Advertisement
Published: March 15th 2011
Edit Blog Post
Friday 14th January 2011 After a final swim in the lovely pool we had a final walk around the town. We bought a couple of dresses and vest tops from the market by the beach after failing to haggle a decent price for several items from the stalls outside our hotel. They must have been gutted when they saw us return with hands full of bags.
After a smooth flight, our first with Air Asia, we arrived in Singapore and got a taxi to Hotel 81 Palace which we’d booked online. It didn’t seem to be in the best district, considering there were prostitutes hanging around the end of the road, but it was only a quick cab ride to the centre of the city.
As soon as our bags were dumped we headed to Clarkes Quay for some dinner, but were disappointed by the portion sizes with the “side vegetables” consisting of 1 mushroom chopped into 4 and a spoonful of mash. We ordered some spinach to make up for this but it arrived after we’d finished our meal and we got in an argument with the staff when we refused to pay the service charge
which had been added automatically to our already pricey bill – where we come from a tip is for GOOD service!
Saturday 15th January 2011 Our first stop was an electronics mall for some camera accessory shopping. At the very first shop we asked lots of questions and ended up with a plethora of products on the counter... We didn’t want to buy everything without a few comparisons, but eventually the price was so good it seemed better to just cave and enjoy the rest of our day for the sake of a few bucks that might be saved elsewhere.
We walked around the town and escaped from the rain in a nice Aussie restaurant before heading to Raffles for a Singapore Sling. It was a stark contrast to see the floor (or not as the case may be) strewn with monkey nut shells in what is possibly the cleanest city in the world.
China town was next on the agenda and it was practically impossible to move for people due to the official start of Chinese New Year’s Celebrations. Deciding not to wait around in the rain for 2 hours for the parade to
start, we grabbed a taxi and made our way to Swiss Hotel for city views from their cocktail bar, but Richard was wearing shorts so we were turned away. As a final attempt to find something to do in the rain we tried the cinema, but it was sold out.
Sunday 16th January 2011 A convoluted route to the Zoo via the train station to buy a ticket for our night train, we finally arrived late morning.
We were excited by all the wild and exotic animals that were almost within touching distance with just water keeping most of them in, instead of bars.
Following the feeding route for a while, we took in the rhinos, lions, giraffes and many other animals waiting for their snack, then set off on our own when the slow pace started holding us up.
Seeing a Manatee for the first time was captivating; we watched it swimming in circles around its large tank, then moved on to the Pigmy Hippos.
The zoo housed almost every species of monkey (apart from Richard’s nieces, Lucy & Charlotte) and lots of them had babies that they were carrying around on
their backs – So Cute!
Joanne must have had a great day because she took over 1000 photos... that must be a record! It was certainly helped along by the “continuous” mode a few times.
We would have loved to stay for the Night Safari, but it would mean missing our night train, so we finished up at the Zoo and headed to the Swiss Hotel (this time adequately attired) for a quick glimpse of the views.
Our final stop was at our hotel to collect our bags before getting a taxi straight to the train station where we found our sleeper beds and watched some T.V. before bed.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.195s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 15; qc: 59; dbt: 0.1401s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb