Samoans in Singapore

We have now arrived in the humid tropics of Singapore and feel more at home as the temperatures are very similar to Samoa. We took off from Brisbane in the middle of the night and flew Emirates with great in flight services. Continual drinks (the non alcoholic variety!) and on board entertainment. Managed a couple of hours sleep around movies.

Arrived in Singapore in the early morning and was surprised that there were no little boxes to tick about what we were bringing into Singapore with regard to food or animal and plant products and no bag scanning unit either for that matter so we let ourselves in! Singapore airport is huge so it was a nice hike from the plane to customs and no queue when we got there probably because everyone else got distracted by the shops and eateries on the way through.

Got ourselves on a shuttle to our hotel after changing some currency and using the ANZ machine which kept talking to me. I kid you not! Was pretty impressed it knew who I was by name and could give me funds from our Samoan account.

We are staying at the Carlton which is on Bras Basash road at the bottom of Orchard Road and right next door to Raffles. This is a great area of town. Cant remember where I stayed last time I was here 15 years ago. The hotel is great. We have a lovely room and it all feels very luxurious with a beautiful shiny reception area complete with fountain and chandellair of sorts.

As we couldn't check in straight away we opted to go exploring. It was hot out of the comfort of our air conditioning but we made it up as far as the Dhoby Ghaut train station via two different shopping malls. Things were very quiet and we were amazed that none of the shops opened until 11am!!! We were feeling pretty weary however some frozen yogurt with fruit soon refreshed us enough to explore a bit more. We discovered Marks and Spencer and Dorothy Perkins from the UK and it was great to have a look around and reminisce about the good old days of shopping in London! Might pop back some time to poke about at leisure without husband in tow! So far things have not been very Asian as all the top Western influences are here including food. We even found a store where you can choose, stuff, dress and name your own teddy bear! What next aye? Anything to get money out of you. We went into a sports shop and 1 running outfit later were still trying to convince the shop keeper that it was not worth us paying $49 to join their club, even with the free sports bag, as we are only visiting!

Managed to pick up some interesting packets of chips and nibbles to try after looking through the fish balls and dried fruit on offer. Also picked up our Netball tickets from the stadium. We were pleasantly surprised at how we could purchase these online from Samoa several months ago, turn up to the box office and be presented with tickets with no dramas or problems what so ever. Hmmmm maybe we have been living in Samoa too long as we are certainly noticing the customer services here! Saw the Wales and Malawi teams at the stadium training and checked out the restaurant options for the coming week.

We have sussed out the MRT and got ourselves a card which we top up with credit as required. The tube is efficient and can get us everywhere we need to go this week so will be making the most of that.

So after all this we headed back towards the hotel, passing 3 of the England team members along the way who stood out by their accents and height! Obviously some down time for them as they were out exploring. We went in to check out the Chijmes center across the road from our hotel and collapsed onto a chair in the lovely court yard where we were brought a Tropical and a Peach Sangria. After a couple of these we also decided to order up dinner and chose the vegetarian set menu as it had mushroom, babycorn, asparagus and cherry tomato dishes all of which we miss in Samoa! Dinner was delicious and finished off with a lovely cheesecake and icecream.

After a bubble bath, another one of those luxuries we miss in Samoa, we crashed . . . . .