Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Singapore’ Category

Not too surprisingly we slept like logs on our first night in the hotel. Breakfast was the usual buffet-style, with a huge range of different types of food – some western and several completely different asian styles. These included a couple of curries. Val says there’s lots of stuff laid out that she’d love to eat but not at breakfast, and I agree with her.

After that it was time for some practicalities. We needed to explore the local area and get a pass for the MRT, Singapore’s excellent underground system. On previous visits I’d bought a 3-day Tourist Pass for the MRT. This costs 30 Singapore Dollars (S$) of which S$10 is a deposit for the pass and S$20 is for three days’ of rides. Then it expires and you have to buy another one. You can hand in the first one and get the deposit back or, if you’re buying another one, use it for that one. Then when you leave you’ve got to hand the pass in to get your deposit back, and that’s a problem. The Tourist passes are only sold or refunded from a small number of MRT stations and often at unhelpful hours. To be fair, the station at Changi is one of them, but my recollection is that it’s a goodly walk from the terminals. If you’ve gone to the airport in a taxi then it’s a faff to go to the MRT station just to get your S$10 back (although that might pay for a coffee in the terminal).

All of the above is a long-winded explanation as to why I decided this time to get the pay-as-you-go pass EZ-Link pass instead. This costs S$10 from MRT stations or convenience stores, and of that amount S$5 is the (non-refundable) cost of the pass and S$5 is the initial stored value. Additional value can be added via either cash or cards at any MRT station. So that’s what we did.

Armed with our MRT passes we went for a walk around three sides of Marina Bay. This is the heart of the ‘public’ city and includes a couple of Singapore’s iconic sights (yes, I know, but this time it’s justified) – the Marina Bay Sands development (the hotel towers, the Art/Science Museum, and a mall), and the MerLion (the symbol of Singapore). There’s a walkway round the Bay. So we took the MRT to Bay Front, from where we walked through the ‘Shoppes at Marina Bay’ shopping mall – seriously high-end, with all the luxury brands you can think of. It also has a food court (like all Singapore malls) where we were bold and drank ‘kopi’ – the Singapore version of coffee. Basic kopi (Val’s choice) has coffee, sugar and evaporated milk while kopi-c (my choice) has coffee and condensed milk. It’s not what we normally think of as coffee, but was surprisingly tasty, though sweet. Standard western coffee is available here and there but at about twice the price of kopi. We continued the walk and ended up at the Merlion – the symbol of Singapore. You have to do it once, along with everyone else. For lunch we wimped out and went to Burger King; then we went back to the hotel, explored, and having found the outdoor pool and bar, sat outside drinking sparkling mineral water.

Late in the afternoon we explored a bit locally and visited the ‘Fountain of Wealth’. Visiting it and thinking the right thoughts is supposed to help increase your wealth, but with the prices here I don’t think it’s working….

For dinner that night we explored the local area and found a hawker centre not too far away where we each had a curry – butter chicken and naan. I was going to have chick tikka + naan, but it was ‘off’ – I got the feeling that the only dish that was ‘on’ was the butter chicken. However it was very fresh and  very tasty. Basically this was a small shack (alongside a number of others) serving a limited range of dishes, cooked to order. Wonderful stuff. The meals cost us S$12 each, plus S$4 for a small glass of beer, which we shared (I didn’t know how large the glass would be until I’d got it) – S$28 altogether.

After that we took ourselves to Clarke Quay, a popular spot on the river where we found a bar and had two half-litres of Tiger beer. Readers, they cost S$33 – more than the meal! I suspect that anything on the riverside costs a fortune. Then back to the hotel feeling replete and wanting our sleep.

Read Full Post »

Over the years I’ve read about a number of epidemics in various parts of the world – SARs, the various Ebola outbreaks, the Zika virus, Swine fever – I’m sure you all remember reading about them just as I do. I certainly did, but they all seemed fairly academic, and while of course I empathised with the sufferers as much as I could, it all seemed rather remote.

Now we have Covid-19, the official name for what has generally been referred-to as the Coronavirus, and this one has hit home much more with me. That’s because one of the places at risk is Singapore, which is a country and city that I have visited and enjoyed several times, and have come to – yes – love. It’s one of those places where I just feel at home. And now it faces great risk, of at least significant economic and social disruption, and possibly major health risk to its population.

There are many reasons why Singapore is especially vulnerable. It’s a very small country, physically, with a significant population, and the population density is therefore high. The nature of life in Singapore is to be very sociable – eating in restaurants, hawker centres or food courts, going to coffee bars, shopping either in the glitzy malls along Orchard Road or in more local shopping centres, and just generally socialising are all key aspects of life in Singapore. There is a huge amount of international travel, in and out of the country. A significant number of non-Singaporeans with PR (Permanent Resident) status are from nearby nations, especially Malaysia, and frequently travel back and forwards. Then there is tourism. In 2018 almost 15m tourists visited Singapore. That’s not very high for Asia, but it has to be remembered that all of those tourists will be heading to the same places in that tiny country – Marina Bay, Gardens by the Bay, and so on. And finally there are the business travellers; Singapore is one of the greatest international business centres in the world. A single sales conference in January, attended by 100 people from all over the world, resulted in 7 new cases of Covid-19 infection among attendees, and of course they passed it on to others. In one well-documented case a British attendee contracted the virus at the meeting and himself passed it on to at least 11 others. The numbers of people infected in Singapore is steadily rising, though not yet at the rate that has been in China, and restrictions on travel to and from Singapore are beginning to be discussed.

I’m confident that Singapore, in common with other affected countries, will beat this infection eventually, and of all the affected countries in Asia I would expect Singapore to do so most quickly – the small size and low number of international gateways can be an advantage here. Indeed it might even be best to accept a medium-sized, temporary hit and quarantine the nation in order to stop continual re-infection from travellers from infected areas. In the meantime, I can only hope that they can stay on top of it. And finally – and selfishly – I ought to report that I am now pleased that I visited Singapore in September last year instead of February/March this year. If I had followed the patter of previous visits, I could well have been there now!

 

Read Full Post »

I was interested to read recently that, as part of the continuing investment in the future of the Singapore tourist industry, two of the main players, Universal Studios and the Las Vegas Sands corporations are planning on a further investment of some S$9Bn in the next few years.

Universal Studios will be adding more content to their Universal Studios theme park on Sentosa Island. I’m more interested in what Las Vegas Sands Corporation, the owners of the Marina Bay Sands hotel and facilities, are planning for that site.

Basically, they’re going to build a fourth tower. The image above is from Las Vegas Sands, apparently, although I couldn’t find it anywhere on their site. However, it’s generally available elsewhere so I reckon there’s no problem showing it. There are other (poor quality) images floating around that just show a fourth tower stuck on the end of the existing three, with the sky park extended to it, and that looks really unattractive. I actually think that having the fourth tower separated (as in the image above) but obviously part of the same group will be effective. However, this is just an initial image – it’s possible things may change. The architect of the original set of towers, Moshe Safdie, will be involved in the design of the new tower. I should also say that the development will include a 15,000 seat entertainment arena – I think that’s the dome/bubble just to the left of the new tower as shown above.

No word yet on when construction will start or how long it will take.

 

Read Full Post »