Goin' Feral One Day At A Time: Singapore

Marina Bay Sands Hotel.

It’s about time for another Lifestyles of the Rich and Shameless edition of Goin’ Feral. After my Australian Alps Walking Track stroll I was looking for somewhere warm and relaxing to visit over Christmas and with Sam heading away with me we were also looking for a bit of comfort at the same time. With only a few days off we decided to head up to Singapore for a few days. The reason we decided on Singapore was that it was pretty close to home (relatively speaking), it was pretty much guaranteed to be warm, the accommodation was flash and lastly, we’d never been to Singapore, not even on a stop over.

Singapore has Electronic Road Pricing which basically means it costs a fortune to drive in the CBD, it does keep the traffic under control though as the toll varies depending on currant traffic conditions.

Being fairly close to the equator we coped a few storms passing through on our time in Singapore.

There's a 100% import duty for vehicles in Singapore, it doesn't stop a few people owning some very flash cars though.

Flying out of Melbourne at around 1am we arrived at Changi airport at around 5am, ah the wonders of air travel. We had accommodation booked for that night but rocking up at Marina Bay Sands at 6am in the morning I was already prepared for a morning of wandering around the local area in a sleep deprived, sweaty haze as we waited to check into the room. So imagine my surprise when I arrived at the check in to find that we could check into our room now, happy days! Marina Bay Sands just went up on notch on my list. So our Singapore sojourn started off good and to be honest things only got better over our stay.

Wandering back to the hotel at night the views were just as good as during the day.

Our days were taken up walking around this beautiful modern city, our nights normally involved us eating and drinking at one of the many food hawkers before meandering our way back to Marina Bay Sands in the balmy night, before either watching the light show behind us at Gardens by the Bay or sitting in our room and watching the light/laser/and water show in Marina Bay complete with the huge steel and glass buildings of the CBD as an imposing backdrop. This was indeed a relaxing time and quite a contrast to my nights and days on the AAWT.

The building that looks a little bit like a flower is the Art Science Museum.

With the Art Science Museum five minutes walk from the hotel we stopped in the check an exhibition called Future World - where art meets science.

Now I’d heard that Singapore was a very modern and cosmopolitan place but to be honest nothing really prepared me for how modern and organised this place is. Everything here seems to happen with a precision and efficiency that I haven’t experienced before, from transport to the food hawkers, shops and tourist attractions, everything seems to just happen seamlessly. Now I suppose if you are the ‘wanker, I’ve been everywhere, world traveller type’ than you could say that Singapore can be a bit sterile and boring, yeah you could say that but I’m thinking that if you are looking for something a little more rough around the edges then Singapore was the wrong choice anyway and you probably should have done your research better.

Singapore CBD.

On our Duck Hippo bus.

There is a seemingly never ending amount of small alleyways to explore.

Unfortunately the Singapore Art Museum was closed for a reno at the time of our visit, actually Raffles was closed too, so I guess we'll have to go back!

This beautiful building began it's life in 1854 as a Catholic Convent.

Christmas Day at St Andrews Cathedral.

The Civil War Memorial or as it's more commonly known 'The Chopsticks'.

To get a bit of a feel for the place Sam and I jumped onto a 'hop on hop off' city tour bus run by a company called Duck Hippo. For 24 hours we could take unlimited journeys along four different routes circling out from near the centre of the city. When I head to new cities, particularly when I’m OS then I always find it good to do one of these types of tours, basically heading out to scope out spots that I’d like to revisit in the coming days. Sitting in the open top tour bus with the tepid humid air keeping us at that beautiful sleepy temperature, it was actually pretty hard to work up the energy to get off the bus and start exploring on foot.

Meandering our way back to the hotel along Raffles Avenue we passed the famous Merlion.

The Singapore GP track.

Thankfully they have detailed instruction for the safe use of escalators. You can almost spend your life underground in Singapore, although every time we went subterranean it would take me half an hour to work out where we were again when we surfaced.

Now this would make Lyle Shelton or the Mad Monk's heads spin, some of the Ladies Toilet's have a urinal for the Ladyboys. BTW is not easy taking a photo in the lady's dunny!

After getting our bearings on the city tour we spent the next few days heading out to Little India, China Town and Gardens by the Bay (of which I’ll knock out quick posts about at some indeterminate time in the future), Orchard Road and Bugis Street. Orchard Road and Burgis Street providing a contrasting experience of shopping in Singapore. Burgis Street was not that long ago known a the red light district but the government has largely cleaned up the seedy side of the district now, still compared to the super clean, modern and expensive shops on Orchard Road the crowded shops of Bugis Street still feel a little gritty.

Bugis Street was originally the red light district.

Orchard Road

We visited Orchard Road on Christmas Day, unlike Australia all the shops are open.

