Singapore Slings!
Trip Start
May 07, 2008
1
33
90
Trip End
Jan 06, 2009
Singapore,
Singapore
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Welcome to our Singapore Sling.
Well, we made it all the way on the bus from KL. Our double-decker leather-seats bus journey was really fantastic. Our friend in KL, Charlie, booked it for us and booked us front row seats upstairs! Traditional row seating upstairs with which included a massive TV screen for everyone and a separate 'lounge' downstairs!!
The journey took a smooth 5 hours including a stop at Border Control. We got to our Hotel, wandered around the shopping mall underneath (hee hee) then stumbled accidentally upon Chimes which had been recommended to us. An old stone building housing a labyrinth of cool bars and restaurants. It was buzzing, dim lighting and too much choice!! (David: There was only one place I can remember. Where waitresses wore Lyons Tea shop black and whites - with stockings!) We had a delicious meal...somewhere! (David: Yes, somewhere. Somewhere else!) and then headed back to the hotel just as the rain came crashing down. We'd had a long day and we had a kingsize bed to get into!!
The next day we ventured out to explore. We found Sim Lim (or Sim City as I nicknamed it!) which is 6 floors of cameras, phones, GPS', photocopiers, playstations, calculators, anything you could ever want or need in today's modern world. We were in heaven!! such fun! (David: Except anything vaguely old fashioned like Palm PDA's... whereas MBK in Bangkok had just phones and one shop I forgot to mention before: a little shop with pristine old games machines, and one untouched PS2 dev kit.
Singapore
Which is meaningless to anyone reading this other than fellow geeky gamers, so I'll stop!)Then we went to Battle Box. Battle Box is an underground bunker in Fort Canning park. This was the headquarters of the British forces during the Battle of Singapore. You go on a guided tour underground where waxwork dummies of soldiers re-enact historical moments of the Battle with recordings. Eery down there. A cold, stark labyrinth of tunnels with bullet-holed, graffiti-walls and original large steel prison-like doors. Incredible to imagine the history, pain, fear emanating from down there. This is where the British forces leaders held the meeting that decided to surrender to the Japanese. They became prisoners of war, these were the same people that helped build the railway line we mentioned in Thailand.
That night we grabbed a cab to Orchard Towers. Orchard Towers looks like a 1960's block of flats but inside is a plethora of noisy neon-lit bars, restaurants and ladyboys adjusting their knickers! Locally it's called: Four floors of Whores!!! Love it!! We went to Ipanema, a very dark bar with Singapore women loitering about attempting to sell their wares. It was good fun but David felt a bit uneasy as hords of Singapore women were eyeing him up irregardless of his wedding ring on. I also had hords of men eyeing me up irregardless of my wedding ring and I loved it!!!!! We then went to Crazy Horses bar expecting to see a Ladyboys show. One hour after it was supposed to start we were still sitting in this nightclub sipping extortionately expensive beers watching ladyboys writhe around poles on a stage dressed as Carmen Electra and we gathered the show was off.
Suspended by a wire....!?
The internet had quoted the wrong time and we were told by the ladyboy waitresses that we had missed it. Oh well..If I'd have had more alcohol and perhaps a girlfriend with me for titty-jiggling-hip-swaying support, I would have been up on that stage dancing to Girls Aloud with them all!!!So we went downstairs to Harry's bar, for a drink. This is a thoroughly English pub with wooden floors, horseshoe bar and pints of beer. It's THE place to sit and watch the crazy weird nightlife drift by outside. But there was also a live band on who were absolutely flaming excellent. The lead singer was a 4foot bloke wearing a dress, humungous sized solitary diamond earring and tattoos on his arms! David and I were hip-swaying and clapping thunderously to their Pink Floyd and Billy Joel hits though. Brilliant night!
The next day, we ventured out to explore. We decided to get a cable car from Mount Faber to Sentosa (another fab recommendation!!) Life is never simple though...we couldn't just get a cable car over. No we had to buy a whole package of tourist attractions with it!! turned out fantastically well actually!!! The cable car was both brilliant and bloody knicker-wetting. I spent most of the journey with my face covered and david standing up, gasping "look at Singapore behind you!" and me going "DON'T ROCK THE BLOODY CAR!!!" we were hundreds of feet up and suspended by a flipping wire over sky-reaching trees, the ocean and tiny model cars zipping along on the highway below. I loved it once I was back on terra firma!
Our first tourist trap was to the huge underground aquarium.
DON'T ROCK THE BLOODY CAR!!!!
