Phuket & Singapore 2009 –Day 9 – Off to Singapore
Gees another early morning – definitely not the holiday of the pampered & privileged…we had breakfast, packed up, paid the final bill & said good bye to all the new friends we had made at the "Deveena Hotel & Spa Resort ", our driver picked us up at 7.15 in a comfortable minibus & we travelled for about an hour to the airport.
We had a few "baht" left on us & It was burning a hole in David’s pocket, so we had a look around the few shops while we waited for the plane, we ended up just buying some "Pringles" & "M&M’s" to eat as well as a few postcards & coin sheet to put in the scrap album.
The flight on "Silk Air " was for an hour & a half which went very quickly.
We had made it to Singapore, The airport, itself, is very modern , even has a pond with koi fish & heaps of tropical plant & palms, also it’s own butterfly house but we didn’t get to see that. We found the Singapore stopover counter & were issued with our vouchers for the transport, hotel & admission tickets to various venues. Our driver then packed our bags onto the bus & we were on our way. Seeing Singapore during the day was a lot different than at night, all the roads have so many green trees & plants along side them – it is so green & clean, no rubbish to be seen, it took about 25min to get to the hotel "The Miramar ".
We went to book in, but before we got there we were ambushed by the tour guide at the hotel wanting us to book tours straight away – he wasn’t too happy with us, as we said, no we wanted to look around first & would look at our options later & see what we wanted to do. So we finally booked in and went to our room, as soon as the elevator doors opened, we noticed (or rather, we smelt) that is was a smoking floor…..then the room had 2 single beds…no that wasn’t what we wanted, so after we explained no smoking & 1 double bed to reception we were given another room – non smoking floor….but 2 single beds…by this time we were all getting frustrated – even the porter !, we called the reception & had to wait 10 min’s until another room would be ready – same floor & 1 double bed ( they would bring a trundle in for Brendan later ) Yes…. we finally put our bags down & relaxed for a while .
Went down stairs to catch the hop along bus which makes 24 stops over Singapore city – you can get on or off at any of them & was free for us. We made the bus ..stop 10 was outside the hotel – and we got off on Orchard Rd which is where all the shopping is.
There are a lot of skyscrapers in the shopping district, a lot are malls & have a variety of shops in them, we ended up in one which was like DJ’S & compared prices…a big bag of M&M’s was $9.00 & a block of Cadbury chocolate was $5.50, Twisties were $1.50.
David was looking for a Tamron camera telephoto zoom lens 18-270mm so we found all the camera stores we could & found that there were either, no stock available or they were dearer than at home. One store said to come back the next day as he had to check with the supplier, price was good but David was skeptical.
We found a McDonalds & fed Brendan, & I thought we could eat at the Hard Rock Cafe …until I saw the price ..$26.00 for a hamburger, so we kept walking further down the street, looking around & found a different bus stop, to where we had got on, (The Singapore Hop Buses have special signs at their pickup points) & journeyed back to the hotel thru China Town, Little India , Raffles stop & the quay area. We ended up ordering room service at the hotel around 9pm.
