Sky Park (Item #3)

Well, Macca again agreed to accompany me on a mission to strike off another of my list items.  This time to Sky Park in the Marina Bay Sands tower complex.  It was a budget $20 (SGD), and when you arrived on leve 57 of the tower, the views were amazing.  We then stopped for a drink (Sprite in my case) at the top, and would have had a bite there also, had the restaurant not been completely booked out.

I was amazed at the pool, which from our side looked like it went to the side of the building and might well have drained over onto the city below.  Another thing that blew my mind was that from that height, Singapore looked like Waterloo (suburb of Sydney) gone out of control........high density housing, what??

....Hmmm Sadly blogger.com doesn't appear to want to let me upload the photos, and seeing as it's almost 2am here, perhaps I'll leave it until the morning and then add the pics, and relate the story of the rest of the evening :)

<insert 7hrs of sleep>

Well, let us see if blogger will let us upload photos again........

    View 1                                              View 2 (Metal Breasts in Earth)

 
     View 3 (Construction)                      View 4 (Ferris Wheel/Restaurant apparently)

    View 5 (Soccor Field)                      View 6 (Giant thing)

    View 7                                              View 8 (Singapore City, Boat Quay etc)

    View 9 (High Density Singapore)     View 10 (Singapore Inner City)

    Sky Park Observation Deck              Observation Deck

    Howie + elderly gentleman               Howie + side of Macca's head

   Macca above the Obs. Deck              Observation Deck

    Marina Bay Sands Sky Park Pool

Hmmm, at some stage, I should get a picture of the building itself and post it here, to give an idea of how high it was above the ground.

Meanwhile, from Sky Park, we decided to head to Clark Quay for dinner at the ever-fantastic Senor Santos.  God bless the carnivorous virtues of Brazilian BBQ.  Then during an attempt to find Mama's Carribean Bar in Clark Quay, we realised that it had been changed into a bar called "Se7enInches" with the caption of "In Music We Thrust".

With a quality name (and moto) like that, how could you choose not to have a few drinks there??? So there we stayed for an hour or so, before tiring of it, and deciding to head to a bar called Ying Yang in Chinatown that Macca had come across previously.

Although this sounds like it should have been a simple process, while we were waiting in line for a taxi to our chosen destination, a local Singaporean man came up to us and asked us where we were going.  When we told him, he directed us over to a number of rickshaws that were near the taxi rank.  After a few minutes of attempting to get them to name the price before we got into their swift and strong chariots of joy (and failing...only receiving the response "good price"), my friend was in his pedal-powered vehicle of wonder, and so I duly sat down in mine.

Now while I'll grant that a rickshaw ride anywhere (even in one that is playing Britney Spears music from a speaker hidden somewhere underneath your posterior) is entertaining, I was somewhat disgusted by the drivers attempts to extort $50 each out of us for a ride that would have cost us something in the order of $6 in a taxi.  After a little bit of argument, we walked away having paid $50 for both, and utterly disheartened with the honesty of the Singaporean people.

In closing on that issue, if you're in Clark Quay, just take a normal taxi, not a bicyle powered rickshaw.  I'm pretty sure they see white skin and their eyeballs turn into dollar signs while making the "cha-ching" sound!......Downright highway robery my dear grandmother would have called it!

At any rate, Ying Yang was awesome.  After walking in, getting a couple of drinks (of course non-alcoholic for me......darn red bull!), and then scoring seats (unbelievable I know!), it really was as though every single Aussie/American/Euro person in Singapore had decided to come to this bar.  It was great, simply done with a nice blend of funky but chilled house music.  (who'd have thought I'd ever be entertained by any music with the words "Funky House" in the description!), and it had a great outdoor area that wrapped around most of the building.

Sadly, without being alcohol fuelled, with all the extra energy that implies, I had to drag young Macca home at a little after midnight.....even after half a dozen red bulls during the course of the night, my aging body decided that the carriage was about to turn back into a pumpkin and we had to go.

All in all a VERY productive and great Saturday, in which I managed to complete 4 items from the list, and have a nice relaxed night out with a mate :)

Now in closing, and off the subject of me for a moment, all sympathy goes to those that have been affected or lost loved one to the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear power plant incidents in Japan.  Let's hope that the tolls are low, and the recovery for the Japanese people is swift.