Festive Season in Singapore

The taxi trip to the airport was fortunately uneventful and surprisingly fast and cheap. Check-in, security control and passport checks were all also swift experiences. To be honest, I expected much worse.

The airport is vast. And empty. There are two huge halls, connected with a walkway that contains the security check point. Quite clever idea, in fact.

We were there so early that most of the shops were closed. After having a good breakfast in a Japanese restaurant, we still got some time to stroll in the shops. We didn’t buy anything as the clerks started to escort us on that moment that we set our feet in the store. It got a little distracting in a while.

The flight took nearly six hours. Fortunately the plane was not fully booked, and we got one empty seat for our stuff. Singapore Airlines are not cramming as many people as possible in the confined space of the aircraft; instead, there were only nine seats per row and leg room was plentiful.

The Singapore airport was also a quick experience, as we didn’t have any checked luggage and we could just walk out of the airport. Our accommodation was reserved from Fullerton Hotel and we took metro from the airport to the hotel. The MRT station is a couple hundred meters from the hotel, so the location is excellent.

Our room was airy, almost four meters high. We didn’t waste too much time admiring it, but went to browse the malls in Orchard Road. We shopped in the western end of the road, ate in Genki Sushi and finally got back to the hotel.

The next day was the Christmas Eve, and the day was spent again in shopping and seeing local attractions near the Orchard Road, eastern end this time. We visited also Funan IT Mall to get some geeky stuff and to post the first part of the travelogue — had to hunt down free WLAN connection…

We had reserved the Christmas Eve buffet dinner (twice) from Finland and rechecked it while checking in. The staff still had some troubles finding our reservations, and the first table was next to the kitchen door. After some complaining, we got better table with a view to Singapore River. The buffet itself was excellent, huge amount of different dishes — over hundred, I guess — and thus we stuffed our plates seven or so times. The next night wasn’t that easy due to all that eating, but we survived.

The Christmas Day breakfast was in a grand ballroom and it was almost a disaster. We had to wait for five minutes to get a table — hello, we are in five stars hotel! — and had to ask waiter to provide knife and fork, and so on. Fortunately the food was good.

We spent most of the day in Chinatown, visiting the small shops in the area and avoiding toters and other people trying to benefit us being tourists. I got a few good photographs, hopefully I can post them here sometime soon, but we didn’t find anything worth buying.

Today, 26th, was time for another shopping spree. The post-season sales started and we hopped from mall to mall hunting for bargains. We found some outrageously cheap clothes — at least compared to Finland — and got still 50% off.

We have already packed for tomorrow, everything fit still inside our suitcase. We’ll rise early, eat breakfast, check out, take taxi to the airport, claim taxes and continue shopping. Tell you more later.