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Asia » Singapore » Raffles Marina
April 3rd 2013
Published: April 3rd 2013
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26/12

We were up at 7 to check out and get a taxi to the airport. We had booked it through the hotel so it was ready for us when we checked out. It took about 45 minutes to get to the airport (which chantelle slept through!). We checked in to the cutest airport in the world! We had to walk through a little shopping area which looked like a village to get to the domestic/ upper class gate (the same thing!). We boarded the place, which was only half full, plenty of space! We got fed on the plane and arrived quickly in Singapore. There were no queues for immigration, so we got straight through, and headed for the taxi rank. It cost $20HK to get to the hotel, which took about 20 minutes. We checked into our room, which was lovely (Novotel), then we decided to head straight out as we only have 2 days here. We had a quick look in Chinatown, as recommended by the hotel receptionist, however after spending 1 month in china, we didn't look for long, and headed onto the MRT to Harbour Front- which cost $2.50 including a $1 deposit. We took the cable car from Harbour Front over to Sentosa Island. The cable car is sponsored by angry birds, and we ended up in an Angry birds cabin! There was a great view of Sentosa from the cable car- it's the tourist area of Singapore with a Universal Studios, aquarium and lots of shops and restaurants. When we got to Sentosa, we had a look around and checked out the prices of universal studios and the aquarium. We saw a Hard Rock Cafe and realised we were starving, so decided to head for dinner. It was so good eating here after being in Thailand and just having noodles and rice based dinners! After dinner we had another wander around, and then headed back on the cable car. We went over a huge cruise ship which was docked, could see the pool on the top deck! We headed back to the hotel and paid for an hour of wifi so we could speak to family again, as everyone was still together in Weymouth for traditional Boxing Day lunch! Gutted to be missing it!

27/12

So today's activity was a toss up between looking around the city, and going to Universal studios...3 guesses which won?! Back to Sentosa again! 😊 Today we got the MTR from Clarke Quay, our closest stop, to the Harbour Front Station, and from there we got on the Sentosa express monorail to the Resorts World section. We bought our Universal tickets and waited for the doors to open. We headed onto the transformers ride first as the queue was already 30 minutes long as soon as the park had opened! It was a simulator type ride (like SpiderMan in Florida for those who have been!). We then went on the 2 battlestar Galactica rides, which are 2 roller coasters side by side. These were both brilliant, and the first intense rides we had been on since being away! We headed to the Mummy ride, which was fun- an indoor rollercoaster. The queues were starting to build up by now though, seeing as it was school holidays everywhere. We were going to head on the Jurassic park river ride but the queue was 70 minutes so we decided we would do this later on. We watched a really good stunt show called Waterworks, then we went into the Shrek land and had a go on the kiddy dragon coaster, which was fun! And then in Madagascar land we went on the boat ride, which was boring! After this the river ride queue was now 2 hours, so we still didn't go on it! We watched another show, then had some food and went on the battlestar rides again. We then watched donkey live and shrek 4D, and finally gave in to the rapids queue, and joined it, with a 2 hour wait ahead of us (at one point it did say it was 150 minutes so could have been worse!) . Of course it broke down whilst we were in the queue so it took even longer than 2 hours! Was it worth it? Not really! But it was good! Nice and refreshing anyway. We decided to head back to the hotel so took the monorail and the MTR back to Clarke quay, and then booked tickets to see Les Miserables in the cinema tomorrow!!

28/12

Our flight to Denpasar, Bali wasn't until 6.35pm, so we had booked Les Miserables tickets to kill some time before we had to be at the airport (plus, it meant we got to see the film 2 weeks before anyone in the UK!!) We checked out and left our luggage at the hotel, then got a taxi to the cinema as we had no idea how to get there or where it was. We got our popcorn and waited for the film to start. It took me a while to get used to the changes between the show and the film, and all the lines they missed out and changed. However, at no point did I get used to Russell Crowe, and how horrendously bad he was! Who cast him?! Seriously?! Samantha Barks, was, of course, the highlight of the film! We managed to spot a few west end faces, but saw lots of names in the credits! After the show we realised we were close to an MTR stop so we headed there and got back to Clarke Quay to collect our luggage and head to the airport. We were a little early, so sat by our gate using the free wifi, and got a sandwich from Subway. We flew with Jetstar and arrived at Denpasar a bit late. We had to pay for an Indonesian visa at the airport, which cost about £18, then had to wait in an extremely long and painful immigration queue. We tried to get a trolley for our luggage, and ended up with 2 porters 'assisting' us (even though we didn't want them- just the trolley). There was a sign saying there was a charge of 5,000 rupiah (32pence) per item for help- brilliant! We tried to give them 20,000 rupiah and they tried to get more out of us- they were saying they wanted a red note, which was 100,000. (£6.45) We told them to get stuffed (sort of) and walked off to find the taxi rank. The sign to our location said it was 55,000, but we were told the price was 70,000 as it was peak time...everyone else was being told the same thing. We didn't have much choice so had to agree to it, after all it was only £4.50! Not loving Bali so far, rip off nation! We got to our hotel, and it was really nice. It was a shame we were only here for 1 night!

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