Singapore is also stunning. End.
We have had some jolly interludes too, meeting up with people we haven't seen in a while; in Francoise's case the 'while' being nearly thirty years.
Therefore more pictures than words this time round.
There is quite a bit to see in Singapore and, even better you can do it walking, though it is rather sweaty and a tad tiring. And Singapore is far more expensive than we had become recently accustomed to. It is a bit of a shopper's paradise though there are rarely rows of shops, just rows of shopping centres.
We have by now just about mastered the bus, MRT and taxi system and it works brilliantly, though we haven't worked out how to use our smart card to pay for it nor the 10c discount on tickets we were supposed to get. We were perhaps not listening properly when we were told, too much water coming out of ears...
We haven't had the bike all the time as it was being cleaned ready for its inspection in Darwin, should we ever manage to get it there. When we have had the bike we have found our way around without difficulty thanks to Singapore having lots of nice, friendly signposts. We did managed to get charged 50c on the automatic road pricing scheme. This meant that inadvertently we had used a priced road, once, and this therefore saved us a 70$ fine. Let's forget the 190$ we paid for the privilege...
Our timing, though it was forced on us a bit, meant that we were here for Singapore's 49th anniversary and we watched part of the firework display from the local kite flyer's mount, the Marina Barrage. The part we didn't see was obscured by a ship sitting on top of some hotel towers. Nearly everyone was dressed in white and red for the occasion. Our rather limited wardrobe did not stretch that far.
We delivered the bike to the Port on Monday and left it in Warehouse W15 at Jurong Port amongst some pipes and sacks. How it gets on to a ship and where on the ship it will be we don't know and didn't ask. Let's just hope it's not on deck and that expensive clean was all for nothing. We had managed to keep it out of the rain post clean. We got our Customs papers stamped and the only surprise of the morning was that the tow truck that picked us up could not drive into Jurong Port either. We had to swap truck for a van at the port gate. We then needed to check out with the Land Transport Authority to show that the vehicle had left the country, or was at least in the Port and also cancel our road pricing smart card and make sure we had paid all our fines. We can keep the (expensive) IU reader as a souvenir...
We are hoping that the boat will leave on the 13th August and reach Darwin round about the 20th; it will not be before. We have now done everything we can, so we are now off on a bikeless holiday for one week hoping the bike doesn't get seasick or miss us too much.
Paul & Francoise
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