The room in the Hotel Amber, Katong, was small but clean, with good aircon and good bathroom. It's a pygmy among giants as its three or four levels were overlooked by at least 20 towering accommodation blocks within a kilometre. Hotel rooms are expensive in Singapore but this was OK at $100 per night and for another $50 we got late checkout at 1800. One big negative was that the hotel did not have wireless broadband despite its being a facility featured on its website, the main reason I made a reservation in the first place. Some anger here but little sympathy from the staff.
We slept well and I dressed in my shorts and sandals for a 7am recce to search for breakfast and Wi-Fi. These both I found in a Starbuck's in a small beachside shopping centre a few minutes walk away.
Breakfast and business emails now out of the way Mary and I decided to visit Marina Bay Sands, the spectacular waterfront hotel which we'd spotted in the distance during the last evening of our previous visit a few months ago.
Taxi is a great way to get around central Singapore. Just hail a cab outside your hotel and very soon you're on your way. And this is how we got to the MBS, which some of the locals justifiably call "Garden in the Sky". Three enormous pillars form the main part of the hotel and on top of them is a horizontally curved platform which resembles a boat's bow at one end and its square stern at the other. On this platform, 56 stories high, are various hotel facilities including an enormous swimming pool and restaurants plus gardens, visible from many kilometres distant.
For a modest sum the general public can ascend to the platform via a high speed elevator. This seemed like a good idea so we paid our money, shuffled into the elevator with the others and emerged after less than a minute, it seemed, into bright sunlight at the top. As general public, our freedoms up there were somewhat curtailed but the views are amazing and we think, worth the money. All around are architectural and engineering masterpieces and the whole of the country of Singapore, and some of the territory of its neighbours Indonesia and Malaysia are in view. Better than the Eiffel Tower, we thought.
In search of a replacement watch band I wandered over to the nearest shopping centre, a multiple level building packed with every shop which could possibly sell something to the multitudes of locals inhabiting high rise accommodation nearby. The service apparently in greatest demand, other than food, for there were numerous outlets for it, was the provision of maid and similar jobs for the local young ladies. The above is just one example of many such outlets I found.
It's a small world, they say, and this was reaffirmed when later, while visiting a favourite tackle shop in Beach Road, I bumped into fellow Sunshine Beach kayak fisherman Steve (aka turtleboy) and his wife Kerry. They head for home this evening while we go in the opposite direction, an hour earlier.
Manchester here we come...
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