From the hospital we walked into a near-by mall and made a bee line to the bakery, we miss good freshly baked bread on the ship. Other than the bakery, the mall just offered the same high-end shops we have at home, so we wandered down the streets to Chinatown. Although we will soon be in China, we found some gift items and decided to go ahead and buy them. I wish we had bought a t-shirt depicting the "crimes" in Singapore and the corresponding fines (more on this later).
We next went to the Maxwell Road Hawker Center, a Singapore open-air food court. There were over 100 stalls to choose from. We ran into Amy & Justin from the ship, and sat with them as we ate. We ducked into a coffee shop to sit out a quick rainstorm, then proceeded to the new Marina Bay Sands Hotel. This amazing engineering feat features the 370 foot long Sky Park. This is the world's largest cantilevered public platform, one hectare in area, with a 150 meter infinity pool perched upon the three fifty five story towers. From afar it looks like a huge ship perched on top of the buildings. We arrived in time to enjoy sunset and the spectacular views of the city and harbor. We enjoyed (very expensive) cocktails with shipmates nurse Randi and her husband piano player John. It was the first time we had really chatted with them, and enjoyed getting to know them better. We then enjoyed probably the best meal we have ever eaten at the rooftop restaurant Ku de Ta. In addition to the spectacular view the food and service were awesome. Our meal included pressed baby spinach with toasted sesame, crispy garlic chips and sesame dressing, baby chicken teriyaki with mustard seed crust, honey-miso glazed Australian lamb sirloin with braised fennel in spicy ginger soy, and forty flavor fried rice baked in a lotus leaf. Dessert was a mango, passionfruit, lemon and chocolate combination that can only be described as 'heavenly'.
Too soon it was time to head back to the ship. We ran into the market at the port to grab some diet sodas and double stuffed oreos. Much to our dismay, when we arrived upstairs we found a line of hundreds of people waiting to clear immigration and board their ships. It was the first time on the voyage that we shared a berth with other ships. It was only thirty five minutes to on-ship time, and we knew there was no way we would make it. Miraculously we cleared the line rather quickly, and as we reached the top of the 200 yard stretch to the ship I took my shoes off and began to run. Tom, on the other hand, laden with his camera back pack wasn't going very fast. At that point our "son" Daniel ran back and grabbed Tom's backpack. "We don't leave family behind", he said. With that help we swiped our cards with four minutes to spare. The ship ended up giving a bit of leeway, and anyone who had cleared the immigration line before on-ship time was not considered late even if they had not yet boarded the ship. In spite of this, I believe over 50 people were late and received dock time for our next port, Saigon.
Now a little about Singapore, A Fine City: a fine city to live in and a city where fines for infractions of the many rules are very high. Most fines start at $500-$1000. Infractions include littering, possessing, chewing or spitting out chewing gum, jay walking, failure to flush a public toilet and nude sunbathing, even in your own yard. A Canadian citizen was recently caned for spray painting graffiti on a train. Conviction of drug trafficking carries a mandatory death sentence. Because of this Singapore is very safe and orderly, with virtually no crime.
We have a very short (two day) passage to Saigon.
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