Beautiful, humid Singapore - an almost completely accurate diary of events.

It was a 17 hour flight to Singapore, so further from LA than the UK. For the 3 weeks, I took a medium and cabin case with my Backpacker guitar (determined to practice every day). Not too bad I thought. We went on Singapore airlines, which is one of the best I think. The staff are always wonderful and the planes feel well looked after. Just what you need to feel safe. I used to get very nervous on take-off, but now am an old pro and am quite calm throughout. Mind you I haven’t yet had a choppy flight as Mark did a few months ago and he said he was terrified! We did once have the captain make an announcement on a South African flight asking if anyone on board was a fireman and then an air hostess ran down the aisle (all when we had been upgraded and were sipping our champagne). We were diverted back to Heathrow that time and landed to see a sea of fire engines with flashing lights (like something out of Die Hard). Apparently, a TV screen had overheated.

Anyway, I digress, nothing happened this time and I slept through most of it. I watched the Favourite – which is a brilliant film!

We arrived to an awe-inspiring airport, covered in beautiful vegetation and flowers. I would say that its worth coming to Singapore just to experience the airport, unlike LAX, which I am beginning to hate with a passion. The immigration was spectacular, in that there was no queue and people smiling welcoming you to their country – no really…. We were out in 15 mins. LAX should certainly learn from them.

I feel that I don’t have enough descriptive adjectives for this trip…

Day 1

So, after the 17 hour flight, it should have been Saturday, but HEY, we time travelled into the FUTURE, as Singapore is 15 hours ahead, so we lost a day.

When we got to the taxi rank out of the wonderfully cool aircon, we realised how humid it was. I mean really wet heat, so your skin felt clammy and sweaty.

The road was lined with gorgeous oaks all twisted. Despite the heat, it was filled with gorgeous greens of trees and vegetation and it clearly rained a lot (in fact the weather forecast was rain for the next few days). There was obviously great thought and planning gone into the planting as there was a lovely symmetry to it all.

We travelled over the bridge to the Marina Bay Area. We saw Sci-fi movie like structures which resembled large trees towering into the sky, as high as skyscrapers. We also saw Sands on the Bay hotel, which has 3 columns with a boat like structure balanced over the top of the 3.

The Mandarin Marina was beautiful, with cathedral like centre and glass roof, with the room doors being all internal and all having outside views, like a large cylinder.

The room was lovely, but the bed was the hardest I’d ever slept in, but what a view!!!!!

We changed quickly and went to the 14th floor to spend the rest of the day at the roof pool with fantastic views of the city. It was wonderful to get cool in the humid heat. I was wearing SF 50 as I could see a number of people had turned red in a matter of an hour.

Day 2

In my usual fashion at the beginning of any holiday I ever take, I decide that I’m going to be fit and healthy and went to the hotel gym. I managed to persuade a grumbling Mark, who said yes the night before believing that I’d change my mind the next morning, but no, I was up and dressed and raring to go. When we got there, I realised it was filled with incredibly fit people and only one very, very, large man, who seemed to just sit on the machine for a few minutes then wipe his face with the towel and move to another. After ½ hour, I’d totally had enough and vowed to go for an hour the next day. Needless to say, that was the last time we went as I was having too much of a good time to worry about that type of thing!

At 10am we were all ready with our room service ordered, sitting on the edge of the bed, excited that the hotel had HBO and that we were able to watch GOT. The waiter came in on the opening credits and must have thought we were mad.

After GOT and taking breadth, we had a long discussion/debate on what had happened and what the last episode was going to be and also the dilemma that we weren’t going to be able to watch it. We decided to go and explore and we walked outside the hotel straight into an airconditioned mall, the first shop we saw was Marks and Spencer.

Well you have to look don’t you? I have to say the food hall made me feel all nostalgic and I did buy a few things, but the dark coloured clothes looked so out of place in the hot humid country. There were woollens for goodness sake!

We decided it was quicker to walk outside and after a few minutes thought we could cope….. then it hit us and we had to move into shadows whenever possible and after seeing a few people with umbrellas up, decided to see if that improved the situation….. It didn’t, so we ducked into a bar for the first of a number of Tiger Beers …… ummmm Tiger Beer (said in the style of Homer Simpson). We eventually staggered to Raffles, but unfortunately most of it was boarded up for extensive renovations, but we did finally find the gift shop and the famous Long Bar.

Walking into the Long Bar was like walking back in time to the 1920s. It was how I imagined Raffles to look in the time of the Empire. The walls were white with dark wood furniture, large green palms and shutters on the windows. It felt as if we had stepped back In time. There was 1940s music playing and fans on the ceiling which were clearly decorative as the aircon was priceless to us at this stage of our trek.

The bar went the entire length of the Long Bar and had a few cocktail waiters doing amazing things with the mixers behind it. On each table was a small sack cloth bag of monkey nuts and people were eating them and just dropping the shells on the black and white tiled floor. It just didn’t feel right. We had two delicious Singapore slings and felt very contented, happy and lucky.

