mahdnc

The Night Safari is alive and well. $560 SGD for a group of up to 7.

We went back to the hotel in the middle afternoon to seek refuge from the humidity and to take a nap as our bodies were still not adjusted to the new time zone. The only tour that I had purchased for our time in Singapore was a three hour night time tour which we did last night that included dinner at the Lau Pa Sat hawker center. The tour cost $163 for both of us + tip. There were a total of 10 people in our tour--all of them from the western hemisphere (UK, USA, and Mexico) with varying amounts of severe jet lag. We also walked along the water front which had beautiful views of Marina Bay Sands. We watched the light show from there which occurred at 8 pm. When the tour was finished at 9:30 pm, we headed back to the hotel and collapsed because we were finished as well. Then the most wonderful thing happened that night--we slept through the entire night and woke up at 8:30 am instead of the usual 3 am on the previous nights (mornings).

Yesterday we took a trip to the Singapore Zoo ($25 SGD by Grab). It is surprisingly not crowded but there was quite a bit of walking involved. The exhibits are well done. The zoo has a lot of areas with dense flora and so it felt like you were walking through a tropical forest sometimes which was unique. My wife was quite amazed at the fiddleheads on many of the ferns. However the high humidity quickly wore us down and so we did not spend more than 2-3 hours there. But that was plenty of time to see the highlights. After visiting the Galapagos last month, it was a bit different to see the Giant Tortoises behind bars at the zoo. The zoo is overrun with small wild monkeys. When the Giant Tortoises were being fed, there were at least four zoo employees armed with 8 foot poles needed to keep them from harassing the tortoises along with the family that paid money to feed them. The monkeys were quite aggressive constantly probing the security team for weaknesses. It was quite the sight.

I agree that it is not a good conversion. We have been in the FV cabins on Solstice, Eclipse, and Reflection (all Deck 8). They were great cabins for my family of 4. The large amount of space certainly was the reason that Celebrity has looked into converting them to suites. However the layout is a big problem to convert that space into something that would meet Celebrity suite standards. For example, the bathroom is the standard non-suite bathroom (small) and not attached to the master bedroom. Relocating it and/or making it bigger would be difficult. Also the balcony on the Deck 7 FVs are very small and would disappoint any suite guest.

This is the view of the Financial District from our room last night. One of the Grab drivers said that there is a $120,000 SGD fee for buying a car in Singapore (and that the fee requires renewing ever so many years--I can't remember what it was). Consequently, there is very little traffic on the roads in Singapore including rush hour.

After taking a badly needed nap, we went to the Gardens By The Bay which is a huge nature park located near Marina Bay Sands. Much of this huge park is free and interesting and has Christmas decorations. There were several venues in the park that have an admission fee. This included the marquee Cloud Forest and Flower Dome conservatories which were both inside their own separate greenhouse structure. In fact the Flower Dome is the largest greenhouse in the world while the Cloud Forest greenhouse has a slightly smaller footprint but is taller. Admission to both venues can be purchased in advance by going online or in person when you get there although you may have to endure a line. We did ours online. Buying tickets was a bit confusing because of the number of options and my own lack of familiarity with the fancy sounding names of the venues. Here is a link to the official website to buy the tickets to the two venues: Cloud Forest (Avatar) + Flower Dome tickets ($53 SGD per person over 12 years old). You have to select the one hour time slot for the particular date which you would like to attend these two venues. The hourly time slots for the daytime are simply lumped together as “9 am - 4 pm” when you purchase your admission tickets online. After that your choices become 4-5pm, 5-6pm, 6-7pm, and finally 7-8pm. The admission price is the same for each time slot but the later time slots are more popular because it is cooler and many people like to stay to see the free 15 minute light show at 7:45 pm, 8:45 pm, and there is a 9:35 pm show added for the Christmas holidays. We were too tired to see it and will catch it later this week. We selected the 5-6 pm time slot and it took us two hours to see both of them. The entrances to the Cloud Forest and Flower Dome are next to each other so you do not have to allow for time to get to the second venue unless you spend significant time in the gift shop that each venue dumps you to as part of the exiting process. Note that both venues will exit you to the same shared gift shop. The Cloud Forest has an Avatar movie theme with Avatar things sprinkled throughout the conservatory which gives it a Universal Studios like ambiance. Some of the Avatar stuff is interactive which was pretty good and would be especially attractive to kids. The Cloud Forest is an architectural marvel (actually the Flower Dome is, too, but it was more apparent with the Cloud Forest). To help humidify the air inside the conservatory, the Cloud Forest houses the world’s second tallest indoor waterfalls. Apparently first place belongs to the famous Jewel at Singapore’s airport. The walkway winds around the waterfall at various elevations. Several sections of walkway are suspended in midair allowing you views all around including Marina Bay Sands which towers nearby. There are many interesting features including “Orchids From Machu Picchu” and quite a few flowers. throughout the conservatory. There was an impressive set of white glass lilies in a pond made by none other than the famous Dale Chihuly. There was an exhibit of very small flowers which had round magnifying glasses for you to see them better. The massive Flower Dome has many themed botanical areas from all over the world with lots of Christmas displays.

