UltraVioletLight

… Was last year. We stayed four nights at the Miramar. Passable hotel, with a passable buffet breakfast and passable restaurant.

The city itself is quite humid and fairly smoggy (for me, anyway, I live in a small coastal town). I didn’t like it much, truthfully, although it was good to do for the sake of it.

Check out Chinatown, for shopping and browsing. And Clarke Quay for eating-out and the nightlife.

(I wrote an entry on the Raffles Hotel in the Raffles section.)

Just looking at some of the shopping centres and public areas was interesting in itself, just due to all of the small differences in function and look to home, and also the fascination of being on holiday.

For a supposedly clean, safe city, I found Singapore surprisingly polluted, and on a nighttime walk back to our hotel from Clarke Quay (we got semi-lost) we managed to come accross some of the less desirable parts of the city.

Last year, I stayed with five others in Singapore. Four of my travelling companions had already been to the Raffles (years ago) and said that it had been a good experience – an English High Tea, the pleasant surrounds and the history involved.

However when we went this time around, the meal was overpriced, and we were given a choice of smorgasbord which consisted mostly of odd, less-than-appetizing snacks targeted at the Asian tourists who are becoming so frequent in Singapore. Together we paid $175 for the meal, and between us probably managed four plates of food (two each for the resident gannets who would eat anything but normally would have had four each; very little for the rest of us).

However after the High Tea, we went upstairs to the bar and drank outside on the balcony, which slightly lessened the horror. Alcohol on the empty stomach ensued that we came away with the disappointment of the experience dimmed, but it was not forgotten.