March 17th, 2024

Happy St Patricks day but does not seem to be a big holiday in Singapore. We got up early and headed back up to the swimming pool. Since that was the main reason for staying there we wanted to make sure we got as much pool time as possible.

The morning light on the Bay are. You can just see the Merlion statue in the bottom right corner.

This is a city view and it is packed with high rises. They say the government in Singapore builds 86% of the houses and then lets people buy them at a lower rate so they have a place to live. They really have some interesting policies like all the hoops you have to jump through to own a car. Even if you can afford a car then you ahve to apply for a license. In total it costs about 200,000 for a car and even then you only are allowed the car for 10 years and then you ahve to start the process over again. That is why there public transportation is so good so that you do not need a car.

Kathy and I in the pool

You can see the curve at the end of the pool.

After we spent about 2 hours in the pool we went back to the room to shower and check out and we were able to catch the 11am shuttle back to the port.

Some of the flowers from the hotel gardens. Everything here is green and lush.

Once back to the port we did a little more shopping in the big shopping mall because we still had some Singapore dollars. I actually found a pair of glasses frames that I liked and will get my prescription put in on our return. Plus the fames were only 50.00.

New glasses

After another quick stop at the grocery store it was back on board for sail away. We really enjoyed Singapore but cannot imagine staying here for a long period of time. All you can do is lay in the sun, shop and eat. Lots of concerts and Broadway shows here also but that would just mean spending lots of money everyday.

On our way back to the boat from shopping we ran into about 20 folks off the ship who were leaving and flying out of Singapore. Very few are actually going home, most have figured out some fun things to do like renting a house in Sidney and going back there for a month or jumping on a river cruise out of Paris. We also had a lot more leave on the second day in Singapore so not sure of totals anymore. More will also be getting off in Sri Lanka.

On our way out of port into the boating lanes we had a little bit of an incident. I just happened to be out on open deck for the sail away and I heard a ship’s horn go off about 3 times. Turns out it was this taker which we were attempting to pull out in front of. We had to turn quite quickly to avoid a possible collision and the tanker had to slow down.

This is our stern trying to swing around to get past the tanker. Not sure how something like this happens since both boats should have had pilots on board steering them into position. Someone said cruise ships have the right of way and we assumed he would slow down and let us in but it was interesting for those of us on deck on the port side.

Next stop is Kuala Lumpur