1/ It's bloody hot
2/ It's information sources are difficult to understand. There are no guides on how to purchase metro tickets, how to use local buses and much more. Singapore is largely an English speaking nation but it was still highly confusing.
3/ It's bloody hot
4/ There's a madman on the loose who eats sausages with chopsticks. This strikes me as being very messy, especially if gravy is involved. Thankfully this man is of Asian extraction, so he didn't drop the sausage as he bit into it. If it was me, I would almost certainly have dropped the sausage into the gravy thus causing considerable cashback (sorry I mean splashback).
5/ It's bloody hot.
6/ The metro system is cool in both a weather kind of way and a good sort of way.
7/ Gardens are exotic and interesting with lots of animal/bird sculptures.
8/ It's bloody hot.
9/ the historic central section is well historic.
10/ Did I mention it's bloody hot.
We've been here before and on that visit I learned that it's bloody hot. Apparently the hot season is over and it's now cooling down somewhat. Their idea of cooling down is seeing the temperature plummet to 35 degrees and I'm talking Celsius here.
After a fulsome breakfast which was a buffet mash up of English, Mediterranean and Asian cooking, we spent a horrible waste of a morning trying to get a monitored COVID test. For every other part of this holiday we have been able to self declare and self verify but not for getting on the Queen Elizabeth.
They insisted on evidence of a monitored test up to thee days before sailing. No information on where these tests could be had. We brought our own tests with us but that wasn't acceptable even if we stuffed the cotton buds up our nostrils in front of them. No we had to have a clinically administered test i.e have somebody else stuff the cotton buds up our nostrils and charge us 75 dollars for the privilege.
So we headed for a couple of pharmacies but both told us it had to be done at special test centres. One helpfully gave us the address of a test centre in a nearby hotel. So we took our lives into our hands by crossing a very busy road where roadworks had wiped out the crossing only to be told they could do the test but we had to have our passports.
So back across the busy road to pick them up and back for the cotton bud up the nose job.
Booking essential it said on the door but we got our tests immediately and got the results emailed within 10 minutes. There's always a worry with these things that they will prove positive and what the hell would we do then?
We took tests before we left home but there's always room for doubt.
Thankfully we were both negative. Cunard sends us a daily email telling us how much they are looking forward to seeing us. Each then includes a reminder to get that COVID test as though we are all slightly naughty children who can't quite be trusted.
Of course the welcome is just a front for ensuring we have had the COVID test as they don't know us personally from Adam.
Whilst I'm having a good old moan, travel companies just seem to have given up making things easy for the traveller. Now we have to print off all our tickets, sort out seats online and even print off our luggage labels. Not to put too fine a point on it, we have to do virtually everything and pay them for the privilege of doing it.
It's the same with train and theatre tickets as well. The customer prints them off using their paper and ink and get charged a booking fee for so doing.
I suppose with staff shortages this will be the way of the world in the future.
In the afternoon we got the very clean metro system to gardens by the Bay.
Things I noticed about the gardens by the Bay area.
Much of it was free and you could wander around wetlands and dry lands to your hearts content.
It was bloody hot. But I'm not going there again. The following day we did more walking in Singapore (about 12 miles of it to be precise). This time it was to the financial and historic area. We didn't get as far as the famous Raffles Hotel but we went there last time and sat in the garden with a beer.
Singapore is certainly a good place to visit. It is clean, bright and enjoyable with a definite colonial feel to it.
My photo gallery is from our two day stay in Singapore.