Singapore
Singapore
We had chosen to fly to Singapore in the evening rather than
catching a 6:00 a.m. flight via Kuala Lumpur, with the early, early morning.
So, instead, we took Scoot Airlines (a budget airline associated with Singapore
Airlines). It actually was fine, though I booked the ticket at rather the wrong
time, so paid a bit more than I should have. It was still a cheap price for us –
didn’t include anything – booked a ticket with 2 bags and bit extra weight for
one of them which we didn’t end up needing *. So off we went on a late
afternoon flight to arrive at our Singapore Airbnb home in the wee hours of
Sunday morning.
So, Singapore. Our Airbnb hostess had sent specific
directions to give the taxi driver since most people stay in hotels. I had it
printed out and he read it and off we went. I knew that while Singapore has
relatively inexpensive taxis (metered), there’s a surcharge after midnight.
However, since there was almost no traffic, it was only $30 Singapore dollars,
so less than $22 USD. He went straight to our house in a small, low rise
neighborhood in the center of the city – just a tiny enclave of several blocks
who have all resisted the request to sell for high-rises. By now it was well
past 1:00 a.m. (our bags were some of the very last off the plane), but our
host was waiting up for us. His wife and month-old daughter were sound asleep –
they all left for a brief trip to Malaysia before we were up the next morning.
Our four-night stay was very comfortable and we settled in
easily. Since they provided breakfast items, there was plenty of basic food for
our time there. They keep MTR (public transport) cards for guest use, so we
just had to figure out how much was left from the previous guest and top it up
a bit – worked great. Stan was having camera problems, so our host dropped us off
at an electronics six-floor shopping complex, with instructions about “best
price”, etc. We looked for awhile and finally bought one that should work fine
as a back-up – at a reasonable price (nice to have Google to check while shopping)
and a number of extras to sweeten the deal (second battery, large SD card,
adapter and unneeded case). Of course, Stan’s original camera is working fine
now (a week later).
After spending some time trying to figure out where “Little
India” was in relation to the mall, we found ourselves in the Turkish quarter.
As is common on these treks of ours, Stan found a hat in a stall just outside
the mosque.
We then headed off to the Botanical Gardens only to get caught in a
rather long downpour. We had seen it coming and found a café to have coffee and
stay dry. Shortly after we arrived it really came down and a number of people were
looking for a place to shelter. As it let up (we thought), we headed back out
to head toward home. With it so warm (i.e. HOT and HUMID!), getting wet wasn’t
really all that bad. We stopped at a food court of sorts near our home metro
station – a large open square surrounded by permanent take-away food stalls – Indian,
seafood, Malaysian, etc. Fortunately, in a rainforest country, there were
plenty of tables under cover. By the time we finished eating the rain had
stopped and we could get home without getting drenched again.
Our second day’s plan was to go to the Singapore Zoo, but
with rain again in the forecast, we decided to go to the Gardens by the Bay – a
fairly new botanical garden, complete with huge artificial trees that are part
of an evening light display (we watched from the ship on the day we boarded).
We wandered most of the outdoor areas and watched wild river otters. It’s a very
large garden – part of a whole bay-side green enhancement of the port area.
Then we finally found our way to Little India and its huge department store,
Mustafa. We wandered a bit, but once we found a few food items we needed, we
actually walked back to the apartment (I think we may have walked more inside
the metro system between trains than the walk back).
Day three found us at the zoo. Fortunately, I had found a
post on TripAdvisor the day before that talked about a shuttle from the metro
stop nearest the zoo (other options were taking buses, which was shorter but
more complicated for us). It was a great last minute find and worked really
well. The zoo has a number of big cats – all awake that morning (well, other
than the big male lion) and lots of very open monkey and ape areas. It’s a
large zoo but mostly flat (as opposed to ours on a mountainside of the Rocky
Mountains back home). They do several animal shows during the day, but we just
wandered the exhibits. It made a nice final day in Singapore.
Our final morning was very relaxed as our check-in time at
the port was shortly afternoon (we arrived too early and spent more time in the
terminal than we would have liked, but Uber worked well for our transfer).
Ready for our final cruise segment for this trip.
Here is Stan’s Photo Blog from Singapore
*As an aside, way back
at the beginning of our first cruise segment, I had contacted the front desk on
the Queen Elizabeth to inquire about leaving our cruise clothing cases on the ship
while we toured Australia. I had initially been told by our travel agent that
it wasn’t an option but had read on the Cruise Critic forum about folks who had
done that. So, I figured it didn’t hurt to ask. Working with the front desk on
any cruise ship seems to be complicated due to a variety of languages even
though they all speak English. At first it appeared that they thought it was an
odd request, but once I talked with the correct person it wasn’t an issue at
all – just some paperwork and a fee. The main concern is being prepared for us
not showing up on the ship again for some reason, so they wanted customs forms
for the UK since the suitcases would end up there if we didn’t show. Really
quite odd since the forms they required me to fill out were totally the wrong
forms but had a place to fill in an inventory, so we did due diligence and
filled them in as best we could. The fee came out of remaining Onboard Credit,
so that was easy – it would have been well worth paying the $50 US to avoid
lugging them around Australia. It was great to find them waiting for us in our
cabin when we arrived back on-board.
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