After 8 hours on a second rate Singapore airlines plane next to the boozy Australian with romantic intentions in Zurich, we made it to Singapore for our 19 hour stop over. After claiming our $40 changi dollars value (CDV) each at the ishopchangi (pretty much 2 bottles of free alcohol!) and waiting for 25 mins in line at immigration (make sure you fill out the form in the plane) we were out in the humidity of Singapore. We were faced with the option of travelling to the hotel by shuttle bus ($9 each) or taxi (stated estimated fare approx $30). After being told of a. 20min wait for the shuttle, plus additional 45/60 mins to get to hotel, we decided on getting taxi (which only cost us $20 anyway!)

We arrived at hotel Jen OrchardGateway, a new Swiss boutique hotel on orchard road - the shopping epicentre of singapore, funnily the hotel lobby was located on the 10th floor, with a shopping mall underneath! The hotel room was spacious with a king bed and free wifi and USB power charging ports - very useful so not to have to dig out the foreign adapter!

Being 2:30am the next part of the trip was Sleep!

I had planned to sleep til 11:30 however woke at 8:30am - or was woken - and we made our way outside in search of a better option for breakfast than the $25 /person buffet option at the hotel.

We navigated to orchard road by following the increasing Christmas decorations and lights and came across a little cafe on a side street called 'coffee club' after breakfast of smoked salmon bagels and eggs (cheap at $11) and $7 lattes (wow that's where they make the money!) we found our way to my favourite- the hop on / hop off bus!

We made our way around Sentec park with the cool waterfall and little India before disembarking at merlion park to see a water spitting lion statue, pose for the standard silly pictures of catching the water then walked through the six star Fullerton hotel and worked out you can't walk under the ocean through an underpass to the marina bay hotel as I previously had thought!

A $5 taxi later we made it to marina bay sands - home of the famous boat on top of the three towers hotel. After a quick trip up to the 57th floor and a few happy snaps we made our way to the food court were we snacked on some tasty chicken Bou (buns) and after a bit of a delay got back on the hop on / hop off bus.

Travelling through Chinatown, residential areas and finally back down orchard road again where we got a great view of the unlit Christmas lights - definitely need to see these at night next time!!

We had lunch at a Singaporean seafood restaurant in orchard gateway mall close to the roof - my goodness the best prawn dish I have ever had! Tempura and sesame battered prawns with wasabi mayo and shaved cucumber, the prawns were huge and the batter light, best thing was the wasabi mayo though! Hubby had mee goren - a noodle seafood dish - which has huge and very tasty also! My coconut water finished me off and back to the hotel to convince the checkout concierge to let us stay 1 more hour (we had already gotten 3pm checkout the night before!)

Luckily she said yes, and that lead to the best swim ever on the hotels rooftop in an amazing infinity pool which looked like it just fell straight over the edge of the roof! The bright orange and lime green day beds for 2 and sun lounges made it a very relaxing half an hour while hubby slaved away in the gym before getting ready to head back to the airport for the flight to Dhaka!