We were pretty jet lagged yesterday so I didn't post anything here. I think that was the worst of it and today should be better although Marcia did not sleep well last night. We ate breakfast at the hotel executive lounge yesterday. Then later in the morning, we took a cab ($12.14 SGD) from our hotel to Chinatown to visit the Chinatown Street Market. We did a lot of browsing and liitle buying although my wife bought a couple of gifts for our kids. We took a Grab ride ($8.90 SGD) from there back to the hotel so we could take a nap in the early afternoon because I was dying.

Well, you’re right—we wanted to see Galapagos and we enjoyed it.

$8,400 for 360 points = $23/point

Camera scan of the card and manual entry--neither worked for us for either Chase card. Manual entry of our MasterCard worked.

My wife has used her Chase card here without difficulty. I presume that there was some kind of incompatibility that occurred as far a getting them to work with Grab.

Yes, you could use a credit card directly.

That's very nice. I plan on being at the Oceanview Bar at the back of Deck 14 when we sail away from Singapore, if you happen to be nearby..... David and Marcia

Have fun, Ken

We are trying to go cashless here in Singapore and later in Hong Kong by going with ApplePay like we have with our two prior trips to Australia. On the other hand, Vietnam and Thailand are very cash oriented and so we will have to be prepared for that and obtain their local currency from ATMs when we go ashore. During our Galapagos trip last month we didn’t have to worry about foreign currency since they have a US dollar based economy. However I still got a surprise and a chuckle when I got change back from my $20 after making a small purchase in Quito. Some of the change appeared to be given in strange subway or old arcade tokens or something like that and I was put off by it. When I held the tokens closer to my face for careful inspection so that I could complain accurately, it turned out to be US one dollar coins. I had not before seen the current dollar coin that is so rarely used in America!

Thank you for the suggestions. We will look into it.

From what I have read and observed in my less than 24 hours here in Singapore is that there is no tipping in general. For example, there was no obvious option to tip the Grab (via the app) and taxi drivers (Apple Pay) and nothing so far here at the hotel. We have not eaten at a restaurant in Singapore yet as we have been eating at the executive lounge here at the JW Marriott out of convenience and getting our bodies adjusted to the new time. That will obviously change because it was not our intention to experience Singapore food through the hotel's executive lounge.

The marathon flights were ok and we would do it again. However we did book Premium Economy seats for the long over-the-water SFO-SIN flight at a whopping 100,000 points per person (was 60,000 points before Covid). The seats are similar to domestic first class (wide seats with lots of legroom but don’t lay flat) and that helped. We have a Transpacific cruise out of Sydney planned for Apr 2025 and we may have to do it in economy class the whole way. Two weeks ago my wife bought her recently widowed father a new Apple Watch Series 9 for $399 USD before tax at Best Buy. He wanted it for safety reasons (like if he falls down and needs to send out a distress call since he now lives alone). So while at the architecturally impressive Apple Store yesterday, she priced the same model with the same specs for $599 SGD before tax which is equivalent to $450 USD. Yes, be careful if you bring your wife to this shopping mall. The formal name of this retail center has the word “shops” in it but it’s spelled with an extra “p” and an “e” as in “shoppes” which tells you that it’s an expensive place that can afford those extra letters. It has a Las Vegas feel to it.

We looked into our options to get to Marina Bay Sands (MBS) from our hotel, the JW Marriott (JWM), which wasn’t far away. Walking was free and would have taken 30 minutes according to Google Maps. We seriously considered this but we were running on energy reserves after our 17.5 hour flight from SFO earlier in the day. We talked to the hotel concierge about Singapore’s Mass Raid Transit system (MRT) and our desire to get to MBS. We were told that there were MRT stations close to both the hotel and MBS although we would have to take two connecting subways to get there. The cost would be about $2 SGD per person at the most. However Google Maps app estimated that it would take a little under 30 minutes which was about the same as walking. The hotel concierge also said that a great deal of the ride there (or maybe it was the subway in general) was viewless because it’s underground. To me that was a big drawback from a sightseeing standpoint so we began looking at car options. A car ride would take about 6-8 minutes according to Google Maps. We ended up using Grab to get to MBS which cost us $9.50 SGD. The app worked well and the use of the app is similar to the user experience with Uber in the USA. The only problem I had was getting the app set up with my credit card. It didn’t like my two Chase Visa cards even after multiple attempts but I got it to take my MasterCard. We didn’t use Grab to get back to the JWM because I wasn’t 100% certain as to where the pickup point was at the large MBS complex (it looked like it wasn’t the same place we got dropped off) so we took a taxi which cost $12.52 SGD and we had an interesting driver with whom we talked about Singaporean politics and his daughter’s upcoming wedding in Hawaii which he will not be able to make the trip there.

