Our guide suggested we switch our itinerary around today, which we agreed to. Originally we were to continue our city tour in the morning and then be picked up from the hotel around 3PM to go to the airport. The only problem with that plan was that we had to checkout at noon, which was not too good. Now we are being picked up later in the morning, then going straight to the airport. This gave us a bit of free time, so we headed out after breakfast to see the Raffles Hotel (link here)
Heading out of the hotel we found a company that offers city tours with an old Vespa scooter and side car.
Raffles was slightly out of our league with rooms starting around $3500 a night and breakfast around $80!
We were picked up at 1230 by our guide and taken to the old port area where all the trading ships docked in previous centuries. The area has been cleaned up a lot recently, but the facades of the buildings remain as they were. The river has also been cleaned up, and is now restricted to electric boats.
We took a trip on a bumboat around the area, the name bumboat describes the small boats that used to ferry provisions from shore to the larger boats at anchor.
Whampoas Ice House was one of those brilliant ideas that wasn’t thought through very well. The plan was to collect ice from Alaska and ship it to Singapore so the ex-pats could enjoy ice in their drinks. Unfortunately all that arrived in Singapore was warm water! The business collapsed after two years!
Form the boat we headed back to the van for a short trip into China Town
We then visited a newer temple
Next it was lunch time in the local market, our guide ordered a mix of dishes for us.
In the China town area we also discovered a Hindu temple with a very colourful tower .
After a little more wandering it was time to head out to the airport for the flight to Doha. This was a seven and a quarter hour flight arriving around 10pm local time. There was a lot of turbulence for most of the flight, but I still managed around 3 hours of sleep. Unfortunately we couldn’t avoid a long layover in Doha, our flight to Montreal doesn’t leave until 8:20AM, so we have 10 hours to wait. Luckily the lounge is open 24 hours a day.
I’ll probably write a quick summary in the next day or so.