Sorry this is a long one, but given we are a bit behind with our blogging this should keep you going for a while…
We were very pleased to arrive in Singapore after a seemingly endless day of travelling, which involved a flight back to Dubai before catching another after 3 hours – still we got through a fair few films on the plane and a number of confusingly timed meals (breakfast at 3.45am anyone?). Happily, taxis here come with air conditioning as standard, and despite booking an airport shuttle (expecting it to be taking other passengers), we ended up with an entire minivan to ourselves. As we drove through the city we marvelled at how polite the drivers all seemed to be – no horns honking and definitely no lane rage. Everything just looked exceedingly modern and clean compared to India so it was a bit of a contrast to say the least. Our hotel for the next 3 nights certainly lived up to our expectations – we had booked a 4 star hotel thinking we would deserve a treat by this point in our trip. We were pleased to hear we would have full use of a Nespresso coffee machine and a free mini bar with soft drinks, tiger beer and Oreo cookies! We managed to limit ourselves to a decaf seeing as it was quite late by this point and the enormous bed and ridiculously over sized pillows did look quite inviting after our lack of sleep over the past few days!
The following morning there was enough time for a swim in the hotel pool (for Corinna anyway) before we met with an old friend of Martin’s from uni days, Jamaica, and her husband Marcus. We’d said we were interested in a tour of some of Singapore’s culinary delights and they certainly didn’t disappoint! First stop was a late breakfast of some ramen noodles with pork and egg at a local mall, followed by a rather interesting concoction of iced tea (including milk) with jelly which came in a confusing array of flavour combinations.
It was pretty nice and surprisingly filling and certainly provided plenty of fuel to take us on a walk towards the Chinese temple, via a quick stop to buy a new pair of shorts for Corinna as some went missing when we laundered some clothes in India. On the way our attention was diverted by some interesting looking fruit at a market, some of which smelled quite potent. It turned out that this was emanating from durian fruit, which Jamaica described as smelling a bit like rotting flesh. We didn’t think it smelled quite that bad so were up for giving it a try – we have to say it wasn’t our favourite, and had a bit of a slimy texture. It tasted a bit like chicken to be honest!
The temple was filled with an amazing aroma of incense which was being wafted around by worshippers. The second temple we visited was actually an Indian Hindu temple and looked very similar to some of those we’d already seen in India, but had been adopted by local Singaporeans as their own.
After this, we were off to see Chijmes, which used to be a convent and school but has now been converted into a complex of shops, restaurants and a banqueting hall. The shops were a little bit out of our price range so Jamaica promised to take us somewhere a bit more affordable later on…
One thing we’d decided we could stretch the budget to was an original Singapore Sling cocktail, at the Raffles Hotel where it was invented.
They were a little bit over priced at £13 each but we got the real deal complete with a box of peanuts. We were reassured that it was perfectly normal and expected behaviour to throw the empty shells on the floor so we guessed it would be rude not to! Suitably sozzled (it was around 3.30pm by this point), it was time for a little something else to eat so we ventured of towards a local eatery with lots of affordable stalls selling different things. We weren’t quite sure we fancied “pig’s organ soup” so tried chicken rice, some flat noodles with beef, pork rib soup and mixed noodles with some prawns. It was all thoroughly delicious but we were totally stuffed by this point!
On our way back to the car, we went into one of the slightly less organised and shiny looking malls – lots of small stalls selling cheap imitation designer gear, clothes (that you couldn’t try on before buying), plastic jewellery, shoes, wallets, and more or less anything you could want). We got a bit lost trying to find our way out as it all looked pretty similar to us, and the food was weighing down our bellies a bit. We went past the fruit stall again on the way back, and the durian fruit was not smelling so great after a few hours in the sun…
We decided a few hours of vegetating (with coffee of course) was required back at the hotel before venturing out again. We had heard good things about the night safari so decided this would be a good way to spend the evening. We were collected by bus from the hotel and got to see a bit more of the city, or at least a lot of the hotels, on the way out to the zoo. We drove past an area known as “little India” (obviously where migrant Indians had settled) which almost made us feel at home as it didn’t have quite the same sheen of modernity and orderliness as the rest of the city. By sunset, we had arrived at the entrance of the safari and were met with a difficult decision over whether to go around the park on a train, by foot, watch a wildlife or fire dancing show! We opted to walk along the trails first, and were pleasantly surprised to see a lot more than we had expected to. We’re afraid there aren’t that many good photos as we weren’t allowed to use a flash (this would have scared the animals) but we got very close to some cats, deer, hyenas, a slow loris, which is apparently venomous, and some bats. We arrived in time to see the lions being fed and think we got some good photos of this.
