Singapore.. a fantastic experience due to Siew-Sai

As usual I am in the airport lounge of Singapore airport - it is ten to eight at night and my plane leaves for Brisbane at 2110 via Quantas - lets see what they are like!

Christmas lights in Singapore

I have just managed to delete this entry!! What a pain in the .....

To recap: I was in HK from 16th to 21st Nov - BK from 21st to 24th Nov - Singapore from 24th to 28th Nov - Port Douglas from 28th Nov to 7th Dec - now to continue from where I deleted!

While I was keying in my diary at Siew-Sai's office he was dealing with some business calls - when he had finished he suggested that I join him and his family for dinner at his golf and country club. He has 3 sons and one of them was celebrating his 10th birthday so we had an excellent meal complete with chocolate birthday cake! It was great fun and the boys are typical lively young lads. After dinner his wife took the boys home and we collected an Indian business friend and Siew-Sai took us to the Long Bar at Raffles hotel for a Singapore Gin Sling! It has a great athmosphere with a live band and lots of people - peanut shells all over the floor and on the table! Apparently, this is the custom and is acceptable. We left about midnight and dropped Amitava back at his hotel before doing a tour of the lights so that I could take some pics - the theme this year is music and all the overhanging garlands were music notes, written on music sheets - the trees along the side of the road were decorated with musical instruments - these decorations are sponsored by Hitachi and have been for the past number of years - I don't think this would happen in London! I finally got to bed at about 1 am.

Singapore Slings

On Saturday Siew-Sai had to go to Kuala Lumpur on business for a few days so I had to say good-bye to him last night. He has been a marvellous and most generous host - it made such a difference to my introduction to Singapore to have a local show me around and take me to places I would not find on my own - where the locals go! I would also like to thank Sunny (his chauffeur) and Melinda for taking me out on Friday and looking after me so well. Being now left to my own devices I decided to take a city tour booked at my hotel. This was a mixed bag - I did not realise that as part of the deal we had to visit some Indian shops and a jewellery factory where it was assumed we would purchase some goods! You have been warned! I was expecting a cultural tour and if I went again I would explore on my own and learn by trial and error. In the evening I took a night Safari - this was very good in contrast to the day tour. We saw lots of animals and had an excellent narrator - after the trolley ride to see the animals, we had a show called "Animals of the Night" - it was really for kids but was a lot of fun and the adults enjoyed it also! We did not get back to our hotel until 11 pm and I was exhausted.

On Sunday morning I went to the Cathedral at 10 am for Mass - it was packed - a long service with lots of singing but good for the soul! After church I decided to lay by the pool and read for a while - I booked high tea at Raffles hotel for 3 pm - it was very disappointing (after the Peninsula in HK) - there was a great long queue and we had to stand in line to help ourselves to the buffet table - not much presentation and no athmosphere - a load of schoolgirls arrived and it was really noisy. I finished my tea rather quickly and went back to the tranquility of the pool at the hotel until I got a taxi to the airport at 6 pm.

General views on Singapore: Meeting Siew-Sai and his friends was the making of my days in Singapore. Everything is spotlessly clean - everything runs on time and is so orderly - even check-in at the airport is done with precision and great attention to detail. One would not need so many days there unless you were going to play golf or go into the hinterland. Transport is very cheap and there are loads of shopping malls, in particular, Orchard Road is a shoppers paradise!