In the bar, we got talking to a Yorkshire family. The younger woman had moved to Singapore with her husband, who worked for Rolls Royce and had been there for 2 1/2 years. She had a 3 year old and 8 month old. Apparently, they were already acclimatised. Her visiting in-laws weren’t though and advised us a better way back to the hotel through all the connecting malls. Thank goodness we thought.

Neither my phone or Mark’s appeared to have internet or phone usage outside the hotel, despite paying Verzion for international use. Unfortunately, they couldn’t sort it out for the entire holiday, so we had very limited use outside the hotel. When I got back after Raffles, I read up about Singapore history and their dependence from Britain. Fascinating history.

We went back to the lovely pool, but were only there for an hour before we were told to leave as we were in danger from the lightening by the pool. What hogwash we thought and then the lightening lit up the sky very close to us and we scuttled in quickly.

Mark’s boss arrived that evening and invited us out for a meal. Sushi is his favourite food and after walking through intense humid heat ( I started the evening cool and serene and after the walk was a dripping mess), to get to his favourite hotel the Ritz Carlton, to eat his favourite sushi, I would dispute that any walk to get sushi was worth it and it was only as good as M & S sushi in my opinion🤣 What a philistine I am!

On the way back, we yet again discovered that we could go through the interconnecting malls to get back…..phew!!!!

Day 3

Jannet & Eric arrived. We met in the buffet restaurant and it was lovely to see them again. I had my usual - I fear I may be addicted to their creamy scrambled eggs. Not sure if they are on the WW plan, but I was trying to steer away from the Danish pastries😞

Raffles deserved a second visit with Jannet, where we had yet another 2 Singapore Slings – what a wonderful place!!! I should imagine it would cost an arm and a leg to stay there when the refurbishment has been finished.

We met up with a lovely Singaporean/Indian lady called Dal, who was the wife of Terry who runs Blackline in Asia. Dal is a Sikh who has lived in Singapore her whole life, but whose family lived in India. She used to travel with Terry, but has now stopped as their 6 year old son is at school.

We met in the hotel lobby and travelled via taxi to The National Gallery which was a beautiful Victorian style building which wouldn’t look out of place in London. It was made up of two similar buildings connected by a large white sail like metal canopy with intricate designs cut out of it…pretty awesome.

We walked through the museum to the famous ‘Violet Oon Singapore’, which Dal said you had to book weeks in advance for the evening, but it was ok for lunch.

As we walked in it was clear about the Victorian influence inside too, we could have been in the V & A museum in London. It was beautiful with high gloss, arts and craft style tiling on the walls and floors, huge windows and gorgeous white linen covered tables. The chef is famous for cooking a variety of Asian gourmet plates rooted in Nyonya and Singapore cuisine (Nyonya, Chinese, Indian and Malay kitchens).

The food was delicious and was eaten in a tapas style. Quite honestly there wasn’t a dish I didn’t love and the colours were wonderful. A feast for the eyes as well as the tummy. Singapore doesn’t’ produce its own wine, so we had a New Zealand one. It was to become a theme of the holiday – a lunchtime bottle of wine and let’s not go into the evening consumption. Be still my liver, I promise to detox when I get back!

We chatted about Singapore history and the people’s unified view on forging their country to a new age, with education and ambition highly pushed by government, it was inspiring to hear. There used to be a limit of one child per couple, but this has changed recently. We learnt more about what it was like to be a sovereign republic. And how it became an independent and sovereign nation in 1965. Singapore has inherited a legal system that is based on the English law, with many English customs. We also discussed how many think that Singapore is a dictatorship comprised of Lee Kuan Yew and now his son, the Prime Minister. Their political party, the PAP has ruled Singapore for the last 52 years. Their principle means of wielding power is through their control of the police and the law courts. Dal felt optimistic that 6 seats went to the opposition at the recent elections, but unfortunately this only happened because Lee Kuan Yew let it. Dal seemed very keen to share the feeling that things were changing though. I did get a feeling that the country was very proud of its heritage and its future – quite rightly so. Singapore is a country full of beauty, diversity unity of spirit and optimism. As you can tell I'm a big fan!

We taxied back to the Marina, merry and certainly 10 lbs heavier. We visited the bay, jumped on a boat trip around the harbour and saw the Merlion statue, a mythical Lion and Mermaid mix, which is a prominent symbol to Singapore and Singaporeans – you see it everywhere.

There was clearly a lot of love shown in the renovations of the whole harbour; it was beautiful with vibrant colours on old buildings and brand new high tech glass structure flanking the water’s edge.

Dal and I talked about my early youth in RAF Changi when my Dad had been stationed there. It felt good to recount those happy memories of snake charmers, trips to Singapore Town and my nanny at the time called Amoy. I remember that she and my mum used to take us to a wonderful park called Tiger Palm Gardens, which apparently is still there but is now renamed Haw Par Villa. It depicts ancient Chinese folk and mythical tales as brightly coloured life size statues, some of which I understand is quite dark, but I remember loving it at the time. Unfortunately, on this trip we didn’t have time to visit it, as it was 45 minutes out of town, but there’s always next year.