Yawn!!!It was brilliant!!!!!!!!!!!! Apart from the usual tiny tropical fish we were introduced to Dugongs which looked like mini-dolphins and this solitary one was so playful. We also saw the most stunning jellyfish against neon backdrops. Sharks, stingrays, seahorses, exquisite.
Next: two 3D short films which was all a bit Disneyland but a right laugh anyway. First was this roller coaster film where you were seatbelted in and then rocked from all angles while you 3D-roller coastered over lurching loops, blood-curdling drops down to water with logs flying towards you. Screaming was unavoidable! Next was some pirate short film with Leslie Nielson and Eric Idle in!! more lurching about but this time water squirted in your face as pirates jumped into the sea and air whistled around your legs as crabs invaded a camp. More screaming!!! All the way to Singapore for some cheap cinematic thrills...
Finally, we went to see this dolphin show. Not quite SeaWorld! Seating was on white plastic chairs on the sandy beach and the 'show' was held in a massive lake. The dolphins were both beautiful (one was pink!!??) and great fun. All they did was jump a bit, get stroked by two audience members and play with balls. Great stuff. We were told by friends that there was a beach in Singapore and we just thought our friends had gone mad!! (David: It's an Island darling, of course there's going to be a beach somewhere) But where the dolphin show took place was a stretch of beautiful golden sands with basketball games, bars, loud music, sunbathers, roller-bladers, it was fantastic.
Sea snakes!
Such a great atmosphere. (David: The beach also had the most romantic outlook: oil tankers, container ships, drilling platforms and stuff floating that really had no right to be afloat at all.) We then got caught in torrential rain just as the show ended and we made our way back to the skytrain taking us back to the city. We were drenched!! That night we finally met up with my friend from London. We met in Fullerton Hotel which is very swanky indeed and you will hear more of this later!! It was really good to see Penny again and to meet her new man, Kelly. They had to go off to a party and we had to go off to a different party so we parted ways but vowed to meet up later in the night. David and I went off for some local fare in this Hawker type place where the locals eat. We went for the infamously drooled over chilli crab which was indeed drooling stuff. However, I like my food. And I do like my food rather instantaneously, so having to sit and pick at crab and break it and smash it and pull the meat out and oh....sod it! I want to eat not delve my fingers into some crab's backside to get some joy! Drooling stuff indeed, certainly - but only drooling because I couldn't get to it. (David: we asked a stallholder how to eat the sodding thing but she just laughed. Eventually she took pity and took them away to..er..bash them up a bit more. Didn't make much difference, just lascerated our mouths with sharp shells.
(David: I needed the toilet later. And it cost 20c to use it. I have no issue with paying 20c for a clean toilet, but I had no 20c to pay and I was pretty desperate.
Jellyfish!!!!
So rather than run around the place looking for change I invoked some ninja Derren Brown psychological trickery and stomped past the surly toilet nymph deftly tinkling her tub of change... she thanked me, I smiled: A little tinkle for a little tinkle... sounds fair)The party we went to was really good. We met Anne, a german girl, while on a tour to The Great Wall of China and she invited us to her birthday party. Anne was great fun and really lovely so we went along, met some really interesting people from all over the world and got merry. Poor Anne got covered in cream and party hats by her friends and got photographed. Very funny! That's the great thing about travelling: you meet such lovely, friendly, diverse people. (David: Anne works for Siemans, which for some unknown reason I got into my head was Pfizer... I have no idea how that happened. Anyway, it may explain why my Viagra jokes fell a bit flat.)
After this, around midnight we met back up with Penny and gang. We all ended back up at Ipanema where there was a live band on (Indie/rock type rubbish) but the place was rammed and we had a great night, jiggling, drinking, gossiping and being silly. David wowed more of the globe's population with his card tricks and he was likened to Derren Brown and David Blaine!! (David: I was asked, again. Honest... no I was, really) We got very drunk and eventually left and got back to our hotel at 5am!!!!!!!!!!!!
The next day, Sunday, we woke early as usual and felt like absolute and utter poo.
