Baywatch

I tend to live my social life in the bus lane rather than the fast lane, but last night was an exception.  My sister Ali - who is visiting from Oz and who provided the title for this post - accompanied us to Singapore's hottest new nightspot, the Lantern bar on the rooftop of its newest (and fabulously smart) hotel, the Fullerton Bay.

It was one of those perfect Singapore evenings - not too hot, a nice bit of breeze, some atmospheric, but not intrusive, Latino sounds and the most stunning views!  The picture to the left was taken from my iPhone and looks great on a small screen but loses some definition on the page, so you'll either have to take my word for the stunning nature of the views or come and see for yourself.  I've never been to a bar with a swimming pool, but this bar has everything.  I say everything, but if I were to be picky - actually I don't need to be, as Chris can be picky enough for both of us when he is in a grumpy mood (sorry, C) - the food was a bit disappointing.  Early days to be fair, as we were actually there on their first night of opening, but they had a very limited menu to start with, did not have several of the items available, and had not bothered to tell the staff.  That said, the food that we did manage to order was yummy.  Ali and I had a double order of lobster tacos - a miniature version of a normal taco, filled with lobster, spookily enough, in a yummy sauce - and would probably have eaten several more had we not decided to head out for dinner to Marina Bay Sands, the newest of Singapore's casinos, for a spot of dinner (see below for a view from our rooftop bar).  This is an amazing looking place, and opinion is most definitely divided between the lovers and the haters, but I'm a fan.  If you'd like to see a much better picture and get a real sense of the thing that looks like a ship on top of three tall buildings, then go to: http://www.marinabaysands.com/.

Those of you who follow the blog will know that we were not impressed with the first of the casinos to open earlier this year (see the post called "Casino Banal"), so we had no intention of even trying to go gambling this time, but we thought we might find a congenial restaurant for a spot of late supper.  The place is absolutely vast!  It is apparently the world's most expensive standalone casino  property and cost 8 billion Singapore dollars to build - almost 6 billion USD.  The complex includes a  2,560-room hotel as well as a plethora of luxury shopping experiences.  Of course, there is the casino, but there is also a huge convention centre and plans for a museum, theatres and floating pavilions. The three towers housing the complex are topped by a 340m-long SkyPark which includes an infinity pool.  The restaurants in (or should that be "on") the SkyPark are not yet open, so we found somewhere inside to eat instead. The meal deserves a haiku, not because of its overwhelming deliciousness, but because it featured what must be a contender for the world's most expensive plate of rice.  We had ordered the house speciality - crab-meat rice - and when it arrived, we thought they must have brought us the wrong thing, so lacking in evidence was the crab.  When we pointed this out to our waitress, she poked through the large plate of rice with some chopsticks and demonstrated the presence of several small flakes of crab-meat, thus proving us completely wrong.  


A simple supper
So we thought. Well, less is more
after all.  How true.