Tuesday, July 27, 2010

East meets west at Singapore

It's a cliche opening line but it's true. For Team BMC's first stop over in Singapore, it's a hot humid melting pot of ethnicity.

Jac arrived into Singapore carrying the airsickness bag as a preventative measure. Something wasn't agreeing with her.

Team JMC are camped not far from Orchard Road - the shopping strip in town and Singapore boy to these guys know how to shop! There are shops everywhere. With the check in not available until 1pm it was time to head out for some practice for the local custom via the Bottanical Gardens.

The shops here range from Louis Vutton to Marks and Spencer (UK Dept Store) to Cartier.Unfortunately for Jac it was only window shopping. But with the Aussie dollar doing well and many sales, there were certainly plenty of bargins around - even Mark went shopping which was accredited as a fine performance considering the the humidity and the fatigue.

By early mid day lunch Jac was getting hungry and wanted something basic. Beef and noodles looked quite bland in the picture. But Jac got a little too adventurious and order the mixed beef noodle. Freshly cooked, they came out with some strange shapes - a ball that wasn't a mince ball and strips of something that looked like villi on one side. Not good for the stomach.

After checking in, we headed out again for a self guided tour which included the fire station, parliament house, arts centre, new and old high courts and Raffles.

High tea was over, it was too early for the Tiffin so it was off to the famous Long Bar for an Singapore Sling. But at the obnoxious price of S$25 it was only the free peanut to be enjoyed. Oh well - Jac had east v west on the plane with a Singapore Sling and Red Wine - maybe that's what started her stomach bug.

Jac and Mark wandered along to the river and tired of french and asia food we went to a Western bar that did a steak burger and fries.

So we wait for the return back to Australia. It's unlikely to involve as much star spotting or gossip as we had on the way over courtesy of David Pell (Sky and Millar most underperformed and overpaid team on the tour; Vuelta to be shown on SBS on the weekends; Scott Sunderland returning home to Australia; UCI response understandable over the Renshaw incident). At least there are some good inflight movies.

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