Sunday, 18 May 2025

Travels...

We are in Singapore. We had planned it back in January to take advantage of my industry travel allowance before I retired. The main purpose is to celebrate her indoors' birthday, but that purpose changed a bit when she lost her job a month ago due to a company restructure. Hopefully this lifts her out of the funk she is in.

So after a ten hour flight we arrived in Singapore in glorious 32C (90F) degree heat - a far cry from the 10C degrees we left behind in Auckland. An evening arrival was followed by dinner and then sleep...since we realised that we had been awake for close to 20 hours.

Saturday started with an early walk around the Marina Bay with its stunning city scape and its great mix of old and new, of concrete, glass and greenery.





This was followed by a stroll through part of the Gardens by the Bay where by chance we met one of my former work colleagues who was part of a team enroute to Hamburg where they were to take delivery of a new aircraft.




We will return there for a proper visit later.

The next stop was the Raffles Hotel for her indoors' birthday lunch. As always we were early, but we found time for a pre-lunch drink in the Long Bar where I had the famous Singapore Sling...that should have had a gold straw for its price...


A fabulous lunch in the Tiffin Room followed and her indoors was more than pleased with the "Birthday Surprise Dessert" that they delivered.


A return to the hotel was followed by a dip in the rooftop pool as welcome relief from the heat and humidity.

Dinner followed by a walk down to the Marina Bay to watch the light show (that was far less impressive than when we were here nine years ago, but that could just gave been where we were standing) closed out the day.

10 comments:

  1. looks like a great trip ,sorry to hear about the redundancy , hope you guys are doing Ok .

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    1. It certainly is nice to get some heat and get away from the hassles at home.

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  2. I wondered where you were off to. Good to see the Long Bar doesn't appear to have changed in the twenty years since I've been there, although as you say the prices no doubt will have.

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    1. Yes I like Singers, but it is expensive and at SG$ 41.00 for a 'sling' with the ease that these things go down one could go broke very quickly!

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  3. Weird - I am sure I already commented on Sunday.....ah well, let's try again - Michelle looks like she is having a good birthday - and I am not surprised you might need to take out bridging finance to pay for a couple of drinks at Raffles!

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    1. Yes it was a good birthday for her and a welcome distraction from all of the problems that gave plagued her recently. If the drinks needed bridging finance, lunch needed a mortgage and the sale of one of my kidneys...thankfully we took an apartment so that all our other meals can be 'home cooked'.

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  4. Well I'm glad that the break seems to be doing the trick to help your wife come to terms with her recent travails. Fingers crossed for the future and enjoy the rest of your break (if there is any?).

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    1. Thanks Steve...things will work out for us...we are well catered for, but our plans did not have her indoors finishing work until late next year and had we known this was coming I would have stayed on for another year.

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  5. Sounds like a well deserved break, my daughter left there Sunday morning funnily enough!
    Best Iain

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    1. Well deserved indeed...we still have three days to go.

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