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Published: August 26th 2010
I love Singapore. In fact, it's dangerously close to knocking New York from the top of my list of Favourite Cities.
Yesterday we took an open top bus tour, which is usually one of my favourite things to do in any city I visit. Although this was a recorded rather than live tour guide it was still good, interesting and a good way to get to know the different areas. It was split into two parts, the city and the heritage tour. As we'd gone for dinner in Little India the night before that was familiar, but it was good to see China town and the business district as well as the many, many shopping malls. I was interested to learn that 90% of residents are above the poverty line, although 85% of 'natives' live in government housing. There's also not as much congestion as you'd expect and in fact traffic seems to flow quite smoothly. They have an automatic congestion charge, 100% tax on imported cars and other measures to keep the number of cars down. I really like the metro system actually, it's very handy and clean.
Wednesday night is traditionally ladies night in Singapore and Rachael remembered that last time she was here everything was free for girls. Well, times they are a changing. We did get half price cocktails in one place but had to pay a 20 dollar entry fee to the bar/club. I ummed and ahhed but in the end we paid it because everywhere else looked quiet, and I am glad we did. Drinks were free at first, which was enough for us, then this brilliant band came on. They were only doing covers, but did them really, really well. I'd taken my little flat shoes in my bag and about half way through the night put them on and then danced like a loon until closing time. It was brilliant and we also stopped for food on the way home at a 24 hour cafe called Mr Bean's Cafe. It's all a far cry from tonglu. I did feel quite old though, as a lot of the people in the club looked like they were gap year-ers or students but we showed them how it's done by staying til then end 😊
This morning it was raining heavily so we decided to postpone our trip to Sentosa Island and wandered round a couple of shopping malls instead. After a wonderful lunch (2for1 steak sandwiches at Ricky's Grill) we headed over to Sentosa. Bit confused about buying the package tickets as the website says some hotels sell them, but we went to two and they didn't have what we were looking for. Anyway, it wasn't too busy so we got tickets at the harbour front. We decided to just see the 3D film this time and sit on the beach for a bit. we'll go back after we've been to KL. I cannot recommend Sentosa enough - I adore it and the staff were all so friendly and helpful. Actually customer service in Singapore as a whole hasn't been that great (though miles better than China) but Sentosa really impressed us.
We are shattered now though, a combination of our late night and and day in the sun. Have to get an early bus to KL tomorrow so we'll be having an early night. We discovered a cheap bookstall today, 3 books for 5 SG dollars so I imagine we'll each curl up with our books for about. oh five minutes, before zonking out!
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Madjock
Paul McGunnigle
Sentosa
Sentosa was great fun, I raced a bunch of kids down the luge (I refused to use the breaks) and relaxed on the beach - very strange sitting on a lovely beach looking out to the water and seeing one of the worlds biggest harbours.