A day in Singapore

Our room in the Miramar hotel is comfortable, no great luxuries (think Travelodge or Holiday Inn) but it is clean and reasonably modern. The location however is very good, just across the road from the river, where plenty of bars and restaurants can be found. We didn't check in until gone 10 pm local time, and given that we had both had less than an hour's sleep in the last 24, exploration was not really on the agenda! We crossed the river to the nearest bar, had one drink and called it a night.

We were up bright and early the next morning, out on the street by 8am. Unfortunately, as we discovered, Singapore is a city that doesn't appear to wake up until about 10am! We walked down the river right the way down to the marina, taking in views of the business district and of course the magnificent Marina Bay Sands hotel. Any sort of food court was firmly shut until we finally rolled up to Sun City mall at about 10am and found an open food court.

Selina and I both had a prata for breakfast, which is an Indian savory hot pancake . We had ours filled with egg and cheese and it was served with a sauce which was like a thin chip shop curry sauce! Breakfast eaten, we hunted down the local tour bus hub and bought our day trip tickets.

The tour bus was a traditional open top double decker, which ran multiple routes around the city. We stopped off first at the Botanical Gardens for a taste of the local flora and fauna before taking in the sights on the Orchard Road - which is basically London's Oxford Street on steroids!

We then got off the bus outside the Raffles hotel and hunted down the Long Bar, where we had cocktails. No, not the Singapore Sling, neither of us can stand those! It was a Long Island Ice Tea for me and a Cosmopolitan for Selina. We also took advantage of the complementary peanuts, casting the shells on the floor, as is the tradition... I had a rather embarrassingly large pile next to my chair by the time we left!

We spent the rest of the day completing our whistle-stop tour of the city and by 6pm we are now back in our hotel room. We are now preparing to head back to the river for an early dinner, then take in the neon lights of the local bars in Chinatown.

I expect the next update will be when we arrive in Brisbane. We fly out from Singapore tomorrow at 3pm and arrive in Brisbane just after mindnight... Mental note, if I ever do this again, arrange flights so that we don't end up arriving everywhere in the dead of night!

Apologies for the lack of pics so far, I am currently writing this blog on my phone, which doesn't allow me to upload anything... I will do a pics post as soon as I get in front of a PC!

TTFN