Expensive dinner in Singapore

A had a short trip to Singapore a while ago and had the most expensive meal of my life. Well at least the most expensive one that I had to pay for. I should have known not to suggest a steak house to my colleagues, especially seeing that I would be stuck with the bill. However, as we had not ventured outside the hotel in the past two days, I felt that we should go somewhere on this evening. I asked the concierge to recommend a restaurant and he quickly suggested this place "Mortons". And I too would highly recommend it, if someone else is paying. It seems that they are all over the USA.

We decided to walk the 20 minutes to the restaurant and I later consoled myself that at least I saved a few dollars by not taking two taxi's (there were 5 of us).

Upon entering the restaurant I saw that it was quite crowded and relatively small for the large hotel that it was in. We were guided to our seats and oversized menus were handed around. To say that things were expensive is a bit of an understatement. The steaks were 100 USD each, and this didn't include anything else. At this point I considered leaving, or ask who was paying. But guilt kicked in and I realized I would just have to swallow hard and start thinking up the story line to get my expense account approved.

On a positive note, it was an exceptional meal and the wine I selected was also top notch. However, everyone did feel a little guilty about the price and no appetizers or dessert were ordered.
 
The final price tag was about 1000 USD.

The photo below was taken during our walk to the restaurant of the Marina Bay Sands.  The "boat" on the roof has a park and a 150 m long swiming pool.

Snowy bike to work

As my travel schedule has dropped off greatly, I have been left without much to write about, so I will share a photo of my bike to work today.

For the past week it has snowed every morning, making my daily commute to work much more interesting. Here is a photo of the pedestrian bridge that I crossed this morning on the way in to work.

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The entrance to Sydney harbour



 

These photos were taken at the entrance to the Sydney harbour.  They used to have a number of gun emplacements at the top of these cliffs to protect the harbour, but they have been removed and only the concrete remains (pretty poor concrete too by the way).

You can see in the top photo a number of large sailing boats leaving the bay and heading out to sea. 

And I will also share with you the view I had from the restaurant that I ate lunch at.  A very nice lunch too by the way.

 

The Airport Hotel - the penthouse suit

The first night in Sydney I wanted a hotel close to the airport and not too expensive, and I found this lovely little room. Yes, my room is the one up at the top of the stairs.  Despite the awful looks, the hotel turned out to be very comfortable.  Not quite the Trident in Mumbai, but okay for one night.

 

 

 

 

Sydney - Australia

I spent the weekend in Sydney and got the chance to look around a bit.  The activities that they have at the beach are amazing.  The one beach I visited (in Manly) had a Surf boat race. The web page listed it as follows:  (I didn't take these two photos - but they are much better than mine)

"Sydney's Dee Why beach was abuzz on Saturday with a large crowd (it was really only about 100 people) gathering for the fourth and final round of this summer's Schick Hydro Ocean Thunder Pro Surf Boat series. Australia's top 36 surf rowing crews from all over Australia converged on Dee Why for the series which is viewed by millions of television viewers worldwide."

The male rowers were all 6'5" and 230lb's,  real giants.  After watching all these guys wandering around I began to think that everyone is that big here in Australia, but at the next beach they were more the everyday size - short and fat.  I am surprised that this sport isn't the number one sport watched by women.  The guys for some reason, pull their speedo's up to form a sort of thong at the back.  Fully exposing their bottoms.  So at the start of the race you see 6 teams of 5 men with their butts exposed, getting ready to rush down to the boats.  The women's teams don't feel it is necessary to do this with their swim suits unfortunately.

The tough part of the race is getting through the first set of waves, and often one boat is completely swamped and looks like it will sink for sure.  But somehow, they can row with the boat full of water and it drains out the back.

 

Further down the same beach was a larger crowd gathered for kids life guarding training.  They had a series of races set up for kids from age 6 to 13.  The little ones had a relay race where they had to run down to the beach and then swim through the waves, go around a bouy and swim back.  The older kids were doing a race with the rescue boards.  They had to go quite far out and around two bouys then back to the beach.  It looked like great fun and I wished I could join in.

Night out

That evening we are all taken out for dinner and join a large group from the same company at the typical round table.  5 of the people at the table I have never met before and don’t even speak English.  The drinking soon starts and they are regularly  “Gambei” each other (finishing off the drink). I wisely don’t take part.  The photo is of our table early in the evening.

The next morning in the meeting room, you can smell the booze coming out of their pores.  But they didn’t seem any worse for wear.

That evening we fly to Beijing on the first leg of our return flight.  When we land in Beijing, the air is unbelievably bad.  Over powering smell of sulfur and smog in the air.  I get 1.5 hrs sleep that night and I am very tired when I have to get up at 4:45am for the morning flight – I am starting to wonder why I put myself through this….

Off to China

How’s this for a travel day:  Get up at 4am (after being woken up at 2 am by mistaken wakeup call from hotel reception) for a flight at 5:45 am.  The first leg of my flight was from Surabaya to Jakarta, then catch a flight to Guangzhu China, then a third flight from there to Wuhan, China where I landed at 7 pm.  By the time I got to the hotel it was 8:30pm.  It was my first time to Guangzhu airport and I had to pass through immigration and then find the domestic flight to Wuhan.  They certainly could use some more signs to inform people where to go. I had to ask a number of people to find my way through an extremely large airport and I was given the wrong information three times before I found the right check in desk.   The business lounge I would rate at the low end of the scale for those who happen to find themselves passing through.  However the airport is very modern and very spacious (and huge).

The hotel is quite nice – with the painting below in the lobby (3 meters high) and the hotel room is excellent (even free internet).  In the morning, I can’t find the restaurant and have to ask again, only to be told it is on the 4^th floor.  I am later told by colleagues that the prostitutes are on the 5^th floor.  I am quite shocked that this is the norm in China for business men and that even top hotels organize this.