A surprise Birthday. OOOPS we meant a wedding

[perthjay85]

In english @perthjay85 , that means the lowest 25% , I think?? (hic!!) Where's the Dom?

TskTsk!! that darn FA pouring the Dom without punting! Oh lordy!

That wasn't me, I myself had to google what imbibers meant haha.

I just did a quick count. From 565 photos on my phone (quite a few double ups) over 95 are of some form of alcohol. whoops lol.

 

[craven morehead]

Believe me, going by pics etc so far, you would be in the lowest quartile of imbibers on AFF

love it !

 

[perthjay85]

So ahead we move.
After spending a great day at the Singapore Zoo and booking our future Night safari tickets we checked out of Rendezvous Hotel which was painless and fast (aided by the fact that everything in the mini bar is free) and headed for our second hotel.

When we started planning our honeymoon around our cruise Michelle strongly suggested we stay at the Ocean Suites at Resorts world on Sentosa Island. Michelle is an animal lover through and through and has always had a strong passion towards all marine life. I thought it would be a bad idea to argue with my future wife before we had even got married.
Now first off this is not a cheap hotel by any means, but if you are a sea creature lover then this hotel is easily worth the money.
These suites are two story:
On the top story you get a pull out lounge for a double bed, with an entertainment unit with TV and bar fridge.
Outside you also have a spa bath which isn't heated as such but it was quite warm for us.

Now downstairs is where you get your money's worth.
This is what greeted us which was very nice (it is always a good idea to email hotels and mention if your holiday is for a special occassion. Plus sorry about the blurry picture, the room was a bit overwhelming)

This is the room window blind being raised:

And this is what you get when the blind is raised completely:

(this was our friend the ray, he was a bit of a showoff as he made plenty of appearances during our stay)
For anyone wondering this viewing window is of the main huge tank at the Singapore Aquarium.
If you look closely at the photo below you can see some square windows at the back of the tank.
These are the bedroom windows. The two windows on the left hand side are of the hotel restaurant
called Ocean I think from memory.

I have heaps more photos of this view if anyone wants to see more. A lot of blurry ones as I was trying to get a picture of the hammerhead shark swimming around, but he was too quick for my photography skills to get a good photo.

A couple of points about this hotel:

• On the 4th photo, you will notice a rectangle on the floorboards right in front of the window. This is a bathtub that if you google the ocean suites you can see open. However, you can not run this bathtub yourself. You have to call your butler to have the bath opened and filled. Neither Michelle nor I could bring ourselves to call the butler to run a bath for us. We simply enjoyed the room as is.

• Another note regarding check in here, If you don't book through the hotel direct they can sometimes have trouble finding your booking.I booked this stay through Qantas hotels as I managed to score a lot of points. When I researched this hotel I noticed a few people mentioning the trouble at check-in to locate the booking. Once I mentioned that they should look at the Expedia bookings they were able to find our details within 20 seconds.

• Lastly to prepare you, you should know that you are driven from the hotel lobby via buggy through an underground carpark to where you find the suites, This makes complete sense when you figure out the hotel is looking at the Aquarium.

Now I could talk so much more about this hotel and load a load more photos but I think I will leave it here for now. We did attend the Singapore Aquarium and Universal studios during our stay of 2 days on Sentosa island, however I did not take many photos or notes. So the next post should be after our 2 amazing days on Sentosa Island at the Ocean Suites where we checked into the Marina Bay Sands hotel for 2 nights.

Thanks everyone.

Jay & Michelle

 

[RooFlyer]

Amazing.

 

[drron]

My goodness.Trying to top your wedding on the honeymoon.

 

[perthjay85]

My goodness.Trying to top your wedding on the honeymoon.

haha we certainly gave it a darn good shot.

 

[Deleted member 29185]

I booked this stay through Qantas hotels as I managed to score a lot of points.

Now if they are not the words of a FFer, I don't know what are! Spectacular wedding and honeymoon cast off to one side to chase those points! A great deal of potential here!

 

[Boca68]

haha we certainly gave it a darn good shot.

Just hope the windows in the aquarium are one way

and oh man! you should have done the bath, as long as , again it's one way glass....ahem!

