Exploring the MBS Complex

Once again we have afternoon tea and partake of the drinks hour at Club 55, the club floor lounge.

 

Today is the first installment of the Voyage of Jack's Dinosaurs.  Today they are visiting Singapore and looking over the Singapore Straights.

The Marina Bay Sands complex is huge.  In addition to the three towers of the hotel and the crowning restaurant and pool floor, there is a convention center, massive casino, theater, extensive high end shopping (who knew there were so many high end watch manufacturers; isn't everyone using their mobile phone or Fitbit for time these days), and restaurants, many of which are celebrity chef locations.

 This is a small part of the casino floor,  These are the blackjack tables.

On the lowest floor of The Shoppes, there is a sampan ride akin to the gondola adventure at the Venetian in Las Vegas.  The sampan ride is totally boring compared to the Venetian attraction.

Tonight we dine at David Thompson's Thai Street food restaurant at The Shoppes.  We've previously dined with him at his Michelin-starred Bankok restaurant, Nahm and Carol was once seen pointing out to him that he forgot an ingredient on Australian television.

 

Carol has Stir Fried Softshell Crab Noodles with garlic, chives, betel leaves and bean sprouts which is excellent except a bit too spicy for her tastes.  CJ has an appetizer of Chiang Mai Larp of Chicken and main of Green Curry of Kampong Chicken with Thai eggplant chilies; the later being the favor he's enjoyed all over Thailand and Cambodia. He orders it authentic and it comes authentic.  He's still sweating hours later.

Gardens By The Bay

Never believe the weather forecast.  The prediction was for a day of rain beginning at 1000.  Never saw a drop all day.

Gardens By The Sea is a three part complex the largest of which and the one with the most features is adjacent to the Marina Bay Sands. The three main features are the Tree Forest, Cloud Mountain structure and the Flower Garden structure.  One can walk most of the complex for free.  The pedestrian bridge into the park has a moat and affords a great shot of our hotel.  Our room is on the 40th floor of the center tower.

 

There is an admission charge for the Flower Garden, our first stop, and Cloud Mountain.

 The display of trees, flowers and vegetation is extensive but the highlight of the Flower Garden for us was the integration of various sculpture.  This first one is a dragon made from pieces of driftwood.

 

 These two souls pulling luggage as if to catch a train appear as upper torsos suspended in mid air.

 

 

 

 This huge flying dragon was difficult to photograph.  The background lighting killed the ability to get detail of the sculpture.

At Cloud Mountain one enters to a waterfall and can get a bit wet. After that there are ascending walk ways and elevators that allow one to climb the mountain.  We were there for the "misting" demonstration when water jets through out the complex water the plants creating a "cloud" effect.

 

Sculptures are again a highlight of Cloud Mountain.

 

 Above, is a view looking up the mountain.  Those are walk ways.

 

 

 

 

Singapore Day 2 Early Morning

First day on this side of the world and we're up at 0300. Our breakfast plan allows us four places for breakfast.  By 0630 we've starving. We select the international buffet. We both forego the massive American part of the buffet for a complete Asian breakfast. Particularly enjoyable for CJ was the fish ball soup which he could doctor with hot peppers and hot sauce paste just like he does at the dumpling shop in Adelaide.

 

 

By 0800, we're swimming 57 floors above Singapore.

Check this guy out.  He's sitting in the middle of the pool conducting a conference call. CJ walked up next to him and he wasn't being loud or disturbing anyone but he was on a business call and had been for at least a half hour.  

 

Singapore Day 1

Our relaxing seven day decompression vacation in Singapore while enroute Adelaide got truncated to two days as a result of Carol's unplanned visit to the hospital in Georgia for five of those days.

Our choice was to pull the plug on the trip and return to the cold weather of Virginia with Carol's lungs in a weakened state or chance the 13 hour flight to Doha and 7.5 hour flight on to Singapore to get to hot weather.

We arrive in Singapore, having managed a good bit of sleep on the plane with far less drinking than is typical.  We don't feel well rested; we feel the week in Georgia has taken its toll.

We are staying at the Marina Bay Sands, a hotel we watched under construction in 2009 from our room at the Mandarin. Check this off the bucket list. Our room is on the 40th floor.  The club lounge is on the 55th and the pool, observation, shops and restaurant complex that crowns the three towers is the 57th floor.

Squalls are rolling through on this first day.  The weather is helping us to be good and get more needed rest. Today's activities include 2pm afternoon British tea in the lounge, followed at 5pm with cocktail hour which we also call dinner and then at 7:45, we view the Gardens By the Bay light show from the 57th floor.

We explore the 57th floor.  From the front the view is of Singapore looking out over the infinity pool.  And I thought a 7th floor infinity pool was impressive. Silly me.
Looking seaward, the view if of Gardens By The Sea.

 

 

Returning to the room, we have a birds eye view of the light and water show in front of the hotel.

 

 

Atlanta to Doha and Singapore

This is our first experience on the new Airbus A 350. Although it doesn't have a bar, it's a very comfortable plane with best lay-back seats we've experienced.  Qatar service exceptional like last time.  Food a bit off, like last time.

 

 

Boarding the plane, the on screen display has our Singapore destination displayed.  Showcased is our hotel, that crazy big three legged building with the hat top.

The 7hr27min flight to Singapore goes off smoothly with both of us getting more good sleep.  These seats are very comfortable.

We get lucky and they have an early check-in available.  We just miss out on breakfast in the lounge but CJ spies a basket of dumplings that have not been cleared.  Breakfast is dumplings overlooking the Singapore Straights and literally hundreds of ships.