Singapore January 17

world's largest waterfall

Hot, not too sticky, partly cloudy, 30 degrees

Today is our last day in Singapore, so we decide to spend it off of Sentosa Island.

I can't get enough

I choose the one on the right

The main attraction for today is Singapore’s Gardens by the Bay – a huge complex of indoor and outdoor gardens. One of the 2 indoor gardens is the Cloud Forest. This conservatory displays plant life from tropical highlands up to 2,000 metres above sea level. As soon as we step foot in here I am in love. It is cool and moist – the moisture coming from the world’s largest indoor waterfall. The other indoor garden is a Flower Dome, which I thought I’d prefer to the Cloud Forest…wrong! The Flower Dome is lovely, but not as spectacular as the Cloud Forest.

The Gardens by the Bay is right next to the Marina Bay Sands resort. This is a huge casino, hotel, shopping complex. We considered staying here and I’m glad we didn’t. It is very busy and I am very happy with our choice of the beach resort where we are. The Marina Bay Sands has a roof-top (57^th floor) infinity pool and restaurant/lounge which is pretty mind blowing. We have a drink at the top and manage to time our visit with Singapore’s daily rain storm.

overlooking the pool

Although we took a taxi to the gardens this morning, we decide to try Singapore’s metro. I always love trying public transit…gives me a feeling of accomplishment.

Dinner tonight is at the hotel buffet where I try Japanese snails – very interesting and cool looking. I can’t quite cope with getting them out of their shells by myself, so the very helpful waitress gets the chef to do a bunch for me. They are quite dense and sweet tasting - eating these is something else that gives me a sense of accomplishment. With this meal we think we spent all of our resort credit.

Marina Bay Sands hotel

Tomorrow is our last travel day for the next 50! We predict it'll be a 10 minute taxi ride - not bad as far as travel days go.

infinity pool 57th floor

assorted shellfish including the snails

Japanese snails out of the shell

Singapore January 16

Sentosa Island Merlion

Hot, sticky, partly cloudy 31 degrees – real feel 39!!!

Finally we are sleeping a bit later…7:00 am, for some reason the monkeys thought we deserved a lie-in today, we didn’t hear them at all.

Seems like I forgot to write about what we did last night…I don’t know if it is the wine…the heat or the sleepiness, but I’m still figuring out what day it is half of the time. Anyway…we spent the evening (yesterday) in town at Vivo City…a  mall complex…a regular mall and tons of restaurants and one of Singapore's 2 cruise ship terminals. I’m not sure what I expected from the mall, but it is pretty much just like a North American mall with us being the visible minority. We wandered the mall a bit before sharing a bottle of wine and a couple of appetizers at Jamie Oliver’s restaurant – the same one we went to last year in Bristol. In general, what we’ve seen of Singapore isn’t cheap. I think it has a bunch to do with the crappy Canadian dollar, but also just the prices here. For example…a Starbuck’s latte that would cost about $5.00 at home was $7.20 here. One thing that makes us feel a bit better about the prices at the hotel, is that they are pretty much the same outside of the hotel.

We also checked out the mall grocery store. Vacation grocery stores are always on my ‘must-do’ list. This one was a bit of a disappointment. Things here are just too much the same as at home - no interesting chips to try.

The last thing we checked out before heading home was the boardwalk along the Singapore harbour. This is lined with restaurants, pubs and wine bars. We didn’t think it would be right to walk TO the wine bar without stopping AT the wine bar. We had a great spot right along the water.

nature walk

It seems that places here don’t have their own washrooms, but you are supposed to use public ones which seem to be everywhere. The thought of a public toilet doesn’t thrill me, but these washrooms are pristine – not fancy, but spotless and I feel totally safe.

Our hotel has a shuttle that drops off and picks up at the mall. We weren’t finished until after the last shuttle left, so we took the tram back – tickets for this are provided by the hotel, but no one seemed to want to look at ours.

TODAY…breakfast as usual was at the hotel followed by pool time, our daily 600 ml beer at the pool during a downpour, a bit of swimming, a visit from the peacocks and back to the room for a nap. We skipped lunch yesterday and today as we ate breakfast pretty late.

