Day 71 - Thursday March 9 - at sea morning Singapore afternoon

Singapore photos

position at 7:30 am: N1 56.59 latitude E104 27.186 longitude
(Gulf of Thailand, about 75 miles NE of Singapore, our next port)
temperature: 80F, 95% humidity, partly cloudy
distance since FLL: 23,424 miles

Sunrise was after 7am this morning, so it was dark up on deck for Clay's morning walk. There was not as much breeze as yesterday, so the 80F was not quite as pleasant. But the Bay of Thailand continues to be very calm, making it a very good night for sleeping.

In the morning, Debbie went to an aerobics class followed by Fusion Fitness. Debbie started coughing in aerobics and by the middle of Fusion Fitness was feeling pain in her left ear and that side of her throat. Uh-oh. Clay went to a port talk on Singapore. We were in Singapore for 3 days in 2001 so we have done a lot of the tourist things like visit Sentosa Island, the Night Safari, seen the Orchid Gardens and drank a Singapore Sling at Raffles, so we are playing this visit a little loose. We plan to take it easy.

We were docked and able to leave the ship by 1:15pm, only 15 minutes after the scheduled time. BUT, Singapore has new custom/immigration regulations that require you to wait in a passport line every time you leave the ship. They also require that you have a filled-out immigration form to be stamped and submitted each time. Well, when you have a whole boat load people trying to get through passport control at the same time, then there is a wait involved. Of course, we got in the line with the most meticulous paper pusher around. It was another 20 minutes to get through the passport line even though our line only had about 10 people ahead of us. We were clocking things to plan our day out tomorrow.

Our goal for our first afternoon and evening in Singapore was to catch the MRT (rapid transit) up to a ChinaTown, and there get a CityBuzz bus. There is an MRT stop (HarbourFront, NE1) in the Cruise Terminal (which is a large shopping mall like Hong Kong, but not as big), so catching the MRT was simple. On the way out of the cruise terminal, we stopped at an ATM and got some Singapore $'s as USD are not used here. The ATM only gave S$50 notes, so Clay made the sacrifice and ate a cone of imported New Zealand Hokey Pokey ice cream to break a S$50. The cost was about S$1.30 up to China Town. You buy your tickets through machines in the stations. There is a S$1 deposit that you pay on the physical card that serves as your ticket. You can your S$1 back through a ticket machine after you exit the subway at your destination station. (For our research for tomorrow, we have to go much further to get to the Zoo. As far as CityBuzz goes, this is a hop off/on bus service that serves most of the central city district and the tourist sights you might want to see there. For S$5, you can ride for a day. The service has 3 loops that you can take. The buses operate from 10am to 10pm and they come around about every 15-20 minutes, so they make a very good way to inexpensively see a lot of territory at your leisure. You identify the stops by a CityBuzz bee logo on the bus stop signs. The buses are double deckers.

So, one hour after walking off the ship, around 2:30pm, we were on the C2 (blue) CityBuzz loop that takes you to stops like ChinaTown, Parliament House, Convention Center, Esplanade and Sri Mariamman Temple. We next switched to the red line (C3) and took it around places like Little India, Thieves Market, Raffles Hotel and the Esplanade. (The Esplanade is on all the routes so you can use that stop to change lines). After doing the complete green loop, it was a little after 4:30pm so we decided to walk through the Esplanade Center (recently built performing arts complex, sort of like the Sydney Opera House, but it has a mall attached to it.) We spent about an hour shopping, and looking at the food in the hawker stands outside the Esplanade. We also watched a few minutes of a hip-hop performance rehearsal. It was a hoot as it was outside and you could see the Merlion statue spitting water behind the stage. We opted not to eat here as the food hawkers were outside, and it was a little too hot and humid to eat outside. So, around 5;30pm we caught the remaining and longest route green/C1 City Buzz loop and took it up to Clarks Quay, where we did some more shopping (looking) and checked out some restaurants there as well. One of the things that Clay did not do on his previous stop in Singapore was to eat a local dish of chili crabs. So, when we saw a restaurant serving them (with a 15% discount for eating before 6:30pm), we thought we might as well give it a try. Now, Clay is used to eating blue crabs, the kind that takes a dozen or so, just to fill a modest appetite. So, he tried to order one crab cooked in black pepper and one crab BBQ style. Well, the server immediately started shaking his head that we did not want to do that. Well, we should have known as the crab was priced by the gram, S$20 per 400g, that these were no ordinary blue crabs. So, Clay just had one crab (that weighed 1.8kg and cost S$75). It is not every day that Clay eats a 40$US crab. He admits it was good, and the pictures show that it was definitely messy (which is one measure that Clay uses to determine what's good). Debbie ordered a beef nonya hot plate dish that was served in a curry sauce. That was hot and spicy as well. Needless to say, it was a memorable dinner. Everyone got religion when we saw that crab plate being delivered, Debbie and a woman at the next table, both said Oh my God and a little girl jumped out of her chair and exclaimed, Holy Cow! This was at the Quayside Seafood restaurant and it was still outdoor dining, but it had cool air piped in under the tent-like structure it occupied and there was a breeze off the river. This Clarke Quay area has all been totally refurbished and the work is still ongoing. They had a whole city block area covered with high translucent screening with giant A/C units pumping in cool air. There were fountains and after dark there were changing lights overhead on the screening. It is a very pretty and pleasant area.

After dinner, we walked around Clarke Quay just looking around. One thing we saw was a reverse bungee jumping ride. We saw 3 girls about 15 or so be strapped into an open top basket attached to bungee lines at two points. The girls had removed their shoes and were also asked to remove their watches and any other jewelry they had on. After some painful waiting as the bungee wound out and taut, the ride operator flipped a switch and in about one-half second, that basket was slingshotted up to an height of about 60-80 feet in the air. There they spun around and wobbled up and down for about 2 or 3 minutes. The first move up would have caused heart attacks in ordinary humans. From the looks on their faces, we were lucky we didn't get vomited on.

We finally reversed our tracks, taking the CityBuzz up to ChinaTown, and then the MRT back to HarbourFront to be back on the ship before 10pm. On the way through the mall, we stopped at a grocery store to check out things. Debbie saw Pringles in strange flavors and Clay thought the beer was expensive. A single hot can of beer in this grocery store was more than 2US$.

It was a good, full first afternoon in Singapore. It was an easy way to just see alot and to see how much has changed since we were here last.

Singapore photos