We ticketed with China Eastern however we actually flew into Singapore on QF5 with arrived on time into Singapore at 9.45pm Thursday 22nd March 2012. No problems at customs. Took MRT Skytrain from Airport terminal 3 to Jantong Pagar station. Went down Maxwell street to Fern Loft Hostel Chinatown. At about 11.00pm outside we took one look and said ‘bloody hell’. This is a ’hole’
The doors appeared to be locked. Two blokes sitting outside said, ‘just bang on the door’ it will open. It did. No-one inside. Rang a number and 5 minutes later, Eynee emerged from her slumber and showed us our room. A small bedroom with one double bed, a cupboard and dresser and a fan. NO AIR CONDITIONER. It was broken!
We slept OK although rather hot and humid. The free internet worked well.
Of course we were up with the sparrows at about 6.00am. Had coffee/toast etc and walked around Chinatown for a little until the local tourist centre opened at 9.00am. We purchased two x 2 day passes at $29.90 each which gave us unlimited rides on 3 different ‘hop on, hop off’ buses around Singapore and it also gave us a guided bus tour and a river boat cruise. The River boat cruise was called a ‘bum boat’ cruise. Maybe because of the hard wooden seats. Good value.
We then got onto one of the buses and went for a tour around Singapore. it’s a very rich city. We didn’t see any slum areas., We decided to alight at Raffles Hotel.. It is a marvellous reminder of what used to be in Singapore. A suite costs $1100/night. The food is outrageous and I wasn’t able to find the wine list, suffice to say the cost of a bottle of wine could feed half of India for a day. A Ridgy Didge Singapore Sling made at Raffles is a mere $26.
After Raffles, we walked down Beach road to ‘the Golden Mile’ where we booked our seats on the coach from Singapore to Melaka. S$20/each.
Then had a 3 course meal at a café for S$11.10 each.
Singapore doesn’t seem to come to life until after 10.00am, in some cases 11.00am. Not like most Asian countries that get up with the sun. Our bus tour took us down Nassim Road, the most expensive piece of domestic real estate in Singapore. Apparently the asking price for some houses on Nassim Road is up to about S$60m. Nassim Road runs onto Orchard Road, Singapore’s version of N.Y. 5th Avenue.
We had great plans for day two except the bus company forgot to give us vital details about the bus to Sentosa Island….it isn’t a double decker with an upstairs viewing platform like the others, it is just a normal bus…which we missed. So we implemented plan B and took the MRT to Esplanade Station for a short walk to the Singapore Flyer. Wrong. The bloke that told us to get of at Esplanade, should have said Promenade….walked an extra 20 minutes in the humid heat to get there. We them did the Marina Bay tour by small coach. It was a ‘we drive you to the destination and you get out and have a look yourself’. The highlight of that was the Marina Barrage, which essentially the dam that holds the reservoir for Singapore’s domestic water supply. It was impressive and Singapore has a great attitude to water and the environment. There is evidence abundant showing Singapore is working toward a cleaner future. In 10 years, they turned a polluted river system into a clean river catchment that provides an eco sustainable water future for the city.
In The afternoon we went to Changi War Museum which is an MRT train ride to Tenah Merah near the airport, then long bus ride. The museum is a great exhibition of the atrocities of war. We bought self guided headphones to make sure we didn’t miss anything. It certainly brought a lump to the throat seeing the photos and artefacts on show that the true gore of war.
Sunday - left Singapore by luxury coach, bound for Melaka Malaysia.
