Singapore, 17-18 December 2017
After a good night’s sleep we were ready to explore Singapore on the Sunday morning. An easy way out after travelling so far was to get onto the City Tour bus and enjoy all the views with the running commentary – besides doing the city tour, we also did the harbour tour – in an amphibian vehicle called???Ducky!!! Our tour guide on the harbour tour was very informative but also ready to take some good snapshots against various backgrounds such as the Singapore Flyer – giant wheel and the symbol of Singapore, the Merlion – a mythical creature with a lion’s head and the body of a fish and widely used as a mascot and national personification of Singapore
Of course we also had time to explore on foot the historical China town, a sharp contrast to the Marina Bay area, as it has low buildings mainly shop houses with the Chinese culture bursting out onto the streets. Food stalls with appetising fragrances of the Chinese cuisine can be found all along the streets and also beautifully ornate Buddhist and Hindu temples. Unfortunately we did not have time to go inside as we were not dressed appropriately and also it was time for us to return to our hotel ( also made up of a number of converted Chinese shop houses on the Joo Chiat road) to freshen up and meet up with my old colleague Chrystie Dao with whom I had worked at ABN AMRO / RBS London. We were meeting up on the rooftop of Fullerton Bay Hotel which has excellent views of the harbour and the buildings across including the Marina Sands Hotel.
I haven’t seen Chrystie for quite a while so it was good to catch up and bring ourselves up to speed on a number of colleagues we used to share. Although Chrystie could not join us for dinner as she had her parents visiting from Australia, she showed us the way to the food market, Lau Pa Sat, where she recommended that we try the chilli crab! well we were messy eaters as you don’t get the tools that you normally do in Europe to eat crab but it was well worth it!!
By the time we got back to the Venue Hotel, we must have walked some 8 km in total even though we did take taxis to and from our hotel. Anyway was quite exhausted by the time my head hit the pillow……
Following morning – i.e. the last day in Singapore, we took a taxi ride to the Changi Prison Chapel Museum. This was very impressive especially as even nowadays the same type of atrocities that took place during world war II are still taking place in different parts of the world.
By the time we got back to the hotel it was time to have some relax moments and then get ready to join my old colleagues from both Citibank days and ABN AMRO days who incidentally had worked together at Citibank Tokyo and both are now in Singapore.To quote Takeshi’s words he used on facebook: “My ex-colleague in the Netherlands is the former boss of someone who is my ex-boss in Japan. All got together in Singapore with spouses. Diversity here with 2 Dutch, 1 Singaporean, 1 Maltese Dutch, 1 Taiwanese and 1 Japanese” we had a great evening and a real example of diversity and inclusion which we have picked up in our banking careers.
Thank you dear friends in Singapore – we will have to come back again to get to know this spectacular country and its people even better!
