After a few years of battling to keep our heads above the financial mire, we were fortunate to get a small reprieve. An overseas holiday to the USA, with a stop-over in Singapore (to see the family) was planned for September 2012.
As we were visiting some of the hottest and coldest places in the lower 48 states of the USA, mid-autumn seemed like a good time to travel. The south west seemed to have a lot of natural wonders with San Francisco, Los Angeles and Las Vegas being the major cities. Serious shopping was expected with the Australian Dollar being on par with the American.
We flew out of Sydney on the first day of September and nine hours later we landed in Singapore to say ‘hello’ to the family. I got an online corporate deal at the Hotel Ibis for 7 nights and on arrival we learnt that you don’t get something for nothing. Our hotel room was rather compact – more fashioned for slighter built clientele (not an Aussie over six feet). It’s interesting that a lot of hotels in the UK and Europe seem to operate on the same dimensions.
I found out long ago that when you go to Singapore, your itinerary has already been planned out with different family members taking us out for lunch, dinner or an intense session of shopping. This time around we got one day to go sightseeing at Marina Bay where the Singapore Grand Prix was to take place.
If you need to get somewhere in Singapore, the transport of choice is the MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) which is a train service that links all the major suburbs and business hubs of Singapore. If you miss a train, it’s no big deal, the next one will always be along in 5 minutes time.
Everything in Marina Bay is ‘large’. The train station and shopping complex is large enough for gondolas to take you from one destination to the next – all inside the complex! You walk outside and you are confronted by large open spaces with large space age buildings in large gardens. We managed to get shots of the Marina Bay Sands Hotel, the Singapore Flyer, the ARTScience Museum and the Water Lily Garden before we ‘called it a day’.
If you love genuine Asian food, then this is the place to be. BBQ Pork (Char Siu), Beef Rendang and Singapore Chill Mud Crab are at the top of my favorites. This also includes sitting down with my (now) favorite mum, eating slices of fresh Baguettes, topped with butter and drinking desert wine while watching Chinese Ghost Stories on TV.
The days rushed by and before we knew it, we were boarding our plane for Los Angeles via Narita Airport (Japan). The flight plan does not cut straight across the Pacific but ‘hugs the coast’. In other words, you fly north, cut across the Aleutian Islands and travel down the west coast of Canada and the US to LA. This route misses any typhoons in the Pacific and utilizes the ‘jet stream’ flying down the west coast of North America.
We were glad to arrive at LA International Airport after such a tiring trip. Little did we know that the fun was just beginning!
It was always great fun to catch up with family in Singapore. We were at a Japanese restaurant and I spied my niece peering at us from behind the decorative wooden slats. It looked like feeding time at the human zoo!
Rex took most of the photos on our trip, but I did manage to sneak in a a rare shot of the cameraman in action.
The tulip building is the ARTScience museum. It is supposed to represent the lotus (water lily) rising from the pond but beauty and interpretation is in the eye of the beholder.
Singapore is a dichotomy of 'man made' and 'natural' beauty. You could spend a whole day (and a few memory cards) in the orchid gardens and watching the Tai Chi Sword Masters in the botanical gardens is a sight to behold.
