We celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary last November and I particularly wanted to stay in Singapore and experience Raffles etc. We had two nights there and I hated it! It was 100% humidity, we had a central (Chinatown) hotel which wasn’t brilliant, we walked everywhere because the taxi from the airport was so expensive, it frightened us to death. All the streets/restaurants around us seemed to sell only noodles and it all smelt the same. My h has an allergy to MSG so we darent try any of that even if we fancied it so we ended up in McD’s! We went to Raffles as recommended for afternoon tea but we felt ripped off. Did have a Singapore Sling, much better value for money.
We couldn’t wait to get back to the airport which is magnificent and stunning and so preferable to the centre of town. We flew with Singapore Airlines in economy which was a bit of a shock, we’d no idea it would be so basic! The second part was Air NZ which was an improvement.
We loved every minute from getting off the plane in Auckland, through the cruise round NZ, Tasmania and back to Sydney. However, on the return trip, our flight was delayed which meant we missed the connection in Singapore. This was great news as the airline put us up in a lovely hotel near the beach and it was a different experience of Singapore altogether, much better and pleasant.
We were so lucky as our first hotel was right near one of those markets and we wandered through finding a replacement suitcase as ours had been damaged. We reckon we just missed catching the virus as it must have been around then. I’d love to go to NZ again, fallen in love with it but we’re probably too old now. I’d have to fly at least premium economy though, nothing less!