My horoscope for the coming year

Our evening activity was to checkout the Sentosa island (where we are staying) entertainment area and casino. We could have taken the tram, but decided to walk at least part of the way. Sentosa island has a nature walk through the jungle that we’ve been meaning to try. We thought this would be a good time and I suppose it was, but 10 minutes in and we were drenched. The humidity coupled with the heat and us hiking up a hill made us a bit ‘damp’ – damp is pretty much unavoidable here. Besides the heat and humidity it was a pretty awesome trail, and by trail I mean a paved path with info plaques.

The casino was exactly what we expected…you have to bring your passport, it was pretty busy, and the slots weren’t kind to us. It was fun to visit, but it would have been a bit more fun to have won!

Our cab driver who brought us from the airport told us Singapore is preparing for Chinese New Year. We saw evidence of this around the casino…my horoscope for the year suggests drinking less…I’ll try, but I’m on vacation after all!!

Singapore January 15

waiting out the storm

hot, humid and a few torrential downpours

We are up way before the alarm again this morning…if this is jet lag, I quite like it. I’m not tired in the day, can take a very solid nap, sleep at night is easy and I’m up before any alarm. One thing I’m not up before are the monkeys…wow are they loud around 4 in the morning, I still haven’t seen any, but they make themselves heard that is for sure.

The day started out quite cloudy and stayed that way. It was mostly very calm today which added to the stickiness.

view from our room

Yesterday I forgot to write about the late afternoon storm we had. It was torrential. All day it looked like it could storm and it sure did. As soon as Chris opened our balcony door it sounded like the storm was going to come right into our room. For the most part the rain came straight down so we could be out on the balcony without getting wet which I loved and it was still super warm.

pool friend

We spent most of the day lounging by the pool. We are definitely the outsiders at this hotel. We knew it held a huge appeal for families, but I had no idea we would be one of what seems to be a handful of people without children in tow. The hotel does a good job of keeping a ‘quiet’ area for adults only. I don’t need silence, but I appreciate the lack of splashing and noise at a distance. There’s also no lack of lounge chairs here. Although I have no idea how full the resort is, there are plenty of chairs to be found.

We found out yesterday that our planned tour in Korea to the Demilitarized Zone has been cancelled due to a ‘military event’ taking place that day. Who knows what that really means, but I’m disappointed to say the least. This was one tour that I was particularly looking forward to. While I’m disappointed, I’m not the least bit surprised. It seems like tours being cancelled, even ports being cancelled for one reason of another is to be expected from cruises. Our decision to book the DMZ tour meant that we wouldn’t be seeing much of Seoul so now that is what we plan to do. The DMZ is also a malaria area which we weren’t planning on malaria pills for. We are there in the winter, so we figured long pants, and bug spray would be fine…now we don’t even have to worry about that.

Travel Day – January 12/13

sake bar

Getting from Calgary to Singapore isn’t quick. From the time we left Calgary to the time we went reached Singapore about 25 hours passed. The flights were great, just looooong. Calgary to Toyko – 11.5 hours, Tokyo – 7.5 hours…sprinkled with a few hours of shut-eye.

The Tokyo airport was very interesting…I was able to take a shower which is very important to me!  The lounge in Tokyo with its shower facilities put the British Airways lounge in London to shame…calm, quiet, clean. The shower area came complete with a ‘high-tech’ toilet that I wasn’t brave enough to use. We’ll be in Tokyo for a few days at the end of the trip…I’ll go high-tech then. There was a Sake bar, automated beer pouring station and noodle bar among other things.

high tech

Thankfully the flights were on time and our luggage showed up. When we arrived at about 11:30 pm it was still about 28 degrees…ahhhhh!

Arriving at our hotel (Shangri-la Rasa Sentosa) at the end of a very long day was a delight…after a shower and a bit of unpacking we passed out.

We left Tuesday and when we arrived it was almost Thursday…what happened to Wednesday?

Asia 2016

 
Asia is where Chris and I will spend the next 9 weeks! It seems like we have been planning this for a very looooong time and it is almost unbelievable that it is here. We will be starting with some time in Singapore on our own followed by a 49 day cruise and ending with a few days in Toyko.

