We caught the train from Goa to Mumbai ( a 13hour journey) and had two wonderful travelling companions. Tolli who was born in Mumbai, lived in New York for 20years and now retired to India spending 2weeks in his house in Goa and 2weeks in Mumbai with his family and friends. Ashok was a businessman selling environmental water systems and was passionate about saving water. We all got on well and solved the problems of the world which made the trip go very quickly. We arrived at CST (the old Victoria station) which was mind blowing with the number of people using the station at 11pm at night and the amount of goods destined for around the country.
We have enjoyed India so much and so now have booked to come back to India in March after Bali to see the south east coast (Chennai and Pondicherry) before going back to “Udayagiri” for 2weeks.
We were collected and taken to our hotel “Suba International” which was 5minutes from the airport and the staff and service there was excellent even though we were only staying one night.
We had another very nice Indian from Mumbai who had an Asphalt business on the Singapore airlines flight from Mumbai to Singapore.
We were well placed in Singapore at the V hotel Lavender which was above Lavender MRT station so getting around for 3days was very easy.
We splurged and went to the Raffles the next day for lunch which was superb. The hotel was decorated beautifully for Christmas and the “Tiffin Room” is lovely. We wandered around the city to walk off some of the lunch. As this was going to be our acclimatization to Perth time zone again we took things easy and went the next day to see the Hobbit at a very large cinema complex near the Marina square shopping centre. We decided then to have a look at the Marina Bay Sands hotel which is a spectacular feat of engineering and opulence at it’s best. We took a tip from “Trip Advisor” and asked for a pass for the bar on the 57th floor instead of paying $20 each to go to the top of the building to see Singapore from the top of the building. We instead had a cocktail for the same price and enjoyed the lights and the atmosphere up there at night. We caught the MRT to Orchard road and saw the miriad of Christmas lights and decorations which was very colourful and bright.
Singapore had got very expensive (to be expected with it’s standard of living) but was a shock after India. Food was quite inexpensive but no one was willing to bargain. Lucky Plaza shopping centre which I remember from years ago has had a large facelift and together with it a large price lift. Luckily we were not buying anything.
We caught the Qantas flight back which left at 2330 back to Perth.