Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Sing Sing Sing....Singapore Part 1: The Hotel

You may have noticed my absence from the blog this past week.  We've been in Singapore this past week, doing some apartment hunting and taking some time off from all the other responsibilities of moving halfway across the world.  I'm going to break up our trip into a few posts since there's too many pictures to jam into one post!

In the days before we took off, things were a bit crazy.  My brother came and visited for a week.  I took him around Houston all week, shopping, sight-seeing, eating.  He left Friday morning and we went to a friend's wedding Friday night.  Saturday, we were scheduled to leave, but first we had to get our house ready for an open house.  Amidst all the cleaning and packing, somehow we forgot to shower before getting on the 24 hour plane ride....so we had to improvise.  We stopped at CVS along the way to the airport and picked these up:


Here's Andy at the airport, giving himself a "shower" by face towelette...



After a grueling plane ride - 11 hours to Moscow, 1.5 hours in Moscow, 11 hours to Singapore, we were more than ready to get to our hotel.  Luckily the hotel allowed us to check in early so we could collapse and get some sleep.  Our taxi drove up to the Shangri-La Hotel and we were greeted by this guy:



How he can stand to wear that costume in 85+ degree heat and 95% humidity I don't know.  It's HOT there.  I thought Houston was bad, but Houston is like a desert compared to Singapore!  The humidity makes you feel all sticky and nasty constantly.  We stepped into the hotel's grand lobby...I think this is the fanciest hotel I've ever stayed in! 



The lounge area of the hotel, which is secretly a tea/drinks restaurant/bar.  Once you walk onto the floor, the waitress comes by with a menu of drinks for you to order, so you can't really sit and enjoy the view unless you're planning on having some ridiculously expensive tea or champagne.


We were more than happy to finally get to our room.  They had this cool spot by the entry where you just drop in your key and all the lights turn on.  When you leave, you just pick up the card and all the lights go out.  Pretty interesting....except for when you just want to turn one light off or on.


To welcome us to the hotel, they left us a little basket with a pot of hot tea.  



We had a cool little balcony - here's the view:



Our door faced the inner atrium which was designed as a waterfall terrace.  We could hear the soothing sound of water running faintly inside our room.




View from the pool area:



They had tons of orchids everywhere!  I'm gonna get me some when we move here.  It's so humid here you probably never have to water them.



Believe it or not, this hotel was located right in the city area.  It was like an oasis in the middle of a whole bunch of high rises.  The grounds were meticulously cared for, everywhere you looked, there was someone sweeping something, or wiping something.  There was even a lady going around wiping off the garbage cans! I guess that's how they keep it so clean.  The whole city country is that way.

More to follow soon on the AMAZING FOOD!

2 comments:

  1. very cool! The ShangriLa is indeed one of the nicest hotels in Singapore, ya'll got hooked up! They have the best buffet there, the Line, did you try it? They also have the coolest gym, with a rock climbing wall that electronically rotates! I'm waiting for the food posts. :)

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  2. Yes, I left The Line buffet for the food post :-) It was so amazing I ate myself sick. We missed out on the gym! I didn't realize they had a climbing wall that electronically rotates! We might be free this Sunday night to get together. I'll let you know

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