Day 61 - Singapore

  Singapore, Singapore
Friday, November 2, 2007

I'm not quite sure why I thought it was a good idea to stay up until 4:30am updating the blog and photos, but that's exactly what I did last night/this morning.

As a consequence I was really tired even with a 10am lie-in, but didn't get much sympathy from Katie, as you can probably imagine!

Fortunately today was cloudy, otherwise I probably would have been woken up at 8am and dragged out of the flat.

It's been fantastic to have use of a PC without having to pay per minute, and Kirsty & Rich have been amazing hosts so far, letting me slope off to use the internet and keep on top of email, Facebook, travel blog etc. Thanks guys ;)

We decided that as the weather wasn't great, today would entail a leisurely stroll around the centre of town, a bit of shopping, just a chill day before a last big night of drinking and karaoke!

As we left their condo the sun came out, so we decided to walk up to the top of the hill and take a cable car to Sentosa, a small island in the bay which I wasn't able to get to last time I was here 5 years ago.

Katie was DELIGHTED that we decided to walk up the hill rather than wait for a bus, and people were nearly driving off the road in shock as they saw these weird foreigners WALKING up a hill in the middle of the day, because absolutely no-one walks here, it's like America.

The views from the top were stunning, over the harbour and out over the island, and over the Marina on the other side.



After a bit of a drama buying tickets (essentially most people working in the service industry here are a bunch of jobsworths, operating inside strict job descriptions so are generally quite unhelpful), we boarded a 'glass-bottomed' cable car and set off!



The cable car itself was very high up and took you right over the water to the island. I'd forgotten that Katie doesn't really like heights, but I was loving it!

 

At one point we even went THROUGH a tall office building which was cool, and we were lucky with the weather because I'm sure the journey is much better when the sun lights the way...



About 10 minutes later we'd touched down on Sentosa, and were both rather under-whelmed. If any of you have ever been there you will understand what a WEIRD little place it is!

It's kitsch, yet drab, random, yet organised, interesting, yet boring?! 

It's like a small island theme park, without the theme park! There's about 5 different modes of transport to take you around the island (cable car, train, shuttle bus, monorail, chair lift...), but it's perfectly walkable. Well, the main part of the island is anyway, which the vast majority of tourists visit.

It even has its own beach area, which is man-made and surrounded by a few 'resort' hotels.



I'm not being funny, but I hope their residents hadn't booked there for the beaches, otherwise they need their heads tested considering the AMAZING beaches a short flight away in Thailand, from whence we came!

There's also a huge statue of a "Merlion" which is (in case you hadn't guessed) a cross between a mermaid and... a caterpillar.. I mean a lion. There's one of these statues in the financial district near Boat Quay, and another bigger one here. But we all know that size isn't important, right H?! ;)



We wandered around the main part of the island, and eventually found ourselves at the foot of a "luge". Memories of watching Ski Sunday with my family flooded back until I realised that sadly there was no ice, just a curvy tarmac road and some dodgy plastic carts!

It was similar to the luge on H's stag in Bratislava where Pricey flew off the corner and I broke my camera, except I was MUCH less hungover and no-one was wearing a Scooby Doo costume;)

You had to take a chair lift up to the top of the course, and it was verrrrry slow, so Katie & I thought the track was going to be massive...



We got off the lift, put on our helmets, got in our carts, had our safety briefing and we were off!



Katie went first so that I could take some photos of her, but predictably sped off as I fumbled with the camera, because driving this thing definitely took 2 hands!

I chased after her shouting that I wanted to take a photo but she was either deaf or ignoring me... Eventually I caught up, grabbed a quick photo, turned the next corner... and we had finished!!!!

It went really quickly but it was good fun, we just wished it was twice as long!

We then walked back to the cable car station (after me being asked to pose for a topless photo on the beach by a load of asian students?!), and headed back to the mainland.



We jumped off at the mid-station, took the lift down to the MRT station and went into town. By this time it was 3pm and we were STARVING.

We decided to head for a Hawker Centre in Chinatown, and when we got out of the Chinatown MRT station someone told us it was closed for refurbishment! Gutted. 

However, the person who gave us the bad news did recommend a good dim-sum place around the corner, which had an all-you-can-eat buffet, a fatal mistake for any restaurant with Al & Katie around!!





Needless to say we ploughed through more dim sum than most of south China would have eaten in a month; some fried, some boiled, beef, chicken, pork, prawns, veggies... makes me ill just thinking about it! I think it was SGP$18 each (US$12), so purty darn good value.

We made the schoolboy error of allowing ourselves to get filled up with the cheap ones, so when the tastier ones came round we were full!