 

[perthjay85]

Now if they are not the words of a FFer, I don't know what are! Spectacular wedding and honeymoon cast off to one side to chase those points! A great deal of potential here!

I should also mention that I took a large gamble by calling Qantas hotels to cancel my initial booking because they ran a promo after I made the booking.

I went from earning around 11,000 points to over 24,000 points.
Thankfully everything worked out.

 

[perthjay85]

Just hope the windows in the aquarium are one way

and oh man! you should have done the bath, as long as , again it's one way glass....ahem!

Well as we discovered they are not one way. However you can only see into the rooms when Certain lights are on, and even then it is quite tough.

Very smartly when the blinds to the aquarium are open all of the ceiling lights are unable to be turned on.

Maybe if we go there again we will do the bath after a few more fancy trips in first class it won't feel so weird having to call a butler.

 

[perthjay85]

And on we go.

Our next hotel and final hotel in Singapore before our cruise was the Marina Bay Sands which I am sure everyone on here knows about. And as it was named by a few people we spoke to "the big hotel with the ship on the top" & "the 3 hotels joined by a surf board on the top".

When booking this hotel I noticed they had a honeymoon package which we booked. This included free breakfasts & free afternoon tea at Club 555. Also other bonuses such as free chocolate covered strawberries and gourmet chocolates + champagne on arrival (this was not that nice, but the thought was lovely). Also included is a VIP experience at TWG tea boutique, however neither of us are big tea drinkers.

The day before check in I was sent an email from Marina Bay Sands which would speed up the check-in process, This would enable us to use the hotel facilities even if our room wasn't ready. I thought that was a great idea.

When we arrived to Tower 1 we were greeted by a really nice guy that asked what room we were staying in, After finding my paperwork and informing him our room was the Orchid Suite city view he pointed us to an entrance next to the check-in desks. This is called the "Sands Lounge" in here you get to sit on some comfortable lounges and have access to soft drinks and coffee machine until you are called to check in. This made the start of our stay very pleasant indeed. Especially considering we were checking in at 10am and our room was already ready. This is the most efficient hotel I have ever been to.

Here we have the entrance to the Sands Lounge: ( I thought it best not to take a photo inside the lounge as it was quite busy)

This was our champagne and chocolates awaiting our arrival:

And our bed that was set up for us as a part of the honeymoon package:

The room truly was incredibly large, The photo's don't really do it justice:

I did do a quick walk through which took nearly 1 minute to do. And I will see in the future if I can upload it somewhere.

Then next we have the amazing pool. Our family business has been in the pool industry for over 35 years so this was my choice of
hotel, Ever since I saw it being built on the Discovery channel I have wanted to stay at this hotel.

This first photo is not mine but just to give some people an idea of the pool:

Here are my lovely Volcom slides:

And the amazing view from the pool: ( I do have a bigger photo but imagebb thought it was too big)

And finally this was the incredible view from our room window:

Now like the other posts I really could go on and on about this hotel and upload more photos, But I think I will leave it there for now and after I have finished detailing the trip I will come back and add more photos in the future.

If I think of anything else about this hotel I will add to this post or add it to the next post.
But the next post will be of our actual honeymoon, The cruise itself. We booked the cruise initially and then decided it could be our honeymoon and then we just started adding these awesome hotels before we even got on the ship.

Also if anyone has any questions about anything feel free to ask and I'll try my best to answer them.

So stay tuned.

Jay & Michelle.

 

[Pushka]

When we stayed at the Marina Bay we went to the Pool around sunset and it was packed with people all wearing their white bath robes. People were eating all sorts of food, many whilst sitting in the water. It was all quite peculiar.

 

[perthjay85]

When we stayed at the Marina Bay we went to the Pool around sunset and it was packed with people all wearing their white bath robes. People were eating all sorts of food, many whilst sitting in the water. It was all quite peculiar.

Things haven't changed that much it would appear then, All of that stuff still happens.

 

[Pushka]

Things haven't changed that much it would appear then, All of that stuff still happens.

What is with that? @love_the_life and I had our eyeballs bleached. It was like we had stumbled on some giant cult meeting as everyone had dressed the same. A caste of thousands, fully packed with people, and eating stuff in the pool.