August 14 - Bristol to Calgary

Rain, rain, rain

Well, this is the last blog post for this vacation. We did very little today apart from packing and having lunch at the hotel. Bristol is about 150k, so we have a car transfer booked for 5 hours before the flight is scheduled to leave. The driver is about 455 minutes late, which doesn’t make me too comfortable, but we get here with plenty of time – not loads, but plenty. I was a little anxious during the car ride – but it all worked out. I even had time for one more in-airport-shower.

August 12 – Bristol, UK

 Sunny, warm, 23 degrees

Our day revolves around a visit to the Clifton Suspension Bridge. This is a bridge 90 meters above the Avon River Gorge. The walk here isn’t far about 2k, but it’s all uphill. It’s a cool walk through the university area of Bristol. The actual walk across the bridge isn’t anything spectacular, but the views are.

On the way back we find ourselves in a derelict graveyard that I think is quite spectacular. It’s overrun with foliage, so much so that some of the graves are hard to see.

Well Hung Man

To quench our thirst we stop at the Botanist – less of a pub and more of a cool outdoor and indoor space for a drink. We only have a pint as we know Jamie Oliver’s “Jamie’s Italian Kitchen” is around the corner. After the Botanist we ducked into Jamie’s for another drink and a snack.

Along the way we stumble upon Bristol's 'Well Hung Man'. Bristol is known for it's street art - especially this mural by graffiti artist Banksy.

Soon we are back at the hotel for a quick nap before dinner.

More chips were found today.

the Botanist

Clifton Suspension Bridge

August 11, Bristol and Bath, UK

Overcast, then sunny…18 degrees

Bristol Cider Shop

We spent most of the day in Bath. Initially we considered renting bike and cycling there, but were told it is just a bit too far – it is about 25k. We decided to take the train rather than the bus for the charm of the train and apparently the train is faster.

The main attraction is the Roman Baths. These are similar to baths in other excavated ruins we have seen before, the main difference being the infrastructure built around them for tourism. Here there is an audio guide, descriptive plaques and some added elements for affect.

Visiting the baths takes about 90 minutes after which it is lunch time. We try our hardest to find a pub.

hotel's bistro

Next we wander to Bath’s Circus - a circular (only half circle) of townhouses. Then to the river-side park and back to the train. I think I’m glad we opted for the train. It’s not crowded, takes no time (about 9 minutes versus the bus that was supposed to take 45) , and has wifi (although so does the bus.)

On the way back to the hotel we stop at a grocery store for a bottle of wine (no new chip flavours here) and then a pint.

There is a shop near our hotel called the Bristol Cider Shop. I thought there would be more to this place, but there’s not much to it.

Roman bath

Tonight’s dinner is in the hotel’s bistro.

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Bath Circus

August 10 – Bristol, UK

Woke up to tons of rain, rain fall warning on news, dried up and sunny later, 22 degrees

Today was the day for the hop-on-hop-off touring bus. It takes about 75 minutes to see and hear about all of the sights. There were only 3 of us on the bus, so the guide was pretty interactive. Of course we drove by and heard about Bristol’s major sights. We could get off anywhere we wanted to, but decided to hear about all of them first and then decide where we might go back to as we have a 2 day pass for the bus. About half way through the tour it started to pour rain. We were on the uncovered upper deck, so just got a bit soaked before we caved and went downstairs.

Clifton Suspension Bridge

River Avon - huge gorge

By the time the tour was over we were thirsty and hungry. We decided on what turned out to be a bit more of an upscale pub. I had a new cider that I sadly can’t remember the name of – my favourite one yet – very sparkling and dry.

One of Bristol’s famous sights is the SS Great Britain. This is a passenger steamship in use from 1845 to 1933. This ship was used to bring emigrants from Great Britain to North America and Australia – that’s my recollection of the story at least. Apparently it took 14 days to cross to North American which I find very fast. This ship was has been restored and it now a museum. It was quite interesting to see the accommodations and the hugeness of the ship.

The River Avon meanders through Bristol having carved a deep gorge.

Another one of Bristol’s important sights we see is the Clifton Suspension Bridge – depending on the tide and how high the river is, can be 90 metres above the water.

