Singapore… the good, the great and the forgettable

We take Singapore Airlines to its home destination. The staff don’t look at all like the "Singapore girls" from the adverts; the food and service are pretty bad and the flight is full. It’s a short-haul and we are in economy.

Jezzabel is not amused.

The Airport taxi charges $48 to go to the "Yotel Hotel" on Orchard Road. It’s funky and modern. Two years ago, I made the same trip here and it cost me only $26. The hotel is a high-tech city hotel owned by a UK consortium with Middle Eastern/Portuguese investors.

An old Whinging pome Radom rule: No. 201, "Always enter a hotel as though you own it".

Great location but $80 if you want an early check-in, be it one to four hours early. It’s 7 am. We leave the four suitcases at the hotel and head out for breakfast. Our return to the hotel to face a room and shower and toilet that is only 12 x 16 feet. Jezzabel leaves the logistics to me as always. It’s like a ship's cabin on a cruise holiday, you have to have a system for everything and all space in your cabin.

Jezzabel however hits the potential abort button and tells Mission Control (that’s what they call reception) about the room size and grumpy receptionist. The result is the head of Mission Control catches us for a chat, he offers us a free late checkout and some wine vouchers for the hotel bar. He got our vote as we knew the room size when we booked it. Given the limited space, the room is as modern as you can get. There is even a robot that delivers basics to your room and then sings to you.

"Goodbye, goodbye, I’m leaving you goodbye"

It also has the best safe I’ve had in any hotel,

There have been many bad safe experiences. At Abad Hotel in Cochin India, I couldn’t open the safe, after four phone calls to reception I carried the safe to the reception, and asked to check out. I told the manager I was taking the safe home as they obviously were ignoring me and it had items still in it.

We are here in Singapore mainly to go to the last Coldplay band performance this year in the city. Though I suspect Jezzabel is actually on a mega shopping trip also.

By chance our buddies said six months ago that the British rock band Coldplay are to play in Singapore in Feb, hence we are here. The concert is amazing, with a great lineup of songs, operating from two stages, special effects/graphics, costumes and an audience of 55,000. We all have to wear a bracelet that is activated with the ability to have colours flashing to the music or coming on and off in different sequences. Massive amounts of oversized confetti, large balls like planets hovering over the audience, changing colours.

Getting out of the stadium is straightforward, getting back to our hotel is not, it’s chaos. Roads are blocked, and taxi drivers can’t find us. After one in the morning, it’s difficult to find a place to eat. In the Marriot Plaza Hotel on Orchard Road, we are taken to a secret door to the "other room” it’s a music bar. A lady comes out and checks us out, the door is then opened to let us in. Great music, shit food and a heavy bill.

We hit a number of restaurants on our Singapore trip.

• Maccha House, a chain in Asia. Service is not so good, I ask for the manager, not on site, no senior man on site, and nobody to whinge to. No soft drinks, just fancy sweet made-up drinks.

• Mexican Super Loco, Robertson Quay, where we eat a range of amazing finger food/bites and watch the world pass us by.
• MRS PHO, Vietnamese, one staff member is asleep in the restaurant, despite a glossy menu we still have to use their app to order, what happened to service, we walk out as the sleeping member of staff starts to snore.

• Bakalaki is the best modern Greek restaurant I’ve ever been to. Been to many in Greece over many visits, but this restaurant is up end and modern Greek. No plate throwing.
• Cafe de Muse - 24-hour dining, but 30 to 45 minutes before they can serve any food. Appalling staff.

At IMAX by Scott’s, the only movie we can see is “Argylle”. It’s a hyped, overcooked, bonkers, nonsensical spy film. The summary given by the film critics is even more critical.

So, you may be thinking the Pome is no longer whinging about Singapore. In truth, there are few whinges when in this amazing but small country of Singapore. Service standards used to be the best in the world as we know it, but no longer so. Clarke Quay is now dead; many great bars and restaurants have gone and there is no buzz as ground-floor units are becoming more non-leisure.

We spend every day doing some shopping, but if it makes the princess happy it’s worth doing. Living and touring with Jezzabel the shopaholic, I could actually write a book on being dragged from shop to shop in different cities in the world. My article on how much time in a man’s married life he spends shopping results in a deal with Jezzabel. Three hours shopping for one hour in a cemetery, my Taphophile hobby. (covered in my books)