SINGAPORE
The first stop on the trip, sorry, the SECOND stop on the trip, the first was Frankfurt.
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The reason? After all there must be a reason to flee the British winter in search of the sun, but do it via the depths of the German winter. Well, the answer lies in the weird way air fares are priced. On a cold dark night in November Sara was tapping away on her laptop dreaming of flying to Singapore business class (flat bed, lots of free drinks and food, steel cutlery, the works) but reconciling herself to the post Covid reality of sky high air fares. However, someone had mentioned to Sara that it was worth looking at European hubs for long haul flights because for some arcane reason they are cheaper - and they are!
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Instead of well north of £4,000 for a business return London to Singapore it transpires that for reasons that make no logical sense it becomes £1,800 from Frankfurt. Go figure? So we hop on a £100 budget flight to Germany, wander round downtown Frankfurt for the evening and then present ourselves at the Singapore Airlines desk in the morning for our much much cheaper flight and pocket the £2,000 plus each we have saved.
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OUR TRAVEL PLANS ON ARRIVAL IN SINGAPORE - There aren't any.
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As in previous years we simply book just a day or so in advance for most things. We booked the return flight to Singapore so we know our departure and return date. We book the first hotel in Singapore, and then we wing it. In Singapore we will book the flights to Langkawi and possibly a hotel/Airbnb for our arrival. Everything else depends on how things are going, how much we like the place, what the weather is like, what we have learnt along the way. Skyscanner/bookings.com/airbnb and good old Google are our travel agents so God help us if the internet goes down.
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Mind you the heaviest part of my luggage is my laptop/ipad/kindle/iphone/spare iphone/apple watch and the myriad of assorted charging units and power banks, a total of six screens. Sara only carries a mere four screens, so ten screens between us. I'm guessing we will be able to plan and book our travels using one of the ten screen/phones we are carrying so I shouldn't really worry.
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SO FRANKFURT -
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Not a lot going for it. Grey, quiet, but it boasts a HUB airport. Wander into town, see the sight (the prettyish square above) , fall into the only decent pub in town by chance. Clouds of smoke, apparently the no smoking law doesn't count here, even had ashtrays on every table, just like the old times. Joined a group of London guys over for the football who could not get their heads round having a fag at a table indoors, really weird. Then off to enjoy a big plate of Curryworst mit Chippens und Biere. Then ready for our flight early doors on the following day, too early to make it from London, hence the overnight.
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Very impressive airport. Mixes incoming and outgoing passengers, which is odd, and may explain why after being in a queue for 15 minutes to apparently check in our hold baggage we realised we in the queue for security, Apologies all round as we reverse out through a hundred people who must have been wondering why we had our flipping great cases. Great start!
But things got better - we were delayed for two hours. I know, normally bad news. However, our delay was announced once we were already on the plane. That meant an extra two hours of luxury, extra champagne, extra delightful snacks, Plus our new arrival time in Singapore would be a way more sensible 10 am. Great shame for the 100 passengers trying to make onward connections though. Sod them! Miss, more champers and some more of that lovely chicken sate please.
SINGAPORE -
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Land refreshed and well fed and wander out into the RAIN at the sensible time of 10.00 am on the Sunday after Chinese New Year. The year of the Rabbit. We are walkers and public transport folk so we master the mass transit train system and in no time we are at Raffles Place and Citadines, our Apart Hotel, dead centre of the financial district and only yards away from the river. Its Sunday so obviously its quiet. Like a grave sort of quiet. No matter, it will be thronging tomorrow, or the next day, or next next day, and it certainly won't RAIN for five days. No chance. This is the best time of year to visit Singapore after all.
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WRONG on all counts. Singapore is 80% Chinese and so close down it did. Sara and I and a few lonely souls were the only people in this massive town. The word deserted does not do it justice. Everything was closed except a few bars and a smattering of 7-11 food shops. No matter, the operative word being bars, and we found just enough, and just enough food.
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RAIN - It chucked it down almost all the time we were there. Misting rain, drizzling rain, light rain, pissing down rain, the Singaporeans have a thousand names for rain (or at least they should have). No matter, we were prepared........
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The picture above is the financial district taken at around midday on the Tuesday. To say it was quiet was an understatement. The well known Singapore rule against any form of Jaywalking was a joke. How can you jaywalk when there are literally no cars or people to be endangered. Particularly as it often takes 3-4 minutes before the little green man appears, and while you are waiting you are basically taking a warm shower. We embraced our little red man and just jay'ed it! On the bright side there was no dodging pedestrians, no risk of being run over, and no issues with getting a seat in a restaurant, no queues at any exhibits - so we were not complaining at all. It got a tad busier by late in the week.
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The other benefit of the calm was when I went on a bike ride it was so safe and simple, Just ride in the middle of the road and watch the rain drip off your nose before posing for some of the craziest group pictures I have ever been forced to participate in by our slightly unhinged guide.....
Out came the waterproofs and up popped a whole collection of brollies. From day one to the day we left we never went out without the lot. We also learned quite quickly to be careful about the food. The main dish below is my first lunch. Chicken in sweet chilli sauce. Now if you look at that dish you will see two tiny, tiny pieces of chicken surrounded by literally hundreds of whole roasted szechuan peppercorns, red chilli, green chilli, great chunks of garlic, ancho chilli and chipolte chilli.
Basically a chilli tasting in one go. Jesus H Christ it was hot, hot, hot but I persevered, much to Sara's amusement. From that day on we have stuck to boiled greens.
But despite the continual soundtrack of PITTER-PATTER-PITTER-PATTER we had a great time. Walking blooming miles and miles soaked through a lot of the time, visiting Chinatown, Indian Town, European Town, various light shows, the amazing Gardens by the Bay, Museums, the Marina Bay Hotel observation deck for cocktails, and a thousand spots along the way. Obviously including Raffles for a Singapore Sling (at £25 a pop).,
And they say they have no issues with graffiti in Singapore, well what's that then? It is a great laser light show is what it is. Incredible show on a whole host of public buildings. Mind you as there are literally NO police anywhere maybe you could grafitti to your hearts content. Or maybe they rely on CCTV with a camera on every corner. We didn't try it.
As you can see above the rain finally got to Sara and she went a bit blue in the face. She got quite a bit of attention I can assure you!
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On the right you can see our modern hotel and note the section part the way up. That is four floors of gardens. If you build a high rise in Singers you have to plant a garden the size of your footprint and the easiest way to do that is roof gardens, but many buildings put them inside the building, open to the air and some put them all over the building with vast planter boxes down the outside. Quite lovely.
And so after five really interesting days in which we walked over 30 miles of streets and parks we squelched our way back to the amazingly efficient and still quiet airport (Chinese New Year lasts two flipping weeks and they really do take the piss over it, whilst some life does return about 50% of the town is still closed a week later the lazy bastards) where we board our flight into Malaysia and head for the island paradise of Langkawi up on the north west coast just shy of the Thai border for a 10 day beach sort of holiday to relax and hopefully dry out.