A bit close to the hyena…
Feeding time!
Also some mosquitoes feasted on us but we didn’t realise this until afterwards, and we’d forgotten to put the DEET on, oops… After this it was time for the Creatures of the Night show, a highly polished and impressive display of the recycling abilities of otters, wolves howling on cue and a python that managed to restrain itself from squeezing a scared looking chap to death on stage.
We then took the train as this was the only way of seeing some of the larger animals like elephants, rhinos and buffalo and we’d done enough walking by this point. So much in fact that we’d managed to burn enough of a hole in our stomachs to make way for some ice cream and as luck would have it there was a Ben and Jerry’s cafe on our way out 🙂
The following day we had a bit of a lie-in before heading to the gym and pool for a bit of exercise to help ease the guilt of the previous day’s feasting and to make sure we made full use of the hotel’s facilities. Despite our introduction to a traditional Singaporean breakfast the previous day, and given that by now it was past midday, we decided that what we (and our rather confused stomachs) actually really fancied was a good old sandwich and luckily there seemed to be plenty of food places offering western style food so we weren’t disappointed. Next, we found our way towards a metro station which we needed to go through yet another shopping mall to access. We discovered that these all seem to join up below the ground so that by the time you’ve finished shopping and get back outside you’re somewhat confused by where you are! The metro was exceptionally clean, quiet and efficient and we were impressed by the amount of space inside the train, and wondered if perhaps the London underground could learn a thing or two if and when it gets a face lift one day…
We arrived by the water front close to the financial district and were surrounded by high rise office buildings and apartments. The clouds that had given us some relief the previous day were nowhere in sight and without air conditioning the heat and humidity started to get to us again surprisingly quickly! We thought we’d have got used to it having been in India for a fair while but it turns out that as soon as you introduce too much air conditioning, which is available in abundance in Singapore, it makes going back in the heat a lot more difficult. We were headed towards the Gardens by the Bay, an impressive selection of indoor and outdoor gardens – the domes looked a bit like the one at the Eden project in Cornwall only we’re pretty sure it’s a lot bigger. Once we’d queued politely for a ticket (they haven’t got rid of that bit of the British influence) we were relieved to step inside the flower dome, where the temperature had been set to match the climate in California, South Africa, Australasia and Europe, depending on which zone you were in.
There was also a tulip exhibition and the opportunity to dress up in traditional dutch costume complete with clogs was a bit too much for Martin so he politely declined. He did not decline the free gouda samples however… Next up was the cloud forest dome, which was basically any geography graduate or teacher’s dream as it was pretty much a reconstruction of a GCSE text book. We marvelled at the waterfall and watched clouds forming over the rainforest as we walked through the different zones surrounded by beautiful orchids.
It was just a bit surreal being able to look outside to the Singapore sky line at the same time!
Having cooled down sufficiently, we thought we could handle a bit more sun in the gardens outside the domes, but soon went in search of a shady bench as we really were struggling with the heat by this point. When it started to cool off we took a lift up one of the amazing “supertrees” which are huge metal tree like structures with plants growing up the outsides – the tallest is 50 metres and has a restaurant at the top! We walked along a “skyway” path connecting the trees, which had great views of the gardens and the bay area of the city.
We also spotted a particularly inviting looking patch of grass near a bandstand, and whilst relaxing on said grass waiting for the sunset so we could watch the lights turn on in the supertrees, a big band started up, entertaining us with an eclectic selection of music ranging from Uptown girl to a Lady Gaga medley.
Supertrees by sunset…
…by night.
It was a great atmosphere with local families milling around and kids dancing to the music in the way that only small kids can. Then we had another show to catch – in front of the huge Marina Bay Sands hotel there is an amazing light and music show every evening. Huge jets of water burst up by the harbour onto which pictures and films are projected and this is all lit up by multi-coloured floodlight and accompanied by music and towards the end we were engulfed by bubbles! Despite lasting only 13 minutes it was spectacular.
We were then ready for some food – although there were some pretty amazing restaurants around the harbour we had already decided to have our proper wedding anniversary meal in Melbourne, so we went in search of the food court at the bottom of a nearby shopping mall. It appeared that everyone else had the same idea so we had to stand to eat our food. We took ages to decide whether to opt for Chinese Singaporean Korean Indian, Japanese etc. but in the end opted for a Japanese bento style meal of salmon, and some sizzling beef.
It was all delicious and very reasonably priced, which we guess is why everyone here seems to eat out pretty much every night. We were pretty tired by this point, so caught the metro back to our hotel for a well earned rest (not before free decaf coffees of course).