 

[perthjay85]

What is with that? @love_the_life and I had our eyeballs bleached. It was like we had stumbled on some giant cult meeting as everyone had dressed the same. A caste of thousands, fully packed with people, and eating stuff in the pool.

I have no idea.I just enjoyed the pool and the view and paid little attention to others. Apart from the very attentive lifeguards who made sure no kids entered the adults pool section, they were on the ball those guys.

 

[Boca68]

You do realise @perthjay85 , you are going to have to live up to this for the rest of your life?

But, seriously, what a fantastic honeymoon. Makes ours of 2 nights at Inkaterra Hacienda, Urubamba seem mundane. (But I seriously recommend it if for your 2nd honeymoon ) Just don't look at the credit card statement for a while....

 

[perthjay85]

You do realise @perthjay85 , you are going to have to live up to this for the rest of your life?

But, seriously, what a fantastic honeymoon. Makes ours of 2 nights at Inkaterra Hacienda, Urubamba seem mundane. (But I seriously recommend it if for your 2nd honeymoon ) Just don't look at the credit card statement for a while....

Haha I know what you mean, I feel we'll never reach these heights again "literally" but I think it was well worth it. And we are both avoiding the credit card statements, just throwing money at the cards now haha.

That hacienda does look amazing. I just had a very quick look and it's somewhere I would love to go in the future. Thanks for the headsup.

 

[JohnM]

Good on you, folks. I'm sure you won't do this sort of thing for the rest of your life (and, frankly, why would you? - it would quickly become boring). You've chosen to have a blow-out blast at an important event in your life.

I really admire the effort you put into putting this together, mate.

As a single traveller, hotels like that are not my thing, but raved-about restaurants and winerys around the world are. Each to their own.

You can now walk away saying you've made your own judgement of what the fuss was about. The fact that you've given various hyped things a crack and made up your own mind is the most important thing IMHO.

Don't die wondering, but always be prepared to be disappointed, (and always keep your sense of humour) is my enduring motto...

Best wishes for the future.

 

[perthjay85]

Good on you, folks. I'm sure you won't do this sort of thing for the rest of your life (and, frankly, why would you? - it would quickly become boring). You've chosen to have a blow-out blast at an important event in your life.

I really admire the effort you put into putting this together, mate.

As a single traveller, hotels like that are not my thing, but raved-about restaurants and winerys around the world are. Each to their own.

You can now walk away saying you've made your own judgement of what the fuss was about. The fact that you've given various hyped things a crack and made up your own mind is the most important thing IMHO.

Don't die wondering, but always be prepared to be disappointed, (and always keep your sense of humour) is my enduring motto...

Best wishes for the future.

Thanks @JohnM I really appreciate the comments.

I understand exactly what you mean that a holiday is each to their own.

I hope Michelle doesn't read your comment because she is a foodie at heart and loves wine, she might want to tag along on your next expedition.

Cheers for the comments once again.

 

[perthjay85]

So we are now ready to move on to the cruise section of our honeymoon.
Before we booked flights or hotels we booked the cruise, this is what the entire honeymoon was all about, We just decided to improve on it
with amazing hotels and incredible flights.

Our cruise took us from Singapore to Brisbane over 14 nights. We had been on this ship just the year before. The ship is the P&O Cruises Pacific Aria. She is quite a small ship but something we were very familiar with. We sprung for a suite on this ship and it certainly didn't disappoint.

Thanks to booking the suite we got some great perks, namely priority embarkation which made us one of if not the first people on board, This allowed us to hunt out the sign up sheets for the Whiskey tasting, the martini classes and the mixology classes (We will get to them later on) and Also make a few bookings at the Salt grill on board.

Now as I have explained before I am not the best photographer and blog/review writer but I will post a few pictures of the room:

Another nice display left on the bed for us:

and some sparkling brut and canapes:

Over the next few posts I will try and detail a bit more about the ship, I didn't take a lot of photos or notes on the ship as I have done this previously. Unfortunately I have no idea where they are, If I find them I will be able to post some more stuff as we go along.

Also I will add some information and pics from our visits to Bali, Komodo island & Cairns.
Also a little information of what an earthquake feels like at sea.

Stay tuned.

Jay & Michelle