Mum had kindly sent me pictures of the family at various points in Singapore and it turns out Dal lives 3 streets away from where we were at one address – small world!

Dal even went onto Google Earth and showed me pictures of the street. It felt incredible to be able to see the same houses 45+ years on.

We then walked to the magnificent, jaw-dropping, Marina Bay Sands Hotel with the boat on top of 3 skyscrapers. Utterly ridiculous really. There were walkways on different levels, with garden bridges connecting the buildings. AND it was a British design. Incredible!!! Boris Johnson eat your heart out. (PS. If it was even possible for me to dislike Boris even more, it was when Trump today said he felt that Boris would be an excellent choice for party leader). Sorry for even putting his name in the context of such a wonderful experience…..

The shopping mall below the Hotel was breath taking in height. Seven open cathedral like levels. It gave me vertigo!!! Especially going up on the escalator.

We had a cup of tea at TWG tea, another beautiful Victoriana looking establishment. Again there was white linen and a delicate china tea cup with a gold covered china teapot. I felt very underdressed!

Jannet who’d been amazing considering she’d only flown in that morning, needed to go back to the hotel, so she was steered towards the taxi rank and Dal and I stayed and walked on the skywalk to Gardens in the Bay.

Now the Gardens on the Bay could have a whole chapter on their own as they are so wonderful. It is difficult to fully describe the Super Trees impact and scale. They look like something out of a sci fi, Avatar movie. They rise above the trees and are space craft like. Truly inspiring.

Dal and I sat on the lake steps in the rain under one umbrella and watched the light show where the ‘trees’ lit up in a variety of different colours and patterns to music – amazing!

We then walked to the Bay Sands food court. It was very up market with each booth serving every food known in the area, from Chinese, Malaysian, Indian etc. Dal bought me one of her favourite Singaporean dishes called carrot cake, which unfortunately had nothing to do with cake, but actually was quite nice. It was eggs cooked with soy sauce and Singapore noodles with bamboo shoots. That was a day of walking until I dropped and also eating enough for 5 people. It seemed to also expand in my stomach so when I returned to the hotel and laid on the bed, I definitely had a little food baby.

Day 4

Jannet and I met for breakfast and yes, I had the scrambled eggs again. I had room again for food thank goodness.

We walked the mall and bought a Big Bus pass.

We stopped off for a stroll around Little India and loved the colours, the murals and the wonderful spice smells. Back on the bus we were told how Sir Thomas Raffles who was a British Statesman and a Lieutenant – Governor of the British Dutch East Indies decided to segment the city into ethnic areas, moving people into various zones.

We stopped in China Town, had a delicious Tiger Beer and then walked around a Hindu Temple with the most exquisite statues and carvings. My favourite is as always Ganesh. We were able to watch (at a distance) a family Hindu blessing.

Our next stop was back to Gardens on the Bay, as we were keen to see it in the day time. We walked around the Gardens of the World and on the walkway under the Super Trees. It was extremely humid and super clammy, but even so we both loved the experience.

We made our way to the glass houses, the larger of which housed an exhibition on Holland, with a windmill, tulips and clogs everywhere, which was very surreal for Jannet 😊

Our favourite was the Cloud Forest Dome. Not only because the aircon was such a wonderful relief! Cloud Forest was filled with plants from floor to ceiling with walkways throughout in a spiral of levels rising to the very top of the dome. The waterfall was filled with plants underneath, like living wall and it was truly one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen.

Those of you who know me well will not be surprised that I got lost on the way back and steered Jannet on the wrong road, which took us away from any malls and into the open humid atmosphere. We finally realised that we’d gone completely wrong when we could see the Super Trees and the Gardens on the Bay Hotel far off to left of us. They are so big, I have no idea how on earth we could have missed them. We walked miles, and got sooooooo hot that when we arrived back at the hotel, I had turned into a red lobster.

Back at the hotel Jannet and I decided to have a body massage. Basically, I felt as if I was beaten up for 90 minutes. She used her elbows and knees to work my muscles and she said I was tense. I was tense because she was killing me!

After a spruce up and a clicking back of bones, we got a taxi to Bay Sands Hotel and travelled up to the 57th floor to Bewitched favourite restaurant – C’est La Vie. We had a drink in the SkyBar to start with – OMG, scarily high!

It was very expensive, but totally worth it.

Very merry yet again we got a taxi back to the Mandarin Marina and had a last Singapore Sling in the hotel atrium bar, waving at Mark trying to have a serious talk with all his work colleagues. He looked shattered. At least one of us was having fun! 😊

Day 5

I was really sad to leave Singapore. Mark and I set off to the airport at 6.30 am. When we got there, there appeared to be a number of police there that we hadn’t seen last time, but they were on segways – how cool is that?

We tried to get to Terminal1 from Terminal 3 to see the famous newly built Jewel, which is the largest indoor waterfall. Unfortunately the entrance is on the outside of the airport and we had already gone through security…..it will have to be next time…..