Hong Kong and Singapore 2016

Results tagged “Monuments”:

Day 9 - Friday 22 January - Singapore Flyer and Chinatown

Another approx 6am wakeup. The bed here is a lot more comfortable. Pillows ok. Worst thing is temperature control. Too hot with the doona on, too cold with it off.

Got up and had breakfast at the executive lounge. Not quite as fancy as the Hong Kong hotel, but perfectly adequate.

Breakfast bar at the hotel

So then we headed out. Into the hot wet blanket that is Singapore air.

First stop was the Raffles Hotel to get a photo of it in the morning sun. Except as soon as I took my camera out it instantly fogged up :( Next time I'll need to give my camera a good long hug to warm it up before heading out.

Raffles Hotel

Then a long slow walk to the Singapore Flyer.

Memorial to the Civilian Victims of the Japanese Occupation and Raffles City

Park under Benjamin Sheares Flyover

This place hates pedestrians. Apparently nobody walks here. At least not outside. Every other intersection you're redirected to the other side of the road or to an overpass or underpass. Now I'd be happy to walk through malls and passageways *if* once you got into them you could get out again. Malls are completely evil - once you get into them it's impossible to find your way out again. Super frustrating.

After much weeping and gnashing of teeth (ok maybe just an awful lot of sweating) we made it to the Flyer. $33 each. Which would be fine. Except. People. I hate people at the best of times, but when you're sweaty and exhausted from a whole hour of being in Singapore heat I was ready to murder people. Especially those super annoying ones with the selfie sticks who don't just take the odd selfie to show they've been somewhere, but dozens and dozens of them. Get over yourselves people!!!! Hate.

We had ok weather for the ride. It had been a bit sunny earlier, but had clouded over by the time we got there. Not thick cloud so it wasn't too bad.

Singapore Flyer

Singapore Flyer sign

One of the capsules of the Singapore Flyer

Marina Bay Street Circuit for Formula 1 racing

View south to Gardens by the Bay

Marina Barrage

Moet and Chandon capsule at the top of the Singapore Flyer

View northeast to National Stadium

Singapore buildings looking northwest from the Singapore Flyer

The Float @ Marina Bay Grandstand

View south to Gardens by the Bay

View southwest towards Marina Bay Sands and Singapore city

View southwest towards Singapore city

View west

Marina Bay Sands

Sands Expo and Convention Centre and ArtScience Museum

Top of Marina Bay Sands

View west to the Durian and National Gallery

The Durian - Theatres on the Bay

Fullerton Hotel

Looking into the Singapore Flyer structure

View southwest to Marina Bay Sands and Singapore city

Looking into the Singapore Flyer structure

Gardens by the Bay

Looking into the Singapore Flyer structure

Afterwards stopped for another drink so we could decide what to do next. Decided to find the nearest MRT station and head to Chinatown where we were meeting Kit's friend (and our former neighbour) Audrey for lunch. We didn't have very clear instructions (the ticketmaster booth) so it took us probably fifteen minutes of wandering around, including through dreaded malls, to try and find it.

Trying to find the MRT station

Once again this city hates pedestrians

No durians!

Once we found the meeting spot, we still had about fifteen minutes, so walked up through the street markets and even through a Tintin shop!

Looking down Pagoda Street

So Audrey found us and we went to have lunch in a big indoor food court place. Had some "chicken rice" which is rice with some chicken. I thought chicken rice might have had the chicken mixed through it somehow.

Chicken rice

Stu, Audrey and Kaz
Photo by Stu

It was also good to chat to Audrey. I'm not sure if we'd met before or not. She lived behind us for a year or so about five years ago, so we probably saw her in passing. We chatted about Singapore and travel and of course Kit ;)

After lunch (it was probably nearly 3pm by this point and some rainstorms had passed through) we trained it back to the hotel with the idea that we'd go for a swim. Except the rain closed in and didn't go away again. So I spent a few hours in the hotel extremely frustrated. Bored in the room, but not able to go out without getting soaking wet (from either rain or sweat) and/or hit by lightning.

Pool in the roof of Bras Basah MRT station

Pool of the Carlton Hotel

Carlton Hotel, Singapore (this was our building, our room was on the other side)

Had drinks and food at the hotel then spent more boredom time before giving up and going to bed.

Day 8 - Thursday 21 January - Hong Kong to Singapore

Another 6am wakeup.

Got ourselves organised, then breakfast as usual.

Out the door at 8:45. Train to Hong Kong where we did the In-Town Checkin so didn't need to cart our bags on the airport train.

Inside Hong Kong airport

Went through security, then had a drink, then headed to the plane.

It was a very full flight. Fullest I've ever seen a Cathay Pacific flight. I should have picked our seats weeks ago, but didn't, and only did it at the web checkin in the morning. They'd given me a window seat nearish the front, but too close to the wing for my liking, and they hadn't allocated Stu a seat at all yet. So I changed them both. There were no seats together, but luckily we could both get window seats up the back, so that was pretty good.

Belly cam of the plane

Takeoff was to the east, but Hong Kong was covered in cloud, so nothing to see there.

Lunch was a very nice chicken dish - the chicken was lovely and tender.

Lunch on the plane

I watched Pixels first up, which was of course completely ridiculous, but a bit of fun.

Then a documentary - The Secret World of Lego - about the company and designers which was interesting.

We flew over Vietnam - lots of fires :(

Coastline of Vietnam near Bai Xep

Coastline of Vietnam near Tuy Hoa

Fires in the mountains in Vietnam

Then saw Singapore from the air before landing from the south.

Changi Airport

Ships in the Singapore Strait

View of Changi Airport from the plane

Getting through immigration at Singapore took what seemed like ages - about half an hour. And both my phones refused to connect to the airport wifi :( So that was all hot and frustrating. We took so long that instead of getting our bags from the carousel, they'd taken them off and left them next to it, so it was all a bit of chaos.

Kinetic Rain sculpture at Changi Airport

Then it was out to find money (easy enough), phone sims (Singapore Recommends didn't have them and no 7-Elevens in sight), train cards (Singapore Recommends had sold out). So that was all a bit fail. Got the train card at the airport station, $12 with $7 credit on them. Asked if that would cover the trip to the city - she said yes.

So two trains into town. Getting off, turns out the fare from the airport is like $1.30. Sydney please pay attention!!!

Everything here is in four languages. Except when it's too hard, they just go with English.

The heat and humidity here is like a blanket. At hot, wet blanket. I really think I'm going to die here.

But we did find a big mall (Raffles City) to walk through which saved walking a city block outside.

Carlton Hotel, Singapore

Checkin at the hotel was easy enough (although they only gave us one room key, and you can't use the room power without it, but you can't use the lift without it either - not very practical if one person wants to go out and the other wants to stay in the room - so went and got another key).

Our room at the Carlton Hotel

View from our room at the hotel

USB charger points, power and light switches

View from our room at the hotel

National Museum of Singapore

View of the pool from the lift lobby of our hotel

View from the lift lobby of our hotel

St Andrews Church

Top of the Marina Bay Sands hotel

For dinner we just went to the executive club lounge and had a couple of drinks and some snackages.

Went to a 7-Eleven across the road to get some sims, but they'd sold out :(

Then I decided to walk down to the waterfront to have a look at the Marina Bay Sands light show. The walk down was a little frustrating in places - seems this place is not too well designed for pedestrians - presumably of course unless you know all the underground and in-mall ways to go. At one point I found myself in this underground walkway, that had a gallery inside it! You could never do that in Australia - it'd get destroyed by vandals instantly.