After a dreadful night’s sleep, courtesy of jet lag and far too much caffeine late in the day, I was already awake when my alarm went off at 7.40am. This was set to ensure I was up in time to try and book flights using points and a voucher for next January to Sydney.
I didn’t manage to secure Business Class seats (for now), but was perfectly happy with Premium Economy. We have always suffered Economy going Down Under before. I won’t be able to add the return flights for another month, and we still need to decide whether we’ll stay in Australia for a month or head straight over to New Zealand. It’s just a shame that BA don’t fly directly to NZ themselves.
Once this mission was completed, Karen got up, and after we had both showered and dressed we headed to the otherwise empty Club Lounge for breakfast. Today’s hostess was called Irish. She neither looked Irish nor greeted us with a fiddly-dee dance. In fact, after yesterday’s rather intense level of attention, we felt almost entirely ignored.
Breakfast was the usual fare, although the Asian option had changed and now included spicy chicken wings, which I bravely tried. They would have been perfectly acceptable for lunch or dinner, but at breakfast time they felt like a step too far.
After a quick teeth clean back in our room, we headed down to catch the 10am shuttle to Outram MRT station again. Today the shuttle was almost empty, and the driver seemed mildly put out that we didn’t want to get off at the first stop so she could turn around and head straight back to the hotel.
We caught the MRT to Raffles Place and then walked to Merlion Park. It was already hot and sticky, with the temperature at 28°C and forecast to reach 32°C later, with a ‘feels like’ of 40°C and the promise of showers. Yesterday Karen had been using the hotel umbrella as a pseudo walking stick, but today typically she’d forgotten to bring it.
The area around the Merlion was heaving with tourists, mainly from Asia and India. A rude professional photographer attempted to push me out of a shot he was taking of a couple. As he was so rude, I stood my ground and silently dared him to try again. He didn’t.
By now we needed to sit down and rehydrate, so as we’d passed a Starbucks, we headed straight back to it. Karen had some much-needed caffeine, while I drank one of the breakfast juices that had somehow ended up in my rucksack. The cool air inside was a welcome and much-needed relief.
It was a lovely — but hot — walk to our next stop, the Raffles statue at the Raffles Landing Site. We sat opposite it for a while, contemplating what to do next, conscious of not pushing Karen’s hip too far and jeopardising the rest of the trip. She was adamant though she could manage the 1.6-mile walk to Gardens by the Bay.
We set off slowly, with several stops along the way, and were glad we made the effort.
The gardens are rated number one place to visit in Asia on TripAdvisor, and number eight in the world. They are very good, although I’m not entirely convinced they are that good — but to be fair, I would need to visit everywhere else in the world first to make a proper judgement.
We headed for the centre but were quickly distracted by the Shake Shack we found there. Karen progressed from “I’ll just have a drink” to also wanting a frozen custard, and then decided that a portion of chips would be nice as well. I queued and placed the order while she found a table. Some 25 minutes later, I joined her with the food. It was all rather lovely just sitting there afterwards, although we both felt we could have done with a proper siesta as the jet lag kicked in again.
Eventually we vacated our table and gave it to a woman with a lovely dog riding in a child’s pram. The dog was wearing a little baseball cap — entirely of its own choosing, I’m sure.
After some humming and hawing, we decided not to revisit the glass conservatories or do the tree walk, having done both on our previous visit. Instead, we opted to explore the rest of the gardens by what I dubbed the “OAP tour” — an audio tour on an open, elongated buggy. In truth, it was excellent. We would never have walked as far as it took us, nor would we have properly understood what we were seeing.
A quick whirl around the gift shop yielded nothing we could reasonably bring home, and as Karen firmly advised me not to break off a stick from the many beautiful plumerias, we decided to head back. We had the choice of a long walk to the MRT, two train rides, and a potentially lengthy wait for the hotel shuttle — around 90 minutes in total — or spending £8 on a Grab and being back in 15 minutes. Not so long ago we would both still have chosen the former. These days, older, wiser, and temporarily more confident in our finances, we chose the latter.
We chilled in our room for a while before heading to the Club Lounge for drinks and to see what food was on offer. Today it was all Asian, and I politely opted out of what appeared to be various strange items floating in something resembling dirty washing-up water. Karen said she’d make do with pizza and cheese — until I mentioned I might nip out to get myself a takeaway. At that point, she suddenly decided that what she really wanted was a Filet-O-Fish from McDonald’s.
I discovered there was one just 120 yards away and left her to relax while I went to fetch it, along with something for myself.
It was indeed just 120 yards away. Unfortunately, between me and it lay a massive dual carriageway. Eventually, I realised I needed to retrace my steps and use a high pedestrian bridge to cross safely.
On the way back through a small shopping complex, I spotted a shop selling large yellow umbrellas with crooked handles — just like the one Karen had been using from the hotel. I bought one. It may not make it home, but it should help her walking for the rest of the trip and serve a dual purpose if the rain arrives.
We ate our food back in the room. Karen then watched the latest episode of the increasingly preposterous series The Traitors. I still don’t get it. It’s a group of people over-analysing facts they simply do not have. It’s no different from Deal or No Deal, where people choose box numbers based on their neighbour’s budgie’s birthday. I think it’s a classic case of the Emperor’s New Clothes.
I blogged, then spent far too long trying to work out why my website wasn’t sending out emails when I published a post. I failed and had to do it manually for now. I do fear that once the problem is resolved, all subscribers may suddenly be flooded with a backlog of emails. If, by the time you read this, that has happened — my apologies.
I had intended to at least try and watch the start of the Norwich match away at Wrexham, but I was sound asleep long before kick-off.