After finishing all those dumplings we could hardly move, but we forced ourselves out to Little India to meet Kirsty who had kindly taken some time off work to accompany Katie to have her eyebrows threaded.



Apparently it was much cheaper than London, although maybe in less refined surroundings, and 15 minutes later the girls walked out looking like they'd both done 10 rounds each with Joe Calzaghe. God knows what went on in there, but what happens in nail bars stays in nail bars. The first rule of Nail Bars is... don't talk about Nail Bars, etc.

We then wandered around the area a bit, before heading over to Boat Quay for a quick boat ride around the harbour, where we were the only people on the tour boat, legend!



The route took us right past the financial centre, and then out into the main harbour where a massive new casino is being built, across the bay from this photo...
 


...just out of shot to the right is where the most famous Merlion sits, looking over his domain.



At the end of the tour we disembarked by the quay and walked back through the financial area, which is like a mini Wall St.

 

We then got the MTR (subway) back to the apartment, where we joined Rich and got ready for the evening meal & drinks.

While back at their flat I tried to get hold of my friends who live in Singapore, but Shane was in Oz, and so was Kate, which was a shame.

The good news was that I was able to speak to Midori san (who some of you have met in London), and we arranged to meet at the Raffles Hotel's world famous 'Long Bar' for a drink & play it by ear.



The Long Bar is famous for 2 things: inventing & serving the 'Singapore Sling' cocktail; and being able to eat monkey nuts and just throw the empty shells onto the floor! It's a bit weird walking around on all the nut shells, but also quite cool.



It was really good to see Midori san again, we worked together at Tie Rack Japan (me in London, her in Tokyo) and she's now working as a translator over here in Singapore.

After a couple of cocktails at Raffles we moved on to find some food, and eventually settled on some satay and roti at one of the night street markets in the financial district.

It was all bizarely territorial between the street vendors and the beer waitresses of rival establishments, but we managed to have a slap-up meal and a few beers without too much trouble or expense. We even ate sting ray (!), which was surprisingly nice, check it out below...



Kirst & Rich then led us to a place called the Ice Bar, which was quite 'cool' (nurse, my sides!), and by this time we were starting to get really stuck in to the old alcohol!

Rich & Kirst were mad for some Jagermeister action, while Midori san & I were on the 'Quick F*cks' because they contained her namesake, Midori melon liquer, and Katie was her usual decisive self but eventually settled on a couple of B-52s!



I'm really not sure how many we had, but they certainly caused Rich to become rather mischievious, I remember him challenging the staff when they gave ridiculous jobsworth answers to simple requests, and then borrowing their hats for some photos (see above)!

He then organised the loan of some coats and led us all out to the coldest part of the bar (which was like a walk-in freezer) for some photos, which were highly amusing as we decided to do them 'Japanese style' for Midori san... peace signs R us!



Midori san sensibly left us when we said goodbye to that bar as we were all pretty trashed by then, and the gruesome foursome headed across the road to a karaoke bar, which always seems like a good idea at the time!

Rich led us off with an interesting rendition of an Aerosmith sing-a-long which had Katie in tears she was laughing so much!



 

...and then we all got stuck in.

Highlights (lowlights) included our group rendition of "By the rivers of Babylon", which nearly stripped the bar of wallpaper...





...and me wailing through "Sweet Child O' Mine" like W Axl Rose having a frontal labotomy...

 

We'd met up with some friends of Kirsty & Rich who lived in their apartment building (Dave & Katie) and some of their workmates, so by now our group was about 10 strong; it's just a shame that none of us could sing!

 

Katie was too much of a chicken to sing by herself, so Kirsty had to help her out!



We managed to get through 2 bottles of vodka between us while we were singing, before staggered over the road to a LIVE karaoke bar, where you sing with a live band in front of the audience!

Thankfully something had kicked-off earlier that night so the place was closing early, so we only had time for a sing-a-long of some random Robbie Williams album track, and then Dave was a very convincing Mick Jagger as he stormed through "Honky Tonk Woman" complete with the backing band!

 

When the band disappeared I couldn't resist the lure of the drum kit, move over Ringo Starr!



Surprisingly (!!) I don't really remember getting home, but I think we fell through the door about 4am, and just about remembered to set our alarm for 6am to catch our flight to Perth! GENIUS!

I'm pretty sure that Philleas Fogg didn't have to get this drunk everywhere?! ;)

We've had a great time in Singapore & it was really good to spend some time with friends from home, and we really look forward to seeing some more old friends in Australia!

Lots of love,


Al & Katie xx