Return Visit to Singapore

The time has come to pack up our things, say goodbye to Sabah & return to Singapore. For our return visit to the Oriental Singapore we reserved an executive room which overlooked the harbour. We decided to change to this option because it offered a complimentary late check out which was really useful considering our super late flight back to Europe. The room was quite a bit smaller than our first room but we also had access to the executive lounge which was absolutely divine. This was excellent value with full breakfast(cappuccino, eggs any style, exotic fruit, decadent pastries etc.), followed by coffee/Asian tea blends with various cookies throughout the afternoon, and my personal favourite, evening cocktails with appetizers. Every night was a different theme & we enjoyed ALL of them immensely. Arnie developed a fondness for his nightly “Singapore Sling", or shall we say Slings in plural. The staff in the lounge were all superb and this was, by far, the highlight of our stay in the Oriental. Special thanks to the ladies in the lounge: Inez, Ayu and Astrid.

During our first day we visited the Singapore Botanical Gardens a place too beautiful for words so I will let our photos speak for themselves.



There were also lovely ponds filled with baby turtles and goldfish.

After a very humid-filled morning at the Gardens, we were looking forward to an air conditioned lunch at the Marriott Hotel on the famous shopping street of Orchard Road, where all the top designer stores are found. We met Arnie's friend Edith at The Crossroads Cafe, a popular alfresco restaurant. It was the perfect setting to relax & catch up on all the exciting news since her recent move to Singapore with her husband.

After lunch, we walked around this shopping district to check out the designer shops. By mid afternoon we returned to our hotel because of the daily thunder/rainstorm and enjoyed some tea & cookies in the lounge (since swimming at the pool was out of the question).

On our last full day, we got up early and took a taxi to Mount Faber where you can see the entire city.

After you are done soaking up the view, you can take a cable car ride and enjoy more views of the city as you slowly descend to ground level.


At the halfway point once we reach the tower ...


At the quarter point ...


We have now arrived at the famous Sentosa Island which is an amazing place for the entire family with activities for everyone's tastes.

There is a beach here and much more. Since we were short on time, we were only able to visit Underwater World which is a pretty amazing complex dedicated to our friends in the sea: large and small aquariums filled with fish of every kind, size & family - coral, sea angels, squid, jelly fish, sea horses, clown fish, sharks, sting rays, turtles and even more.

It would take me an entire day to explain the vastness of this facility so I suggest that you check out the link for more detail. Below you can see Arnie in the spectacular 83-metre-long acrylic tunnel, home to great shoals of fish, prowling predators and a host of other creatures that inhabit the ocean depths.

The final place of interest was the famous Merlion Park where you can see Singapore's half-lion, half-fish national symbol, the lion representing Singapore's roots as the "Lion City" and the fish representing the nation's close ties to the sea. No visit to Singapore is complete without a visit to this extraodinary lion.

This is the end of our Singapore - Borneo vacation and as you can see ... I was there.