Trevor & Jonathans Cruise & Trip to the Far East and Australia 2016

Day 86 - Wednesday August 3rd 2016 - Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia to Singapore

So the alarm was set for three o’clock in the morning and the taxi for four…early I know!

The human body seems incapable of sleeping when it knows it has to wake up early in the morning, well at least that it how it was for the two of us. I’m not saying that we did not sleep at all but we were certainly in and out of sleep for the five hours that we had.

You also seem to be able to get through the bathroom quicker than you do any other day as we were down in reception by 0345 checking out of the hotel, luckily the taxi was already there so off to Darwin airport we went.

It wasn’t that hard (not at all) to find our flight, it was the one with the queue at this obscene time in the morning. We were flying Jetstar to Singapore, a low cost carrier that wasn’t particularly low cost to be honest but we had the front row, seats 1a and 1b so at least Trev had his much loved leg room. It was a four and a half hour flight over to Singapore and to

be honest we nodded in and out of sleep most of the way, Jonathan shamefully ignored the American man next to me that kept trying to start up conversation with me. It was a bit of a bumpy flight (not good when it wakes you up) but nothing that you can do about that so it was good news when we touched down at Changi just a little but early and there was not a single person in the queue at customs so we whizzed through and caught the train over to terminal one for the MRT into town.

Now we have been to Singapore three times now but had never caught the MRT from the airport into town. This time was a first but it just made so much sense as the hotel that we were staying in was actually on the same line so off we went through parts of Singapore that we had never seen before. There wasn’t much to see to be honest, just high rise after high rise of apartment complexes and the occasional sporting area or park before we disappeared into the dark of the tunnels under the centre of the city.

We got off the train at Outram Park and we’ll be honest and say that other than our hotel at first glance there did not seem to be that much going on in the area other than building works.

We had made it to the hotel by 10:30 so the thought of being able to check in was completely out of our minds even though we had requested an early check in when we made the reservation so we were both amazed when they told us that our room was ready and we could go on up. The Dorsett hotel where we are staying is actually in a really good location for getting around Singapore in that it didn’t seem that far from anything as the day went on and you can access it from the main two lines that cut across the city. It’s one of those design hotels, nice enough, lots of glossy surfaces and designer touches have gone into the interiors but like all big city hotels the rooms are relatively small but perfectly functional.

It was our job for the rest of the day to stay awake and fight the early morning so that we would get through the day tomorrow.

Now it’s been a long time for Jonathan to get any retail therapy and seeing as we had already been to Singapore on this trip there was nothing that we needed to see or do so today was the day it was going to happen. With his Revolut card charged up (it’s a prepaid credit card that has great exchange rates) off we went to the retail mecca that is Vivo City, the biggest Shopping Complex in Singapore on the harbour front. First things first though as soon as we got to the centre we needed a caffeine fix so the nearest Starbucks was located and in we went for some much needed food to keep us going and coffee.

Refreshed but not necessarily revived we started the shopping marathon. Trevor was being so kind, patient and understanding as Jonathan walked in and out of every shop, looking for something different, looking for something that would always remind me of the trip but apart from a pair of trainers that cost over £160 (no way on this earth I am paying that kind of money for a pair of trainers) We left the centre totally underwhelmed with everything we had seen. We left Vivo City with one carrier bag and that was a present for one of Jonathans sisters, as soon as he saw it I knew it was just perfect for one of them in a real tongue in cheek way, she’ll have to wait for Christmas or a birthday to find out what it is.

Now opposite Vivo City is a place called Sentosa Island. It’s kind of Singapore’s playground, home to Universal Studios and a beach, gardens, zip lines, a real family fun kind of place and there is certainly something for everyone. We had visited Sentosa every time we had been to Singapore (excluding the last time on this trip) so it was time to put that right. They had opened a new boardwalk so you could now walk onto the island so that was the way that we went.

Now bearing in mind that it was a midweek day today (Wednesday) the place felt eerily quiet. We had been watching the rollercoaster in Universal as we sat in Vivo City eating our lunch of Thai soup (man it was seriously hot hot chilli hot) and had only seen it go round twice. As we walked the boardwalk all the bars and restaurants were closed and as we got on to the island itself it also felt like it had been forgotten about by the people of Singapore and the surrounding Asian markets. With no atmosphere and nothing open (Universal was but we had already done that on a previous trip) we headed back down the boardwalk, in to the shopping centre again and onto the MTR.

Having failed to shop at Vivo, it was time to see if the shopping mecca of Orchard Road could relieve us of any money, Jonathan needed that shopping fix (it’s very much a family thing).

Orchard road was buzzing, people everywhere, surely there would be something here that would catch his eye and make life complete??