Next morning we were up early to make sure we could pack our bags before we took a walking tour of the civic district. Our guide introduced herself as “the dragon lady”, which was fair enough seeing as her surname is actually Dragon! Having been a tour guide for 27 years she absolutely knew her stuff, and took us to see St Andrews church, where she told us about the development of Singapore since the arrival of the British (particularly Thomas Raffles) in the 1820s and how the main part of the city and government had changed.
We were also taken to the supreme court building so she could show us the great view from the top floor and also tell us a bit about the court systems. We moved on to an Armenian church, and back to Chijmes, where we learnt a bit more about the history of the convent and school, particularly that young girls had sometimes been abandoned outside to be taken in by the nuns as their families were unable to look after them. The tour ended back at Raffles Hotel, and although we’d already been for a Singapore sling, we were shown which room Michael Jackson had stayed in, and had a new appreciation for the significance of Mr Raffles!
After over 3 hours of walking around in the heat, we were in need of some iced tea refreshment, before going in search of an interesting sounding ice cream parlour we’d found on trip advisor where the ice cream is made in front of you with liquid nitrogen. This appealed to Martin as it sounded a bit “Big bang theory”/Brian Cox-esque, so we attempted to follow the directions on our phone, which took us on a bit of a diversion and we eventually found that the place was closed on Mondays! Much disappointed, we had another 40 minute walk back to the main hotel/shopping mall area on Orchard road, by which point we were absolutely in need of some dumplings (some a bit strange tasting because we couldn’t work out the ingredients) and some gelato.
This was also to fuel us in our quest for some jeans to keep us warm when we reached Melbourne the following day. In the end, only Corinna was successful, having located good old M&S after being rather baffled by the sizing systems in some of the other shops (buying jeans is stressful enough at the best of times). A cup of tea and a shower back at the hotel and we were ready to head back to the airport for our next flight on to Melbourne.
We landed into a dark and cold Melbourne, unfortunately really still dressed for Singapore weather with an optimistic one jumper each. We hadn’t anticipated that it would be quite so chilly, and as it turned out this was a particularly chilly day and the weather had been much nicer the day before.
Nevertheless, we were determined not to let this or our tiredness affect our second wedding anniversary, so as soon as our airport shuttle had battled through the rush hour traffic and we’d safely stowed our bags for the day, we were off in search of our favourite things – food and coffee! Luckily, our hotel was very close to an excellent coffee shop (with freshly roasted beans!) and the Victoria market, with a huge array of fresh fruit, veg, meat, fish, cheese, cakes….
Martin somewhat predictably headed straight for the bratwurst stall, whilst I opted for something a bit different sounding – a cheese and spinach Bhorek which was a kind of filled flat bread pancake type thing and very tasty. This only served to warm us up for a short while however, so we got quite chilly waiting for a free shuttle bus which drives in a loop around the city pointing out the tourist highlights. We were slightly tempted by the big red sightseeing bus that arrived first, but given that this cost £18 each we didn’t get on and nor did anyone else! When the bus finally arrived we were very grateful that it was heated, and on the way to Federation square got to see the Etihad stadium, Royal Exhibition building, cathedral, parks and railway station all with a commentary from the friendly Scottish driver.
We’d decided that today was a day we needed to spend largely indoors, given our inappropriate clothing, so were headed for the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), where we were pleased to find there was an exhibition of Hollywood costumes, which had previously been at the V&A in London. It was a great way to spend a few hours, and the rest of the centre also had some great exhibits including old video games (yes we did play Lemmings for old time’s sake) and loads of interactive displays to keep our minds ticking over despite the lack of sleep.
We headed back out into the rain and managed to catch up with another free bus headed towards the shopping district, as we realised we were sorely in need of some decent jackets and jumpers before going anywhere near New Zealand! We finally got back to our hotel with only just over an hour to spare before we were due to head out for our celebratory dinner – so much for a power nap! We managed to make ourselves look presentable enough for some fine dining aboard a 1927 tram car restaurant that travelled through the city as we ate a delicious 5 course meal 🙂 Throughout the meal we were entertained by a cheeky waiter/sommelier. The meal was fantastic – we sampled baramundi and kangaroo for starters, both opted for rare fillet steak for mains, devoured the cheese course and finally stuffed ourselves with sticky date pudding. All washed down with champagne, wine, port, baileys and coffee! We had a bit of a drunken stumble back to the hotel and finally got back just after midnight, knowing we had to get up in less than 6 hours to make sure we were ready for our flight on to New Zealand. It was a fantastic meal and well worth the late night….
Love, M&C xx
Martin & Corinna's Travels 2013 