This is the continuation of my RTW diary from September and November 2004.I am coming to Singapore at this point in my blog because it makes the most sense to do so. After Beijing, I headed to Singapore with the plan to see the sights in depth and then travel up the peninsula to Kuala Lumpur and then Bangkok. Singapore is Country Number 24 on the travel list though because en route from South Africa to Sri Lanka, I spent a day there between flights and had a taster of the city.
What can I say about Singapore? The same things as everyone else I suppose... It is clean. Clean and lushly green with tropically coloured flowers pouring from every balcony.
The air conditioning is so strong in the shops that it spills out onto the streets too. At 34 degrees C, it was actually cooler than Zimbabwe had been, but the humidity meant that anything faster than a slow slow walk had me breaking out in a sweat. So I spent a lot of time heading into shops and browsing the electrical goods.
I kept this up for a few hours until I could justify cocktails at Raffles Hotel. I’d really been looking forward to a Singapore Sling there, while enjoying a view of the lawn sweeping down to the bay.
Firstly I should have consulted a map as the hotel is surrounded on four sides by skyscrapers, and has neither a view of the Sea, nor indeed a sweeping lawn. It did have a nice courtyard and fountain though the ambience was somewhat spoilt by the exhaust fumes from the lorries going past seeping over the wall. The noise of the traffic was enough to send riplpes across the to of the cocktails!
Singapore Sling is one of my favourite cocktails. I’d been so looking forward to having one at the place where it was invented, ie Raffles. Unfortunately, I don’t think I have ever had a worse Singapore Sling in my life. I’m sure all the usual ingredients are there, but somehow the drink was neon pink. I know the eighties are making a comeback, but this is too much. I think they had blended maraschino cherries into it and although I love cherries, I hate the maraschino version. The gin and tonic was great though. Very ginny. I then got hammered at snooker. so all in all I wasn’t too sad to leave Raffles, grab a taxi and head back to Changi Airport for my flight to Sri Lanka.
One tip for anyone flying through Singapore in the near future though. Hotel occupancy rates are way down at the moment (if you feel people aren’t giving you much personal space then cough and watch them run!), so you can get good hotels for as little as a third of the price if you are willing to risk booking them through the airport booking desk.
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