Saturday 21 November. Grand tour, fake trees and evening drinks.

I would not normally take a city tour for love nor money. However, the hotel had thrown it in with the booking so I thought why not? It was actually quite helpful as it showed me some of the things that were on my 'to see' list and also introduced the variety of quarters that make up Singapore.

We set off from the Singapore Flyer - the island's equivalent to the London Eye.

We went past the landmark Marina Bay Sands hotel before arriving at the Gardens by the Bay. All of this is on reclaimed land - quite a feat in itself - and one hope the engineers calculated the depth of the piles for the hotel correctly.  It is vast with a horizontal roof garden longer then the verticality of the Eiffel Tour - so they said.

The gardens are weird. On the plus side, they are evidence of Singapore's desire to be a city in a garden - the phrase conjured by the ever-visionary City fathers. On the other hand, they have a fake, theme park feel to them - the precise opposite of the Botanic Gardens.The two biggest buildings house a tropical rain forest and a display of flowers - but if you want to see a tropical rain forest, surely it is easy to get to from Singapore and doesn't need to be in a giant greenhouse. Anyway, it seems to be a tremendous hit with its visitors and each to their own, I suppose!

I spent in all an hour looking round, doing a circuit of the various themed gardens (Indian, colonial, world of palms etc) and decided to re-board the bus for more of the journey. This took us through Chinatown, Little India and Arab Street before arriving back at the Flyer. It had been a useful tour and eye-opener. I came to appreciate that my hotel was in the St John's Wood of Singapore (without Lord's) and that the areas I had now seen had a good deal to offer - if only in  terms of wandering around.

I set off to explore the marina bay area a bit more, crossing on the helical pedestrian bridge.

This brings one to a vast shopping centre, annexed to the hotel. Plenty of spending opportunities here!

I went back to the hotel which gave me a view towards Malaysia - a rather rainy view at the time.

That evening, I met a friend from the London tennis club who was coincidentally in Singapore. Waiting at the MTR shop I noticed a shop selling the weirdest item - a shrilling chicken!














My friend had lived in the City for a while and we went to a roof bar she knew just on the edge of Chinatown.

This was really a separate district to Chinatown - very ex pat and rather like Lan Kwai Fong in HK.- lots of nice bistro-type establishments, all in low rise buildings, unlike LKF.

After our drink, I went off to a street stall market - Lau Pa Sat - and had an extremely nice and inexpensive Kway Teow.

Afterwards, I walked for quite a while back towards Raffles and the MRT, taking a few pictures on the way.