Monday - with a quack quack here

It's Monday night, which means I have been back in Singapore for about 36 hours. It's not been all milk and honey this time around.

So far I am finding Singapore to be 50/50. The MRT is still pretty awesome, althoh there's some damn long walks between lines and platforms in the same station. Food is pretty awesome. Trying to find free Wi-Fi around the city is nigh on impossible. On top of that inconvenience, people are rude, pushy, intolerant, sarcastic, have no idea of customer service, are arrogant and unhelpful on the whole.

I had to go to Suntec this morning to pickup my Singapore Pass, which gives me a Singapore Flyer ride, River Cruise, two days off on hop off bus transport, a duck tour in a Vietnam war amphibious vehicle, and a pile of Museum tickets. I arrived at Suntec at about 8:30 AM having taken two trains on two different lines with a big ass walk in between platforms from my hotel.

I found pretty much everything that had been so popular six years ago at Sunctec no longer existed, including the food court which was the biggest one there. Closed for redevelopment they say. Vendors  in the Asian Hawker Stalls nearby told me the food court has been closed for redevelopment far longer than it was supposed to have been and they are rapidly losing business.

Try and find anything for breakfast was an absolute nightmare. I found a bag of melon slices, some toast and an iced coffee. Try and find brown bread in this part of Asia. Go on, I dare you! It's pretty available in Malaysia but Singaporeans clearly like their blood sugar on roller coasters. Trying to find FODMAP-friendly food in general on this trip has been a challenge and there have been days when I've
been really crook either within hours of eating (total FODMAP overload) or the next day (Metformin and FODMAP conspiracy) but that's all part of the fun of travel.

After one of the strangest breakfasts I've ever had, it was back upstairs to the Duck tours counter to pick up my pass. I had a swag of paper receipts stapled to a timetable for the HIPPO (hop on, hop off) buses and promptly went for a walk around Suntec as I had about 45 mins to kill. There were a couple of sporting goods stores on sale but even with their sale prices they were way more expensive than home. Guess I'll stick to buying my gear in Malaysia or Aussie then!

It also suddenly dawned on me that I probably didn't have enough cash for the day, so i went in search of Wi-Fi so that I could log into Internet banking on my iPhone and transfer some money to my TravelCard. Do you think I could find any Wi-Fi? I walked around and around and around Suntec, even in the IT mall level of Suntec there was no free Wi-Fi. I finally found it outside Giordano clothing store. It was too slow for description but it served the purpose.

The DUCK tour was pretty good. The commentary was in very amusing Singlish from a nice young chap. Basically you jump on board a Vietnam war amphibious vehicle, which is essentially a truck that turns into a boat. It was actually pretty cool, The one that I was on was used to transport ammo during the Vietnam war for the US Army. I wasn't really happy with the fact that I was on a vehicle that had assisted in killing thousands of people, but they did point out it had been chock-full of thousands of bulletholes, taken to Singapore, completely revamped, entered service as a tourist vehicle and was now doing virtuous activities for the good of people. That did cheer me up a bit

We drove down the road a bit then it was splashdown time! We went down the Singapore River around Marina Bay where we got a pretty good view of most of the awesome landmarks and a very entertaining running commentary. Then we got back on dry land, drove around the city a bit more and then returned to Suntec.

By this stage I was getting very grumpy and felt like Kung Fu fighting everybody in sight. It was clearly time to check my blood sugar, seeing as how I haven't had a fantastic breakfast. I tested and found that it was under three, so it was time for an emergency Pepsi mission. The only place I could find postmix Pepsi was at KFC - nothing else was open and so I smashed down a Pepsi with a mashed potato and then 15 minutes later when i was back up in good blood sugar level land, I had a piece of chicken. At least it would tide me over until I found some decent food.

Then it was time to walk off the sugar so I hit the shops. I did manage to see a couple of places that would be good to return to, then remembered that I only had 48 hours of bus time, so best I go and do something. Seeing as how the brief rainshower that slightly soaked us on the duck tour was gone and the sky was clearing, I decided it was time to ride the Singapore Flyer.

The Singapore Flyer is 165m - 5m higher than the London eye. I caught the Hippo bus to the flyer. I exchanged my voucher for a ticket, and boarded a cabin with about ten German people. The flyer ride was awesome, it takes about 30 minutes to do the complete circuit and the views are just incredible. Sadly there was still a bit of smoke haze around from the fires in Indonesia, so we weren't able to see the Indonesian islands. I bought a magnet in the souvenir shop and had an iced coffee.

Next it was back on the bus and over to Marina Bay Sands and Gardens by the Bay. As I was very short on time, I elected to pay the $2 SGD fee to ride the tram shuttle over to the domes at Gardens by the Bay. Unfortunately the flower dome was closed on the day of my visit, and I did not have time to return the next day when it would be open. As a result it only cost me $14 to visit the cloud dome. The domes themselves are beautiful and definitely well worth a visit. There were lots of interesting flowers and
plants to look at. Plus, they are also air conditioned - LOL.

I jumped back on the bus to Funan IT Mall and a couple of other random malls that really weren't worth my time, then I caught the bus to Tanglin Mall. Imagine my delight at finding a Brunetti cafe here. I had a coffee, used the free Wi-Fi, had a snack and then decided it was time to venture down to Orchard Road. It was time for "shopping lite" - i.e. one top and some groceries. I stupidly checked my emails and as a result "last bus missed dealing with work emails". Not happy Jan!

I caught the MRT back to Chinatown where I purchased lots of souvenirs, a few dresses, cushion covers and some slippers. Well, okay, three pairs of Chinese brocade slippers. LOL. I walked around the corner to the hotel, we I dumped my bags before returning toThousand Taste hawker food centre for roasted pork rice for dinner. I love the fact that I can walk three minutes from my hotel and be surrounded by about 50 different hawker stalls!

So that was Monday. I did have a very structured and highly planned itinerary for this trip, but as per usual I am winging it each day as I wake up. Obviously there are some things that I cannot avoid, like plane rides and train trips and needing to be certain places at session times, but sometimes it is good to just take the minimum amount of stuff with you, walk out the hotel door and see where the road takes you!