Jurassic-tastic in the City by the Bay!

Hello from Singapore!

Its the start of our long-awaited 10yr anniversary trip and, over the next 2 weeks, we will be visiting Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.  I’ve actually visited them before on work trips, but they are all new locations for ManpanionTM – and I love SE Asia, so its great to be back!!

I will try my best to keep up to date on this blog in real time – I know I still need to finish off our last day in Transylvania (sorry!) – but it just gets so much harder after you get home, you are jetlagged, then distracted with integrating yourself back into your day-to-day life.  Excuses, I know – and I WILL eventually get it finished.

But back to this trip.  It’s now Sunday early morning (just after 6am) and I’ve been awake since 3am, so the jetlag has been as brutal as you’d expect with a 13hr time difference!!  Our trip got off to a slightly bumpy start – we were scheduled to fly out of ORD at 6.30am to San Francisco, then onwards to Singapore – our Uber picked us up at 4am, we arrived at 4.30am, checked in our bags and, just as we were about to go through the security checkpoint, the boarding time on my phone updated.   And it was not good.  The plane out of SFO was delayed 3hrs due to technical issues – which meant we would miss our connecting flight to Singapore.  Well, shit.  Not the most auspicious of starts.

I immediately got on the phone to the Premier 1K helpdesk (yet another reason to obsessively chase renewing the status each year – a better quality of assistance when things go tits up) to find out what our options were.   Fortunately, pretty quickly our chap was able to find – and secure us – seats on the flight to Singapore via Tokyo instead.  Only downside – it didn’t leave til 11.45am and the flight from Tokyo – Singapore wouldn’t arrive until almost 1am on Saturday!   But we were just grateful to be able to get there – even if it mean a crushing 7hr wait in ORD plus another 3hr layover in Tokyo.  Looking on the bright side, at least we were able to hang out in the business lounges – plus the shopping in Tokyo airport is way better than the shops in SFO, so there was that.

The only slight concern was whether our bags would be retrieved correctly and make it onto the correct flight (the lady at the United lounge filled out a LOT of paperwork to make this reroute happen, so we were hopeful – but skeptical!).  We would be flying ANA instead of United, so we did get to check out biz class on ANA which was a new style of seat called “The Room”.  We were actually facing backwards (which was fine, no need to panic) and sat together in the middle section of seats.  They were double wide and had little doors that you could slide out, so that your seat would be semi-private and closed off from the aisle.  It was a neat system – and solved that eternal concern of inadvertently showing your underwear to the world, which happens when you’re lying down and your blanket and skirt gets all hiked up by your seat belt, as you toss and turn, trying to get comfy.  (you usually figure this out when you start to notice a breeze or your cheeks getting a little chilly).  The Room = modesty preserved.

The flight itself was smooth – I watched a couple of films and ate some tasty (and recognizable) Japanese food.  The pre-flight announcements had a disproportionate focus on photography etiquette onboard – including informing people that it is illegal to conduct “stealth photography” (ie taking pics of people without their consent) and to refrain from taking photos of the crew conducting their inflight activities.  The safety video featured various Pokemon characters – so it was all adorably weird and quirky.  Tokyo airport was how I remembered it – including the various fun shops selling all manner of strange foodstuffs.  PSA – if someone offers you a wafer of cheese chocolate to try, politely decline.  I tried it and it was a very odd mouthful.

We had a 3hr layover in Tokyo, so we headed to the lounge to wait.  By this point, we’d been up and traveling for longer than 24hrs, so the fatigue was starting to kick it, big time.  So much so, that I somehow didn’t get my boarding pass and passport back from the front desk at the ANA lounge when we checked in – which led to an awful heart-dropping moment of panic later on when I realized it wasn’t in my bag!!  Fortunately, they had it – but that illustrates how tired I was that I let it out of my sight at all!!  We lolled about in the lounge until it was time to board (on visiting the loo, I was reminded of how the toilets in Japan make a flushing sound when you sit down on them – to disguise the sound of you peeing!) and we finally landed in Singapore just after 12.30am!  Fortunately the immigration process was very quick and smooth AND in an additional bonus, our bags actually made it!!!  We’d given it an 80:20 chance, so it was fantastic they had been correctly transferred over to our flight and we didn’t have to wait for hours for them to show up.  We met our driver in the arrivals area and, after only about 20mins, were arriving at the Mandarin Oriental hotel where we were quickly checked in, handed our keys and we finally got to lay down on a proper bed and get some sleep!  It had been quite the journey!!

After about 5hrs sleep, we were awake and headed off to the club level on the 21st floor for breakfast.  The Haus 65 is a nice douchey lounge area that we have access to as part of our Club level room.  We are on the 23rd (top) floor and overlook the Marina, including the famous Marina Bay Sands hotel (the one that looks like a giant ship perched on the top of 3 huge towers).   Breakfast was very nice and a cheeky mimosa may have made its way into my jetlagged paws.

We had complimentary tickets to visit the Gardens by the Bay – one of the top attractions in Singapore, so we decided to head out shortly after breakfast before our energy ran out.  Here’s the website so you can check it out – but its basically a HUGE botanical installation, with lots of different areas and gardenscapes within it.  HERE

We had free tickets to visit the Cloud Forest and Flower Dome areas – the Cloud Forest experience heavily featured Jurassic Park stuff (which made sense) and the Flower Dome showcased a ton of roses (yey for roses!).  It was very busy which made shuffling around a little tiring – but inside the Dome and Forest was relatively cool and pleasant, which made a nice break from the heat and stifling humidity outside.

We had just finished with the Flower Dome and had decided to walk over to one of the hawker centers for some satay skewers when the heavens OPENED and it started to chuck it down with rain!  That put a kibosh on those plans so instead we caught a cab back to the hotel, went and enjoyed a spot of afternoon tea back at Haus 65 before we finally succumbed to the jetlag that had been circling us for the last hour or so.  We had only intended to have a nap for a couple of hours – but nope, our bodies had other ideas and we simply could not rouse ourselves to get up and go back out!  As beautiful coincidence would have it, the city was practicing for their 60th year anniversary celebrations, so there was a practice firework show and other assorted stuff planned for the evening.  As the focus of the city is the Marina – and our room looked directly out over it – we had the perfect view!  I will say, though, that its a singularly alarming experience being woken from a deep sleep by the sound of military jets roaring overhead, in a ceremonial fly past!  This was followed by multiple cannons firing across the bay (presumably 60 shots?) and then an incredible firework show which we managed to stay awake for at least half of.

So that’s been our time so far.  We’ve just got in from breakfast, having been awake since 3am, so I’m catching up on this blog while ManpanionTM is sweating over an Excel spreadsheet for work.  Today, we are going to check out a couple of temples and then the hawker centers (basically outdoor food courts and a very famous aspect of the Singapore food scene) as well as head to the Long Bar at Raffles for a Singapore Sling.  Unfortunately one of my favorite bars in the world, Atlas, is closed on Sunday and won’t be open until after we head out tomorrow – ah well, never mind.  Maybe next time.  Tomorrow we start the next part of our SE Asian adventure and embark upon the Eastern and Oriental Express train for a tour through Wild Malaysia!  It’s even luxe-ier than the Golden Eagle, so we are in for a treat!!!  Stay tuned!!!