Day Nineteen – Singapore – Six weeks off work

admin October 9th, 2015

At least I think it’s day 19. Timezones…

I was meant to fly out to Singapore and meet up with Georgie (who went the day before) on Wednesday evening, landing Thursday afternoon. Sadly, someone decided that my train to Heathrow was the one they would use to kill themselves and the ensuing delay meant I missed the flight. I managed to book a flight for the next morning though and arrived in Singapore on the Friday morning. I’m writing this on Friday night…

Arriving in Singapore airport (which is a very nice airport) I was greeted by a large fan on a robot arm, which was a bit odd.

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Giant fan on a robot arm in Singapore Airport

It wasn’t actually spinning very quickly. Anyway, I arrived at the hotel, and after freshening up we decided to go on one of the open top bus tours for a look around. Little India was nicely decorated

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Entrance to the main street of Little India

And it seems that sitting in the back of a pickup truck is a common way to get around…

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Hitching a lift in Little India

We also ended up at Chinatown (which we might go back and investigate some more tomorrow), which was also “colourful”…

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Chinatown street decoration

After the bus trip, Georgie needed to work for the afternoon so I headed back to the hotel for a rest (I never manage to sleep on flights…) Our hotel is next door to Raffles, so I took a quick look at the entrance. It still looks rather grand, but is oddly placed with modern buildings all around.

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Raffles hotel entrance

We went for a pre-dinner drink at one of the bars in Chijmes. This chapel and surrounding buildings used to be a convent but is now used as a gallery and for dining/entertainment. The hazy Singapore sky turned orange as the sun went down.

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Chijmes Hall, an ex convent of the holy infant Jesus

We went into the mall under the hotel for something to eat- you get the fun of ordering on an iPad which is pointless, but mildly entertaining in it’s interactiveness.

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Georgie ordering food on the iPad at Grandmas

After dinner, we went to the night safari which is well worth a visit- you get driven around in a “tram” (basically a large version of one of those tourist trains you see in cities) where you’re driven round with commentary about the various animals. After that you can walk some smaller paths and see some things you don’t see from the tram, such as enclosures where you see fruit bats close up. Not many photos from here, it’s really dark, and you obviously cannot use flash, but have a lion and a bat.