Wednesday, 13 July 2016

Last day in Singapore

The Singapore Flyer is165 metres tall, the tallest Ferris Wheel in the world.  It stands 30 metres higher than the London Eye.

On our final day in Singapore, we took a tour of the city in an open-top bus.  We saw Chinatown (not far from our hotel), Sentosa Island and another Merlion (apparently, there are five altogether), tourist attractions like the Raffles Hotel, the suburbs, the area where foreign embassies seem to congregate, construction sites, and city areas including major shopping streets like Orchard Road.  
On Orchard Road is the ION building.  At the 56th floor is ION Sky, where people can view the city surrounds, look down on neighbouring skyscrapers, glimpse icons like the Marina Bay Sands Hotel and its crowning Skypark, or peer into the distance to Malaysia.
At Scots Road, not far from Orchard Road, is the Grand Hyatt Hotel.  And on the ground floor, in '10Scots', where Jean and I had high tea.




Saturday, 9 July 2016

Images of Super Trees Part 2





















Images of Super Trees Part 1


 















Day 2: Universal Studios, Singapore

We spent the day today at Universal Studios here in Singapore, which is a take on the original in L.A.  To enter the Studios, it costs $SGD75 per person, roughly $75 Australian, or roughly £38 Sterling.  However, there is often an horrendous wait-time for most rides - sometimes two hours.  But if you pay an extra $100, you can take the 'Express Lane' on rides, which allows you to walk past everybody else who only paid $75.  And you can do this as often as you like.  Or, if $100 extra is too much, you could pay $80 extra - this will allow you to sail past all the other suckers only once on each ride.  We decided to pay the extra $100, and gleefully marched past hundreds and hundreds of people throughout the day.

We walked past this ride early.  Little did we know the funny event that would come later.

The Revenge of the Mummy ride


Jurassic Park



It was when we were in the Sesame Street Spaghetti Space Race ride, in which the object is to find the lost bowl of spaghetti, that the system suddenly mal-functioned and we were stuck in our 'car' in the middle of the track.  Count had said there were four seconds remaining to something, and then all went silent.  I thought four seconds later, something would happen, but everything remained dead.  An announcement came that the system had gone down and we'd soon be assisted.  Then, numerous people came by to tell us we'd soon be assisted.
Count

This lady was the second person of several to tell us we'd soon be saved.
A bunch of other riders further round the track got saved, and came passing by us.  We were eventually rescued, and nobody did ever find the lost bowl of spaghetti.