Blog ≫ 2024 ≫ Singapore day seven - River Wonder and Clarke Quay
Had breakfast. Good breakfast today I had a bit of variety. I went for different Asian style breakfasts. One of them I think is good at the Chinese 1. It was chilled noodles with vegetables and soy soup. Something like that. Then dhal, roti and something that said vegetable gyoza, looked like a tagine 2. Anyway, very good and then I have some potatoes and beans after that. So three breakfast and three different nations. Now the others are washing their clothes, and I'm meeting them at the pool in a short while. We're going to the animal park of some sort today. I think it's a river ride through an animal park and they have pandas at this place. That's why we're going T1 is Panda crazy. I'm just taking a walk up and down so as not to miss the opportunity. I can't stand waiting in hotel rooms. Spending the morning waiting by the pool would be okay.
I wasn't very impressed with our trip to Marina Bay gardens last night.
Did I wait until I was well away from the hotel and Clare before daring to voice this out loud? She did put a lot of effort into planning this trip, finding this way for us to go up Marina Bay Sands, and finding vegan food up there. I did little planning, so if this bit wasn't great I am to blame.
I knew it wasn't for me really, and that I wouldn't fit in, but I don't think that coloured my experience in advance. It's good to see, and I can say I've done it now at least. We went to the "bar and grill" up on the top floor, 57th floor because you could either pay to go to the viewing platform on that floor or go to the restaurant on that floor and pay but that way get some food. Then the food is basically subsidized! We chose this one because there was a vegan dish on the menu, even if it was only falafel burger. Is a very American restaurant. It's a famous American restaurant. I forget the name. You always see it in American hotels. I will look that up later too.
It's Wolfgang Puck, he must be a chef, I've seen his name in restaurants in America.
But when I ordered the vegan falafel burger I said "it is vegan is it?" and he checked and said oh yes it is, but it will be very dry, as we'll have to leave out the sauce. Oh and the bread is also not vegan so we leave out the bread too. I can swap the bread for some lettuce? So it would have been just falafel and lettuce for $30, so I ordered a salad instead and it was a very small. I got some fries too The others had burgers.
There's an infinity pool at this level too, we could see people swimming outdoors, fifty-seven floors up, not sure I'd really fancy that. You have to be a guest at the hotel to use this though, it's not for the likes of us.
We had fun looking at the wine list and the whiskies and seeing how many tens of thousands of dollars you could spend on just one bottle. This was a not drinking day for me. Clare is right (she is always right) I would have enjoyed it more if I'd just relaxed and ordered booze.
Anyway, dictated that above while I was out for a walk, while the others were washing pants in the room.
I'm trying to walk to Clarke Quay but I don't know if I'll get there. I just did a little video just what it's like trying to cross the road. They are setting up for the Singapore Grand Prix and looks to be a semi-permanent feature, like the roads are designed first for the Grand Prix, second for cars, definitely last for pedestrians. I don't understand why it's not more pedestrian friendly.
Back at the hotel again now and I came straight up to the pool where I'd agreed to meet Clare and the boys. I didn't walk as far as Clarke Quay but I did accidentally walk to Raffles hotel so I know where that is now. I think this is going to be another thing that "you have to do" but it's going to be ultimately expensive and disappointing. But that is me judging it in advance again. I'm doing that definitely more for this than I did For Marina Bay Sands.
Anyway, I walked back from there, but as I came in the hotel it started absolutely hoofing it down. I've probably been here at the pool for forty minutes now and it hasn't slowed down. Everyone was sheltering by the bar because there must have been a thunderstorm warning to tell everyone to go in. Now one family is braved out into the pool because it's still warm but still raining quite hard. Clare and the boys are still in the room because Clare is doing immigration forms for us to go to Malaysia tomorrow. I'm going to head back to the room in ten minutes or so. Get showered. We're being collected to go on our river tour. This is at the wildlife park where hopefully we're seeing pandas the pandas also sheltering from the rain. I don't know what it'll be like. This was another of the main features of this trip really because T1 is crazy about pandas.
After that, I think we're going to hawker markets, food stands and that's probably where we'll eat later, at least where they will eat. I do have some tips for things to look for how to get vegan food at hawker markets. We will see.
Tomorrow and Malaysia I'm very excited for 3.
River thing was quite good. We got picked up by a minibus, it picked up another family from another hotel. I get the feeling I might have some content about this that I dictated the day after so will go check for that before I continue. Ah yes!
We went on a mini bus type thing. We were sharing a van with one other family to The Rivers Wild. This is part of a collection of wildlife parks at the northern end of Singapore so we had a trip booked. A van with a guide came to pick us up and then went to another hotel, The Copthorne for one other pickup, and then on to the wildlife Park. So there are other things there including the zoo. Somehow you can do a night Safari there, but we were just doing The Rivers Wild which is a river themed park. We walked through following a path and it tells you about all the different rivers of the world, and shows different animals that live there. So a lot of tanks of tropical fish. Some of them really massive so that's quite interesting. But the main reason we were going there was not for the fish. They had one animal there that was not river themed, but they put this animal there to draw more people in, and it drew us in. It was two giant pandas! The pandas are about halfway through around the park and when we first got there We just saw one of the pandas disappearing back into their private space. While we were watching we heard that the other panda was ill, and wouldn't be coming out. We only had two hours, I thought "are we going to see the pandas or not?". But the people working at the park were just putting out some food, and cleaning one part of the enclosure. So after a few minutes a panda came out started eating his biscuits of some sort. He did have some bamboo there but he didn't start on the bamboo while we were there. So we only saw the male panda. It was a real giant male panda up quite close. Got lots of pictures, lots of video. T1 especially loves pandas.
We also saw some giant river otters there, and manatees and various other animals. There were some gharials, I think it is kind of small alligator, lots of fish, and birds. Oh and some monkeys, and also red pandas. T2 was quite excited by the red pandas I think partly because of a Disney film he watched Turning Red 4.
After this we got the bus back to our hotel, and then headed straight out again. We were heading to hawker markets and we did get there eventually, but we took a bus for the first time. The bus was nice and easy and we went to Clarke Quay which is a lovely area. Lots of bars and restaurants. I was not drinking, but Clare huffed a little bit about it, and then I saw a brew bar, so we went there and we had a couple of pints. Well we had one pint each. That was nice. Nice place to sit too then from there more walking. I think we got the tube after that. We were looking for Maxwell hawker market. By the time he got there it was starting to close. So we went to the Buddha tooth temple also, and that was closed. The market is advertised as running 24 hours, but Sunday evening it scaled right back. At the market. T2 and I both had curry things. T1 had some noodles that were too spicy. Clare had something Chinese I can't remember, chicken. We also tried the sugarcane drink, it's very popular here but it's not really nice. We got the tube back again to our hotel, s very convenient. I see it goes all the way from here back to the airport but we won't need it because we will have a transfer.
We didn't really need the guide for this animal park, and in fact he didn't show us around or anything, but on the bus on the way there he did tell us how easy it is to go to Indonesia. We asked him what the locals do here and where the locals go. I think we started the conversation saying we were going to Malaysia and he said yeah, going to Johor is one of the popular choices for locals, but so is going to Indonesia. It's only a 45-minute ferry, everything is a lot cheaper, and it's really easy to do, so we're going to try and fit that in as well.
Spoiler, we never did go to Indonesia.
- Dictating remember, not quite sure what this was.
- Gyoza was just a mislabelling, this was Indian rice.
- I got the day wrong, was not tomorrow.
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