Orchard Road was Sam's favourite neighbourhood:)

The good thing with all the shopping was short periods of relief from the humidity, well that was my opinion anyway;)

We actually visited Orchard Road on Christmas Day so we weren’t exactly sure what would be open. When we arrived at the western end of Orchard Road Sam was very pleasantly surprised to see all the flash shops open. We spent the next few hours gradually wandering east towards the CBD checking out a few of the different malls. Really you could spend 6 months in Singapore and still not see everything it has to offer when it comes to shopping, although from my limited Feral observations it didn’t seem like it was that cheap, although I’m no expert on the going retail price of a Chanel Handbag and it’s like. Back at home I’m probably what you would call a reluctant shopper (I’d rather visit the dentist than go aimlessly shopping) but over in Singapore I quickly worked out that to enter a shop meant that I was entering an air conditioned sanctuary for a few minutes respite from the heat and humidity outside.

Looking back towards the hotel from outside The Shoppes.

After dinner each night we'd meander our way back to the hotel, sometimes stopping at Marina Bay to watch the light show.

The back drop was pretty sweet!

That's the historic Fullerton Hotel lit up on the other side of the bay, it's a little like White Night.

Sometimes we'd watch the light show from our room.

If we got sick of the light show on Marina Bay we could go up to the roof of the hotel and watch the light show in Gardens by the Bay, yep choices!

After our daily excursion we would meander our way back to the pure luxury of Marina Bay Sands Hotel, this is the hotel that you may have seen on ‘worlds best pools’. The hotel consists of three towers with an stunning infinity pool perched on a slightly curved, slightly cantilevered deck spanning the whole three towers about 57 levels above the ground looking out over Marina Bay to the Singapore CBD. Here’s a Feral tip, with the hotel catering for up to 2,561 punters you want to get to the pool fairly early in the day to get yourself a sun lounge, like all resort pools it suffers from the scrounge of towels left on the lounges to reserve them, a first world issue if ever there was one! Now here’s a controversial statement, one thing they do well at the pool is to keep the ankle biters out of the adult area of the pool, it provided lots of entertainment watching the various mum’s and occasionally dad’s trying to convince the life guard that their little tyke should be allowed in. The other thing that is immediately noticeable at the pool is the amount of punters taking to the water with their smart phones to get the obligatory selfie, if there are any canny smart phone repairers in Singapore reading this then set yourself up in the lobby of Marina Bay Sands with a hair dryer and you’ll make a fortune drying off drowned smart phones!

It was still dark outside when we arrived, this is the foyer of the hotel.

The foyer of Marina Bay Sands is huge, this is the base of the second tower, there's a third tower around the corner.

This is looking the other way towards reception and the first tower.

It was only three weeks ago that I was slogging my way north to Canberra along the AAWT, what a contrast!

I suppose the other notable feature of the hotel is the view, from our Deluxe King Skyview room on the forty something floor we were looking out over Marina Bay to the CBD, I never did get bored looking at this view, day or night. The curtains in the room are actually programmed to open automatically when you come into the room, unfurling the view as if you were at the theatre. Our room also featured one of the most comfortable beds that I’ve ever had the pleasure of laying my head on, although I prefer beds on the hard side so it might have been too hard for some. There was a choice of three different restaurants for brekky, although with two and a half thousand of my newest best mates at the hotel with me, breakfast was a little more manic than I normally prefer. If you get sick of the pool or the views from the room then the hotel has it’s own high end shopping mall attached to it, imaginatively called ‘The Shoppes’, maybe it loses something between cultures? Actually the hotel / mall also has it’s own metro station as well.

The view from the room wasn't bad.

The view from the pool was better though.

They let all sorts of riff raff in.

I wonder how many smart phones end up at the bottom of the Marina Bay Sands Hotel pool?

The hotel even had it's own high end mall called The Shoppes.

The Dirt.
Singapore is a great spot to spend a few days, it’s pretty comparable to Australia when it comes to value for money (so it’s reasonably expensive). On our time over there we ate at the numerous food hawkers scattered around the place, these places are generally very clean with good food and cold beer and they make for a relatively cost effective way to eat out. Marina Bay Sands Hotel isn’t a cheap and cheerful option, we payed $400 plus for our Deluxe King City View room which included breakfast and free wifi, although I think the view and that pool are probably the things that lift it above some other hotels, so I suppose it’s not that bad. If you want to use the pool then there is no option but to stay there anyway! Sam and I spent everyday wandering around the city on our own, sometimes returning to the hotel fairly late in the evening, from what I could tell Singapore is a very safe place, I certainly never felt unsafe on any of our little adventures. As I mentioned on our first full day there we jumped on to a city tour with Duck Hippo, we got on or off the buses as many times as we wanted to for 24 hours, this proved a great way to get a lay of the land. There’s no photo’s in the post but we also went to the Singapore Night Zoo Safari one night, while it was good I’m thinking that the day zoo may have been a better option. The zoo is an open range type zoo which is good, but it also means that the animals can wander a fair way from the viewing spots which can make them a bit hard to see at night, you also don’t get as much time there as you would during the day either.

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London, England, 2015.