Somehow we were once again thirsty and found pub with outdoor space that was quite nice. Again I found another cider I liked, but not as much as the last one. At least this time I took at picture of it - Aspall.

Next was some grocery shopping (more chips or should I say ‘crisps’?) and dinner of pizza.

August 9 - Bristol, UK

Overcast, but warm…23 degrees, rain later in the day.

dinner

No alarm today was glorious – when is no alarm not glorious? By the time we got moving it was noon. Today being Sunday and also during Bristol’s hot-air balloon festival is busy around the old town. Out hotel is in the old part of the city so it is a short walk to the water – Bristol Harbour. The Harbour doesn’t seem to be a harbour in a functional sense, but is a tourist zone, with restaurants, bars, a market and other very touristy amenities.

lunch on the water

After a bit of a walk around we decide on a pub lunch. I had lamb skewers and Chris had lasagne – neither were great unfortunately, fine just not great. What is great is that all pubs have cider and not just Strongbow. I’ve had Thatcher’s Cider and Blackthorn. There is a Strongbow Dark Fruit that I’m interested in, but I suspect it’ll be on the sweat side.

Somehow our after-lunch stroll ends us up at another pub with a soccer match on. It’s a bit of dude central, with a few families thrown in. It’s still odd to see little kids at pubs.

not fake tasting enough

In the evening we tried for dinner in a pub, but of course no pubs seem to serve food in the evenings. At least this is what we found out last night and again tonight. We weren’t exactly up for a fancier Italian meal, but that’s what we found. 

Our quest for foreign chip flavour continues. Today it is roasted chicken and thyme. I think these are my least favourite so far. They are very authentically flavoured, which is somehow just a bit weird. Of course they aren’t so weird that we don’t eat them!

We have officially gone from the smallest (at least one of the smallest) to the largest showers we’ve ever been in. There are 2 entrances to it on either side. It was hard to take a shot of, but is behind this giant tub – note the 2 doors to the loo…that is a first also!

HUGE shower

August 8 - Bordeaux to Bristol, UK

I don't really get towel art

Pascal - he fed us for the past week

Rain and cool in Bordeaux, clear, sunny and 21 degrees when we arrive in Bristol.

Regret is not how I feel getting off of the boat today - no end of vacation sadness I often feel when heading home from Mexico or some other shorter vacation. I’m not happy to be leaving, but I’m ready for the next leg of this journey. Although it’s been a great 7 days on the boat it’s also been very busy - I’m ready to hang out in a pub for a while.

small but efficient

Our plan was to spend the morning before our flight with perhaps a stroll in town or sitting on the boat’s sun deck, but there is NO sun this morning. We hung out in the boat’s lounge instead. The weather forecast seems like it’ll be better in England than it is here today at least. I’m hoping Chris will soften a bit more to the idea of spending more time in the UK…I don’t love the rain, but like the cool gloominess and accompanying lushness compared to blazing hotness.

good sized bed - called it a double, but it is K sized

I realized when doing using the en-suite laundry facilities (the sink) last night that I could get by with 2 outfits. As long as the fabric is thin enough things dry overnight. I don’t get sick of clothes and would be happy having less to deal with. I also feel a sense of satisfaction when all of my clothes are clean. Chris figures he couldn’t possibly be seen with someone who only has 2 changes of clothes being the fashion plate that he is!!

I tried to get some boat shots to remember where we’d spent a week of our lives.

Getting to Bristol was an adventure in itself. We flew with Easyjet, one of the UK's discount airlines. The check-in, security and bag drop off was in what seemed like an old hanger. It worked, but was interesting. Although to us there seem to be little rhyme not reason, it all works and soon we were in the air. 

"say cheese!"

Getting to the hotel was entirely more difficult. There is a hot-aiir baloon festival in town coupled with the fact that there is only one taxi company that either is allowed to go to the airport or who chooses to go to the airport it too us forever. In fact, it took us longer to get a taxi and get to the hotel than it did to fly from Bordeaux to Bristol.

Anyway...we are here and settled in. 

biggest TV we've ever had on a boat

at least we can have a beer on the curb while waiting foe a taxi