We are staying at the Oasia Downtown and had a very pleasant surprise when we checked in, in fact two pleasant surprises. The first was that out room was ready for us at 8:45 in the morning and that we were club status which means we are on a special club floor with access to the club lounge.
Oasia Hotel
Oasia is situated just a 10 minute walk from China Town and about 4 minutes to the MRT (subway and not the sandwich kind). Our room has a great view across the city and the bathroom has smokey one way glass doors so that you can look out across to the skyline from the baths and the toilet. The club lounge has its own 25 meter infinity pool with loungers next to or in the water and cabanas if you want a snuggle (far to hot for that sort of carry on). The area is covered so that you can get out of the sun or close to the edge there is a sunny spot. I am lying on a lounger as I type this, after haveing a refreshing swim. I don't know how they keep the water so cool, usually at this temperature the water is like soup. Another great bonus is that children are 'discouraged' from using this area. Now I do like children, heck I work with them every day. But I have just had 11 days on a ship surrounded by kids so this is a little light relief.
View from the toilet
The pool overlooking the city.
This morning we had breakfast in the club lounge and it was had some great options; I particularly enjoyed the freshly mashed avocado on sour dough and a green tea steam bun filled with coconut jam.
Back to day 13; after sorting our stuff we headed out to explore. Singapore is such an easy city to get around, it s very organised and the public transport is great. Our first stop though was by taxi as we had organised a visit to the tailor to get a couple of things made. It was extremely expensive even after Lance had bartering with him so we got less than what we had intended. I guess we had the extremely cheap tailoring that we had experienced in Vietnam in our heads.
Back in the Orchard Central Food Hall we had chicken and rice which was a welcome soothing meal for my poor old foo foo valve that was still playing up (medication has been taken). Then we headed to the MRT lining up at the machine to purchase tickets and holding everyone up because we had no idea what to do. Luckily we spotted a ticket office and now have in our possession 3 day tourist passes, and have become pretty expert in the art of jumping on and off trains, changing platforms and going in the right direction. Whizzing under the city we arrived at the cable car ticket office and promptly climbed aboard. What a great thing to do! And what a fantastic view of all that Sentosa has to offer. The screams from the water slide came right up into our capsule! We hadn't planned to take in any of the attractions and just had a look around with sweat running into our eyes. Hopping on one of the free island buses we alighted at Resort World where we got ourselves a couple of Hard Rock shirts and a coffee. The coffee was okay but $17 for two coffees, nothing fancy about them, was pretty steep.
Back on the main land we headed home to recharge before heading off to the Zoo for the night safari. I really love a good zoo but Lance is not that keen. So it was a compromise a night safari. This way we thought that it would be something different and not as hot. The route was planned with the MRT with one interchange and then a bus. All this was to happen at 5:30pm which was rush hour. The MRT went extremely well and I even got a seat for the longest part of the journey and then we got off at Yio Chu Kang where we were meant to get bus 927 to the zoo. There was no bus 927. So we waited at the taxi stand and after quite a wait we jumped in with a lovely gent who promptly told us he didn't know the way as it was his second day on the job and that he was 72 years old. We had a lovely conversation but his driving was terrible! He was doing 40 kilometres on the motorway and traffic was banking up behind us. He kept picking his phone up and looking at the map. As we neared the zoo he made a wrong turn and we were back on the motorway again; he was very apologetic and we felt sorry for him. At last we were getting close when google maps said (please think this in that very proper google map female voice) "At the fork keep right". He mumbled to him self "At the fork, at the fork" and I wondered if he knew what she meant. It became very obvious that he didn't when he slowed down to 5 kilometres at the fork and was moving the steering wheel indecisively from left to right. Cars were flying past us tooting and giving us filthy looks and Lance and I were yelling at him to stay right as we didn't want another wrong turn, that is if we survived. Finally we got to the zoo with only five minutes to spare and he apologised and said that he would charge us less. We just paid and ran up to the night safari only to be told that we had to go back down to the main zoo to buy tickets. When we were finally admitted with seconds to spare we threw ourselves onto the shuttle to take us on the tour and just looked at each other in shock. "How are we going to get home" Lance asked me. "We'll cross that bridge when we get to it" I answered.
Being dusk and a bit cooler the animals were out and about, in fact we had to stop for some sort of African deer to get off the road. The commentary was good and and there were a variety of animals all going about their nightly business. Even the wolf gave a big howl as we went past.
Once we got of the tour we went for a wander through the tracks in the jungle. By now it was dark and it was quite spooky walking around only encountering a couple of people on the way. The roaring of the lions reverberated around us and sent chills down my spine and even the tiger and cheetah were walking around their enclosure.
We grabbed some dinner at the food hall. Every thing was being cooked on the spot and we got an Indian chicken tikka plate which was really great and just perfectly spicy. The next job was to find our way home, and that is just what we did. Seven dollars got us a seat on an air conditioned bus that took us to a stop ten minutes from home.
We slept like babies, our first night on solid ground in 11 days.
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