Singapore to Bangkok

All good things must come to an end, and we had already arrived at our last day in Singapore. 

We did our best to have a slow start to the morning, but perhaps we were all getting used to the time zone as we were up and ready to go reasonably early, after listening to a session of the cricket on the radio.

Checking out of our hotel, we left our bags there and ventured back to the SMRT (any Simpsons fans will know exactly what little jingle goes through my head when I see that written anywhere), to catch a train up to Orchard Road. 

Known mostly for its shopping, which is really not our thing, we mainly just wanted to show the kids the sheer scale of the street (compared to little old Queen St Mall in Brisbane!). 

The kids were suitably impressed, and even moreso when we jumped on their first double decker bus experience. Sitting on the top level, we cruised up Orchard Road to the end, then got off and meandered our way back. 

Jim and I are big fans of the Decathlon sports store so we popped in there for a bit. Luckily we don’t have a lot of space to spare (and it’s early in the trip), so we just bought a shirt, shorts and swimshirt for Jim there. If we find one in Bangkok on our last days then it better watch out.

We ended up back in the Ion shopping centre for lunch. On top of the train station that we arrived in, this place is absolutely enormous. It was also packed full of people, so we made our way down to the food court and found a little corner of it to have some lunch. Hamish is yet to branch out (Thailand is coming and our days of indulging the burgers is coming to an end), so he had some hashbrowns and chicken nuggets. Heidi had some more dim sum and Jim and I had a noodle soup each.

Many months ago when we were booking this trip, I mentioned to Mum and Dad that they were welcome to join us in Chiang Mai for Christmas. So they duly booked their flights, and we didn’t tell the kids about it. 

Later on, Dad let slip that they would also be in Singapore for our last day, so we’d been messaging to see if we could rendevous (his plan was that we would ‘just run into each other – Singapore must have been a little different back in the day when they lived there because there was absolutely no chance of that plan working out!).

But, we did manage to be in the same place at the same time, so I directed them down to the food court where both kids were a little surprised, but not really, as Granny and Grandpa now have a history of just showing up in random places.

So we had about an hour with them, before getting back on the train and heading back to grab our bags and head out to the airport. We’ll see them again soon in Chiang Mai for a week.

I think I’ve mentioned before that Changi is the definition of airport goals. You really could live there it is so big with so much to do. On recommendation of our Grab driver, and with a 30 minute flight delay, we wandered over to Jewel, which is this enormous indoor waterfall and walled garden. It’s really quite spectacular. 

The kids and I had a quick snack (Jim had finished off his lunch and mine), then hopped on the plane for the quick 2.5 hour flight over to Bangkok. The plane ride was pretty uneventful, except to say that the chicken pasta was very ordinary! The first poor meal we’ve had from Singapore Airlines.

In Bangkok, we landed at the ‘wrong’ airport (i.e. the furthest one from our hotel), so had a 45 minute ride in a Grab car to get to our hotel. 

With the one hour time difference we were well and truly ready for bed.

This morning, right on cue, I woke up feeling pretty sick. Heidi has had a cough for a bit and I think has shared it with me. I’m always the one who gets sick the worst and for the longest, so I can’t say I’m too surprised to go down.

So to counteract that, we planned a quiet day, going to the Wat (temple) at the end of our street, followed by an easy meander to the reclining buddha. If that’s all I could manage, then that was going to do the job.

While Jim went out foraging for coffee and some cereal, I lay in listening to the cricket then we all finally got moving. When on our way to the buddha, we spoke to a guy on the street who told us that it didn’t open until 2pm today (and it was about 11am). He suggested we get in a tuk tuk, go to the pier, do the longboat tour of the floating markets and the Big Buddha, then be back at the right time for the reclining buddha. 

It sounded like a solid plan to us, and he even stopped a passing tuk tuk and negotiated 20 baht for us to get to the pier. 

Now I’ve travelled enough in the world to have a healthy dose of scepticism about pretty much everything, but the worst that could happen was that we ended up at the pier.

As it turns out, it was a great tour on the longboat, stopping at the floating markets (which don’t float, and aren’t very big), where we had a delicious smoothie and lunch each, then on to the Big Buddha, back to the pier, then to the Reclining Buddha, afterwhich we walked home. 

Jim and I have seen most of these things on a previous trip, but it was still interesting to see them again, and the kids had a good time too.

They’ve now just returned from finding some dinner, so I’ll sign off and go and have my laksa!