Day 6/7 Singapore

Day 6 of holiday was spent pretty much in transit.  We boarded our Air Nuigini flight from Port Moresby to Singapore at about 2pm and arrived into Singapore at 6.30pm.  None of us wanted to do anything tonight so we settled for a few drinks in the lobby at the Marina Mandarin Hotel where we were staying.  We had been well and truly feed on our flight so nobody was very hungry.  We were in bed quite early for a day of sightseeing the following day.
We woke quite early the following morning.  Excitement I guess, and this is the view we had from our hotel room on the 18th floor.  It is a magnificent golden hour photo with the Marina Bay Sands Hotel with the "ship sitting atop" the three buildings, really dominating the skyline.

We had pre-arranged to meet the rest of the crew for a 7am buffet breakfast.  My goodness, what a magnificent buffet.  There were at least five "stations" loaded with food and absolutely everybody's taste was catered for.  We discussed what we each wanted to do today and it was decided that Kate, Mike, Philip and I would do the hop-on, hop-off bus and as Linda and Tony had jobs to do we decided that we would all meet back at the hotel and walk the short distance to Marina Sands for lunch. Tonight was also going to be special with reservations having been made at Jumbo Seafood for a feed of chilli crab!

Our tour around this lovely city on the bus was fantastic.  It is certainly the best way to see a place and get your bearings, so to speak.  We didn't get off as we were happy to complete two of the four routes back to back.  Our tour took us through the city where the Marina Sands Hotel now dominates the skyline, past the legendary Raffles Hotel, out to little India, back to China Town, down Orchard Road where the likes of Prada, Gucci, Louis Vuitton have numerous stores.  We also visited the well known Botanical Gardens that looked very inviting but unfortunately not enough time to explore this trip.  What a great morning it was travelling down the tree lined streets, and always looking upwards. We watched window cleaners hanging precariously off the sides of buildings with no safety harnesses.  Workplace health and safety is apparently an unknown here.

Botanical Gardens

Washing fluttering in the wind...

So much beautiful greenery on just about every building

Those little "ants" climbing up the side of the building are window cleaners!

We finally ended our tour at midday and meet up with Linda and Tony.  They had walked a massive 10km around the city this morning....mostly underground where there is a zillion shops!  Honestly the island is so small that every available space is used and underground shopping malls are commonplace.

We walked over to the Marina Sands Shopping Complex and ate lunch in the food hall.  What an amazing choice of food.  It's hard to know where to start but as we were going to be "pigging" out on Chilli Crab tonight we held back slightly!

Lunch at the Marina Sands food hall

After walking off lunch, we headed back to our hotel room for a rest before dinner.  Our reservation was for 6pm so we were all to meet in the lobby at 5.30pm.

Jumbo Seafood Restaurant was amazing..... and the food.....well it certainly lived up to its name.  The restaurant was packed with diners....always a good sign!  The Chilli Crab was so delicious and tender.  I was lucky enough to score a big fat juicy claw and it was truly the best I have ever eaten.  We all sat around the lazy suzan and made complete pigs of ourselves, washing down the crab with the local beer.  Such a nice combination.

Jumbo Seafood.  The best Chilli Crab in town!

Too busy eating to get a photo.  Did get the remains though :-)

The sky was threatening rain all night and we were a little concerned that we had an outside table and would be drenched but as luck would have it,  it only started to rain as we stepped into our cab.  

It was a very memorable night.