. This is an underground cave that was made into the forces headquarters for World War II. It has been made into a commentary of the last couple of days before the Japanese occupied Singapore in 1942. There was a video of the news reels for the few months leading up to the Japanese invasion to give you the background. Each of the underground rooms had the equipment in for sending the morse code messages, and how the information was relayed from the different areas and to and from each General and his troops. This information was then assimilated on a large map of the area which plotted the Japanese aircraft and ground troops. Would have been a lot easier with mobile phones!
We then went back to the hotel for cocktails and canapés before heading out to the airport for our final flight home. We just got a taxi this time - $30. Bargain. Last time in the First Class Lounge, last time to be given priority to board the aircraft and for them to greet you by name. I could easily get used to this. The plane was a new plane – excellent I thought. Wrong. The seats were not made for short people like me. The seats on this plane did not have any foot rests – they were tucked in the far corner and converted to a seat if you had anyone wanted to come and chat with you. But I couldn’t reach. The light on the chair instead of being a spotlight was on the chair upright, and had a lamp shade on it which completely blocked my view out of the
window. I did have another window, but that was full of condensation for the whole trip. Amazing how picky you can get – and how I will wish for a condensed window next time I am flying in economy.
Back to the UK – the end of an amazing trip. The IRIS scanner didn’t work and the baggage was delayed because of problems getting it off the plane.
Welcome home!
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