It was our 1st year wedding anniversary last night :) So my husband decided to treat me to a romantic night on the Singapore Flyer. We hoped the crowded would not be big, it being a weekday night. The journey there boded well, with few people in sight. As we bought our $30 tickets and proceeded to the upper floor, we were feeling blissful looking at the nice landscaping of the Yakult Garden below.
The first sign of a 'suay' trip was a Malay service crew who I initially mistook for a bouncer. He interrogated the visitors obediently standing in the queue about their individual group size. as though we owed him money. Then we were herded into a fake capsule to take 'souvenir photos', six groups as a time. The groups had to wait for all 6 cameras to be ready and activated before we could move on.
As we exited the photo-taking area, we were allocated to the next capsule with not much of a choice whether to wait for the next one. When in fact, with the thin crowd, each capsule could have taken less people. So my husband and I ended up in a capsule with a group of China tourists and a Singaporean family from hell.
This family consisted of a frail grandma, the oblivious parents, 2 screaming stomping boys, and the very embarrassed maid. From the beginning of the ride, the 2 toddlers ran around the capsules shouting to the parents, screaming comments and stomping on the floor trying to shake the capsule. Their mother praised them with encouraging words while their dad just tried to act blur.
I got a headache after a few minutes as the noise resounded around the enclosed capsule. I also gave up taking photos because many of my shots were ruined when the boys pushed me while running around. Shooting the evil eye at the dad did not help as he immediately avoided eye contact, looked away and pretended nothing happened. Because I did not want to embarrass the grandma, I grinned and bore with it. Near the end of the ride however, my husband got fed up and shhh-ed one of the boys. His dad immediately moved away, as though disowning any association with the ruckus.
We couldn't even hear the China tourists' babbling above the noise created by the boys. It was so intolerable that we were standing at the door even before the capsule returned to ground, and walked out so fast we expected the service staff to ask for feedback. But of course they didn't.
We just wanted to get the hell out of the place. But the exit led to the souvenir and photo buying area, where we were herded once again into a queue to view our photos. Our photo on the viewing screen looked good and clear, and so we parted with an exorbitant $15 for it, taking it as a momento of our anniversary. It became a momento of a piss-ful trip when we received the final printout and it was so pixelated our faces looked mutated on it.
The counter staff also asked us to pay in cash. Apparently that's all they take, but they did not have the good sense to put up a sign so visitors without cash could skip the hassle. We had to empty our wallets to pay for the photo. Stomachs growling, we rushed to the Popeye outlet to have out dinner, but realised our leftover money could only pay for one meal. My husband then went around the entire building looking for an ATM, but found out from the staff there that only one ATM was available - ABN amro -__-" How many Singaporeans can use that?
In the end the 2 of us shared 1 meal of 3 chicken parts. After which we realised the Popeye counters accept Visa. What a suay anniversary celebration!
P/s: The Flyer experience is not worth the hefty $30 price-tag. We took the capsule from evening til it turned dark, but the view was similar to what you would see from Nicoll Highway or Sheares Bridge. Without a staff in each of the capsules, it is also difficult to maintain the atmosphere of the trip. It is too expensive a risk to take.
Labels: Cynic In The House
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