EC-Rider Travels

Early start to get to the airport, though needless to say Amanda was up and out with the dogs before I left. I was so sorry to say goodbye to her. She has been so unbelievably kind to me and we have had just the best time together. Having only met Amanda a handful of times, it really was beyond the call of cousinly duty to have me to stay …. for a month!… and I have just so loved getting to know her. We have laughed so much and despite living on the other side of the world from each another, discovered we had an uncanny amount of similarities, likes, dislikes, secret pleasures, favourite products – in fact it was hard to find something we did not have in common. Spooky eh! I don’t know how I can ever thank her enough.

It was not a great start to the day, as the Uber I had so efficiently booked, cancelled at the last minute, as did the next, the third one (having cranked up the price) turned up, and as I was literally putting my bag in his boot, he drove off. John, from Chiang Rai, eventually arrived and charged me almost double the original quote Grr! 😡. Shattered my illusions of Uber who have served me so well on this trip.

However, I had a nice hour or so in the Singapore Airlines lounge (thank you Cosi!) and a painless flight to Singapore during which I complained to Uber and received a full refund! A slight issue, however, at Singapore immigration when I suddenly found myself being marched off by a uniformed officer with no explanation …. quite nerve racking! Fortunately, it was simply a problem with their scanner reading my electronic chip and I was released without charge. No queue for a taxi and within 25 mins I was at Branksome Road, the home of Ed and Justinna Pank ….. who I have never met. Ed is Lucy Ward’s Godson and, with a little encouragement from his Godmother, sweetly invited me to stay for the weekend. They were subsequently invited to a party in Indonesia so are not in fact here. I was however greeted by their lovely housekeeper, Cindy and we sat down for a nice chat.

As I am only in Singapore for 72 hours, Cindy is very concerned, I am not going to see everything I need to and having explained where I should go, and seeing the blank look on my face, she insisted on coming with me! We headed down to Orchard Road which is Singapore’s retail heartland, with department stores and luxury boutiques, alongside swanky hotels and shopping mall after shopping mall. There was some pretty incredible architecture and quite a buzz about the place. We went on the bus, the train, the tram and the monorail, which I would probably not have done otherwise. Needless to say, everything works like clockwork and is immaculately clean. It made me smile to read that you are not allowed to drink, even water, on the underground or eat anything and in particular, durian as it smells so bad!

After Orchard Street, Cindy felt I needed to see Sentosa Island – again not something I would have necessarily done otherwise! It is not quite an island – joined by a causeway, and is an enormous playground/ theme park with every possible kind of entertainment and ride: from bungee jumping, abseiling, zip wires, horrific fairground rides, luges; to Casinos and endless bars – you name it, it was there. Including a man-made beach and several man-made islands. There were thousands of people of every possible nationality having a lovely time – not necessarily my scene, but certainly theirs!

We had a slight detour on the way back, as we managed to jump on the right bus but unfortunately going in the wrong direction. However, it was a great way to see from one end of Singapore to the other and it was a pretty stunning journey as the city lit up. As we left the impressive architecture of the city, we passed endless, huge white apartment blocks of identical apartments, very nice but very small – I later learnt this was their social housing which over 70% of Singaporeans live in. There is a huge amount of construction going on but hard to see many of the traditional houses. Being Friday night the restaurants were buzzing, but following my 5am start (again) plus a three hour time difference, I am certainly no longer doing so. Night night.