Marina Mandarin

We went to Singapore last weekend to attend the wedding of a friend. It was on Sunday afternoon so we decided to go on Saturday and spend the night there. The wedding luncheon was to be held at the Marina Mandarin ballroom so we decided to stay in that hotel itslef.

From my past experience in hotels, the reception will be located on the ground floor and you can go and check in there. When we stepped into the hotel, we were asked to hane our bags over and proceed to the 4th floor. We were a little confused but did as we were told. The receotion was actually located on the 4th floor! So anyway, we got checked in and one of the guys at the front desk who happend to get some free tickets to an art exhibition at Suntec City (across the road from the hotel) gave us a couple. Our room was on the 10th floor so we proceeded to the lift and stepped in and pressed '10'. Unfortunately, nothing happened. We tried this a few times but without any success. The lift had not moved. The one of the hotel staff who came in to use the lift told us that we had to slot our room access card into a slot on the panel and onky then press the floor number. It worked :) I felt so dumb but honestly it was all so new and canggih for me.

After a short rest, we went over to the art exhibition. There were artist from all over the world. The one that caught our eye was the Indonesian booth. They had 2 artist, I Ketut Mara and Udin Antara. The former was more on landscape but the latter painted people and from far, you could not tell that it was a painting as it actually looked like a photograph. We definitely would have bought one of the paintings if we could afford it.

Dinner was at AquaMarine, in the hotel itself. They had so much of variety. There were oysters, sushi, duck, tiger prawns fried on the spot and the fried rice was exactly like the one we have in LP. The deserts were delicious. They had a chocolate fountain and ice cream with all the stuff to put on the side. Something different in the buffet was that all the plates were actually on a shelf right below the food. I am so used to the plates being at one end of the buffet line that it actually took me some time to find the plates. Looking back, I think having the plates on a shelf below is much more convenient as you can get one at any point in the line.

Breakfast the next morning was also at the same place. Their lo mai kai and char siew pau were very nice. I didn’t eat as much as I usually would have coz we were having lunch later. The ballroom was very grand and each female guest was given a red rose. The food however was not great. After having dinner and breakfast at the hotel, I had quite high expectations for the lunch so I was rather disappointed as the taste was only so so. If I had known this, I might have eaten more at breakfast. The whole lunch dragged on for almost 3 hours as each course was served so slowly. Lunch started around 1.30 and desert only arrived at 4. It was definitely the longest lunch I have ever had.