WHAT am I doing??! Penny, Kelly and I at Ipanema
After David had, for the third time, put his head in-between his knees, we forced ourselves out to The Fullerton Hotel where we had met Penny the previous night for cocktails. We were told to go to the Fullerton Hotel for its cocktails but more importantly, its Sunday brunch - including its roast dinners. That recommendation was a piece of gold. Since early June we had lived off asian food. And there, in a sumptuously expansive chandelier dining room was, before us, crackling pork, medium-rare beef with Yorkshire puddings, potatoes, veg, gravy, stuffing, OMG!! But you know nothing. NOTHING I TELL YOU!!! As part of the Fullerton Sunday Brunch thing, you could eat all you like with FREE CHAMPAGNE!! FREE CHAMPAGE!! FREE CHAMPAGNE!! FREE CHAMPAGE!! FREE CHAMPAGNE!! FREE CHAMPAGE!! There was a live jazz band on as you ate, there was a beautiful fountain splashing water outside, the waiter service and friendliness was incredible and we WERE IN HEAVEN! HEAVEN I TELL YOU! HEAVEN!! Now, I hear you all groaning at the prospect of this lunch. I hear you all sobbing at the utopia of this scene but now you will start screaming at us. We had before us a feast of a Sunday lunch and an endless supply of free champagne. And you know what? We were feeling SO crap, SO dire, SO hungover that we.....er...kind of..er.....asked for 2 cokes!!! We just couldn't touch the champagne. We stopped drinking at 5am that morning. Champagne was like drinking acid to us! I felt disgustedly ashamed that I was in such a wonderful situation and all I could bear to drink was coke! Coke for pitys sakes!!!Immediately after this we returned to the hotel and went to bed! It was 2pm.
THE Fullerton Hotel
We slept till the evening and then we got up and went out to the Night Safari. Tourists and staff we had met from India to China to Malaysia had told us to go. It was absolutely flaming brilliant! Basically it's a massive park with wild animals which only opens at night so you see them in their natural habitat albeit spacious enclosures. (David: You may be wondering how anyone can see anything in a zoo at night. Well, they have cleverly lit everything with carefully placed lights emitting a light similar in colour and intensity to a full moon. So as far as all the animals know it's a full moon night. Consequently, you get to see a lot more of their activity than in a normal zoo - genius really.) We got on a long train of trams which takes you through the leafy jungle of animals. We unfortunately got into the one tram with the Japanese family! Throughout the whole of the live commentary, the Japanese family just screamed and chatted constantly. It was impossible to hear a thing! And they do it at ear-bleeding high decibels. The guide told us to keep quiet for fear of scaring the passing animals with any loud noises but the Japanese just continued to yak yak yak yak constantly at ear-bleeding volume! I can totally understand their excitement at seeing a tiger 50 feet from you but KEEP IT DOWN FOR TERIYAKI'S SAKES!!!!!!!!!!Anyway, if not able to hear a damn thing, we at least saw elephants, lions, tigers, bears, wolves etc. It was amazing. Afterwards, we took the walking trail through the jungle where you can see close up leopards - OMG this was heart-stopping.
Lois being stupid!
He is in a massive natural wooded enclosure but behind glass and for some reason he came right up to the glass and was pacing up and down literally 1 foot away from us. INCREDIBLE. BEAUTIFUL. EXQUISITE CREATURE. You could see right into his eyes, his big furry paws, everything. Breathtaking. (David: this pacing was a bit weird, usually it means they're a bit distressed. But he didn't seem stressed in any way: he had a sumptuously large, varied and naturalistic environment with signs of constant stimulation change. But, he came over to pace. The only conclusion we could draw was that he was full of energy after a day asleep. And he needed to walk it off, he just felt like using that space by the window to do it. Perhaps he was an exhibitionist, which might explain Lois' obsessive fascination with him: kindred spirits meeting perhaps. I suspected that he'd come over to say hello specifically to her) Then we went into the Flying Squirrels den. The Flying Squirrels are essentially what it says on the tin. A squirrel with wings! They are the weirdest creatures. Squirrels with webbed legs but when they fly they glide so elegantly like a leaf floating down to the grass. Beautiful. They were flying about over our heads which was a bit scary but great fun. The next day we went to Raffles for a couple of Singapore Slings (courtesy of Charlie and Les as a wedding gift - thanks guys, they were fantastic!!!) and to kill a bit of time before our flight. Raffles is an internationally famous Hotel, renowned for its sumptuousness and grandeur. We went to the infamous Long Bar which is decked out all colonial with wooden shutters, floors and raffia seats. All over the floor were crushed monkey nut shells - it was de rigeur for staff and customers to just brush the used shells onto the floor to be cleaned up later....ok! the Singapore slings were absolutely scrumptious and we relaxed in comfort and style.
After an hour-long debate with the hotel over our bill (don't ask!) we grabbed a cab to Singapore airport. Our flight was delayed but no matter...Singapore airport was massive with its own outdoor swimming pool (complete with wooden sun loungers!! As aeroplanes took off behind you!!). After a few hours in the free internet café, we boarded our flight for Australia. We were going to Australia. Wow!!
Love, us xxxxxxxxxx
