Another Fine Day in Singapore

Next stop: Kuala Lumpur after another sea day tomorrow

Our only excursion today was “Singapore After Dark,” so I took off late in the morning by myself to explore Singapore. Specifically, I wanted to ride the Singapore Cable Car, a gondola system that is celebrating its 50th anniversary. We have noticed it overhead from our docked ship, and I couldn’t resist buying a one-day ticket, which cost $26.34 on my Visa card. (It’s so wonderful never to need local cash in every country we’ve visited!) Here are a map, plus a couple pictures I took from it. I guess the building at Harbourfront Station must also be 50 years old, with the cable cars stopping on its 15th floor:

The bottom picture is the station atop Mt. Faber, where I had lunch. I chose their “Taste of Singapore” special (chicken, rice, lobster, soft shell crab, noodles) plus 2-for-1 Singapore Slings.

There was also one of the original cable cars on display at the Mt. Faber station. Obviously the windows on it didn’t have cartoon decals covering them back then:

After lunch I returned to the Harbourfront station and began a two-hour adventure on Singapore’s subway system, which I had been told was “very clean.” Yes it was, but it was also uninteresting — no artwork or design features to photograph. It’s an amazingly large system! Look at this map I photographed:

My destination of choice was the Marina Bay Sands “integrated resort” — they don’t like the term “casino.” It required a few change of trains to get there and back! I was impressed at how fast the trains traveled — seemed like 50 mph or faster, and the acceleration surprised me. One thing I noticed. It may be super clean but there are zero waste baskets, so I had to stuff the remains of my ice cream cone and napkin in my pocket until I left the system. (Littering is a serious crime here, and I didn’t’ want to miss the boat!)

I returned to the ship in time to leave for our “Singapore After Dark” excursion with Rita and friends. It was a combination bus tour and river cruise (very short on the Singapore River), plus a visit to the historic Raffles Hotel where the Singapore Sling was invented by a bartender to look like a non-alcoholic drink at a time when women were not supposed to drink alcohol. Here’s a picture of me with my drink and a peanut, plus a picture of Rita and friends at the back of the river boat:

It’s after midnight, so I’m not going to share much more about today, except for this cute picture taken by our tour guide.

By now you recognize the Marina Bay Sands building in the background. Neither of us got up to its roof garden, but RIta’s friend Margaret, who left the ship yesterday, sent us this picture of her in the infinity pool:

When we returned to our statement at 10 p.m., we found the following food and note on my desk. This is routine when the crew knows that we missed dinner because of an evening excursion. The sandwiches were delicious. The chocolates were very rich and not exactly conforming to my new eating program (which is working, thank God)!

Night-night!