We did something very light and introductory during our first day here in Singapore. We visited Marina Bay Sands and went through its high priced shopping mall. Of course the mall was all decked out for Christmas: The mall is very nice inside and most of the stores were fashion stores like Versace, Gucci, Dior, Hermes, Burberry, etc. There was a very nice tea store there named TWG Tea. TWG Tea had a separate restaurant out in the open area of the mall that served high tea among other things: The second floor of the Apple Store there had very impressive architecture. It was encased in a large glass sphere. Apple's showroom floor had spectacular views that the photograph below does not convey very well. There were a lot of circular design and architectural elements throughout the shopping mall.

The one week cruise does go by fast in the end. However, I remember being exhausted at the end of our second day on Xpedition and thinking "OMG, this cruise is not even half over and it feels a like we have been here forever". Have a safe trip back to Quito tomorrow, Ken.

We booked a 1 King Bed, Premier Guest Room which is one step above their lowest category room (which is smaller). We used Marriott points to book our 5 night stay there (if you book 4 consecutive nights with points, you get a 5th night free). About a year ago, Marriott switched from a fixed award schedule to a dynamic pricing model. This meant that the number of points needed for a given room on a give date could rise and fall with time depending on supply and demand. The overall affect was an increase in how many points were needed for a room (aka devaluation of Marriott points). When I first booked the room back in Jan 2023, it cost 207,000 points to get our 5 nights at the JW Marriott. However the award pricing slowly declined over time and I was able to modify the reservation to get the lower rate several times this year. In fact when we were waiting at the gate at San Francisco for our flight to Singapore, the priced declined to 168,000 points. So while I was waiting for our flight, I was able to secure that rate. Before our room was assigned by the front desk agent, I asked if she could get us a room with a view of the Marina Bay Sands Hotel which would also afford us a view of the cruise pier. She was able to get us a room on the 20th floor . The view is very nice and I can see two cruise ships from our room: Norwegian Jewel (docked) and Genting Dream (getting ready to dock). Below is a poor telephoto view of the cruise ships and the pier. Hopefully I will have a better picture of. it later--maybe with Solstice in it. Our room is pretty nice. It is a bit compact, with high tech touches such as a motorized shade and light controls--neither one I have yet to master. There is no room for a small couch or a cushioned chair, just this metal rocking chair (at the left in the photo below). Very importantly are these electrical outlets placed on either side of the king bed. All of my electronics are now powered by the more modern day USB-C connections. We have the old style USB connections by our bed. We will live. The bathroom is nice. Not visible in the photo below is the walk in shower (to the left of the photo) and the water closet (also left of the photograph and not visible). The toilet also has been gadget-ized and we are learning how to control it and how to use it for good and not for evil. It's 1 pm here and my wife and I were able to relax and get our bodies recharged. I think we are going to venture out.....

Here was our arrival schedule this morning: We landed at 8:00 am local time. This was right on schedule so I don't understand what the pilot was talking about in San Francisco when told us that we would arrive much earlier. There was a fairly long walk to custom and immigration. We arrived there at approximately 8:15 am. As I mentioned in my previous post, customs and immigration was a painless affair as it was all automated (means you won't get your passport stamped though). It took us a while to collect our 3 checked suitcases at baggage claim and we manage to cram those suitcases, our carryon bags, and ourselves into a taxi sedan at 8:53 am. We got to the JW Marriott at 9:11 am. The fare was $25.93 SGD ($1 SGD = $0.75 USD) and it was payable by ApplePay. When we got to the front desk, we were told our room was not ready which was understandable (photo below). The hotel does not have any day rooms or a formal early arrival lounge like we saw with the Marriott hotel in Sydney. However we were told that we could use the showers in the locker rooms on the 18th floor where the swimming pool was located. Since my wife is a lifetime Platinum Elite member with Marriott, we were also able to go to the Executive Lounge to wait for our room and also have a nice breakfast which we did.At 10:10 am, the Executive Lounge host told us our room was ready and gave us our keys.

Thanks for mentioning it, but we missed it which is too bad. The good news is that SIN is set up real well to get arrivals out the door efficiently. The bad news was once we got our bags, there was the taxi stand and away we went. I am aware that SIN has garnered awards as the top airport in the world (here is an example). And when we got lined up to get off the plane, I warned my wife that we might make a detour or delay our exiting of the airport to some of the attractions. But I was not very well prepared in terms of knowing where the attractions were because I assumed that some of the impressive design features of the airport would be there to welcome world visitors flying into Singapore. I was wrong!