Well I have to say that it was actually pretty tough going finding anything that jumped off the rails and into my arms. Normally this is never a problem and Trevor will tell anyone how I also seem to find something in the first shop that I go into then spend the rest of the day looking around everywhere else only to end up going back to the first shop! Yes, this frustrates him……. A lot!

After another half an hour or so Trev’s will had given in, his feet aching so with much guilt I left him sat on a wall outside a department store within easy reach of a cold drink and ran off into the crowds promising to be no more than an hour. Trev also knows that I prefer shopping on my own anyway, I don’t feel guilty then about always trying things on and how much something might cost (don’t worry I really don’t do expensive clothes, retail therapy works so much better on mass shopping rather than only buying one thing).

I returned within the hour with two bags, I had managed to be seduced by a Calvin Klein t-shirt and an Abercrombie short sleeved shirt, not much of a bounty but enough to satisfy my lust.

I have another saying when it comes to shopping, sometimes I will see something and won’t buy it even though I really want it. It’s normally to do with price, I just don’t think it’s good value, something like that but if I really like it it “burns a hole in my head”. Now I had seen two things today that I did not buy that were burning my head right now so well see if tomorrow I have to run out and make a panic purchase.

For now though it was time to finish shopping and get back to the hotel, let Trev have a rest and sort our flights out for tomorrow as check in was open in an hour so we could pick our seats.

Back at the hotel Trev got online and started to reserve our seats for our two flights tomorrow with Vietnam Airways. The first would take us to Hanoi and then after a quite considerable time to be sat in the lounge we would fly all the way to London Heathrow.

Now you would think that when two people book flights together under the one reservation number any airline would be clever enough to think that these two people would clearly like to sit next to each other? Well we would so when Trev logged in to the airlines page we were more than a little disappointed to see that they had allocated us seats away from each other for both flights and there were no empty seats left on the first plane to switch things around. On top of that the web site crashed repeatedly as we tried to check in so we had no choice but to try and telephone them to try and sort it out.

This turned out to be even more of a saga. We rang the Singapore office and kept getting cut off, we rang the U.K office and we could only get answerphones even though we were ringing in office hours. We even rang Changi airport to ask to speak to a Vietnamese Airways representative but we were told they had none at the airport and no office. In a last attempt we rang Vietnam and guess what, they hung up on us twice….guess they are not winning any customer service awards anytime soon. The problem no though was that I was MAD yes in big capital letters mad and could not believe that an international airline company would operate this way (although I should think about my experiences with Norwegian Airlines but that’s another story and nothing to do with this).

Me being mad is not a good thing, Trevor hates it but I just absolutely deplore bad service and this was ridiculous, we couldn’t even get any service! You couldn’t make it up.

Now as I said earlier we had had the hottest bowl of Thai soup earlier on today and to be honest we were full but it was now nearly seven and we were umming and arghing about getting something to eat. We got our shoes back on and hot the streets around the hotel and literally fell into Chinatown by following the flow of plastic carrier bags coming towards both of us.

We had never been here before either, don’t know why but it had not been on the radar. As you would expect it was rammed with all your usual restaurants, Chinese lanterns ran from lamppost to lamppost to give the area that unique Chinese flavour but what was different was all the cheapy shops selling all your tourist tat and stuff that no one really needed. The architecture of the area was beautiful though but not really oriental in any way. It was more colonial wit big white shutters for the windows and ornate plaster work. What made it so characterful was the fact that they had painted the frontages in really bright primary colours like zesty orange or citrus lime, it really bought the streets alive.

We were still no closer to finding anything to eat so we resorted to going back to the hotel for a meal that we knew was going to be far too big for our needs. We stopped off at a little local shop though first to get some cold drink in for the evening before heading back to the hotel and the restaurant there. It was actually a chain restaurant, not one specifically run by the hotel and the food was average but yes there was too much of it. Trev got to have a Singapore Sling cocktail though, something he wanted to have whilst I went for the biggest glass of beer I have ever drank, seriously, and there is photographic proof.

I had suggested to Trev about going to Raffles for cocktails after our Orchard Road experience, thinking that it might make up for him having say on a wall for the best part of an hour waiting for me but he passed on that so I’m glad that he got that drink he deserved it bless.

By now the early morning was really catching up on us so with very full stomachs we returned to our room and crashed with the iPads. I was still fuming about the situation with Vietnamese Airlines (how do companies get away with it??) but after a bit of Peaky Blinders (Television series) I was able to get some shut eye. I can’t say it was the most exciting or successful day ever but hey, we got to break the flights up and a bit and that’s was worth it alone. One more morning, that’s all that is left.