Sky high over Singapore

Another early start saw us out of bed at 5:30 am, pack, pay, eat and be on the road by 7 for the start of the long (and somewhat) disjointed trek home. The road back to Phuket Airport seemed to take a lot longer than the trip in – even though that could not have been the case as all was very calm, it was most likely due to the daze that we arrived in 5 days earlier. It was interesting seeing the hordes of locals swarm down the steep entrance road on the plethora of motor scooters and tray trucks. All heading to position themselves to hassle the tourists.

The short flight to Singapore went well, except we were stymied by being dumped in the Budget terminal. Not the rent a car company – this means for the people that can’t afford a real air fare (apparently) As we had 10 hours to kill, this was not too much of an issue except we missed out on the free transit passengers tours that are on offer if you can afford an airline that uses the main terminals.

Deciding this was our fate we dropped our bags in the Left Luggage, jumped on the trains and headed into town. Another day another country and yet another city. Singapore is a very interesting place to visit and lives up to its reputation. Clean, efficient, new and also hot and muggy. We didn’t really have the energy to walk around too much so we decided to stroll over to the new wheel to see if we could afford it.

As it turns out, that cat was out of the bag again because the whole town was abuzz with birthday celebrations. We thought it was very nice of them to put on concerts, military parades, air force flyovers and the like just to recognize Rosemary’s big day. Luckily they didn’t ask for a speech as it was too hot and we were all pretty tired. So we walked around the blocked roads and got to the Eye (they call theirs the Singapore Flyer) to find discounted rates, no queues and we actually got a whole pod to ourselves. This backs up our previous theory that an attraction is only going to be really popular if you charge a lot of money to stand in queues.

It was a very insightful journey and we gained a reasonable appreciation of the place in our 40 minute loop. We also fund out the real reason why the Melbourne one was such dismal failure. Feng shui. Yep – here they got an expert in and he pointed out that it was going the wrong way – apparently they should follow the path of the sun. Our people in Melbourne really should consider these things. The Singaporeese also seem to have their Mykey system working perfectly well on the trains. What are our lot doing?

On the way back to the trains we stopped by some heavy artillery and then paused in an Irish pub to while away the hours. Given the price of drinks this was done in a very controlled manner.

Leaving the locals to continue the party celebrations, we made our apologies (due to the flight times) and we headed back to the airport for a whole lot more tiring hangin’ out, sittin’ around and waitin’ in line in order to get on to our last flight.