The intention today was to find the Pan Pacific Orchard a hotel which was voted Best Tall Building in the world in 2024 which my research suggested was near Istana, the President’s residence in Singapore which is located in Orchard Rd at the end nearest to our hotel.
Having walked to the area around Istana no hotel was found so asked an individual who after looking it up on his phone said it was further along the road so off we went again just as a motorcade with outriders and numerous vehicles came down the road at speed with all other traffic brought to a standstill.
Not too much further along Sherry spotted the flagship store of a clothing retailer she likes so a detour was made and some time was spent, coming out with another bag of goodies.
Now using our own Google maps we found the PPO up Claymore Hill which is off Orchard Rd and in my opinion not an ideal position for such an iconic building nevertheless the building is quite eye catching.
The building has around 7000 sq. ft of greenery over the building and four open aired terraces – it looks very different from all the other hotels in Singapore.
When we returned to Orchard Rd we were now at “the far end” and we saw the Isetan, a large department store so not near Istana!
By now we were well into the afternoon so found a café for lunch and a sit down following which we started the walk back to the hotel. On the way back at an intersection traffic in one direction was stopped so we stood around to see what was going to happen and sure enough the same motorcade we had seen previously was now returning to the Presidential residence.
A Google told us that it was a visit to Singapore by the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, To Lam.
After it passed we continued back to the hotel now feeling quite drained due to the muggy conditions and soon after we were into the pool though that was cut short due to it beginning to rain so we retired to our room later crossing over to Raffles City for a touch more shopping and dinner.
During the afternoon news filtered in that one of our usual four had a hole in one on the ninth at Pupuke today – well done Tony M and good to see that he can break 90 again as it has been a few rounds since he last achieved it!
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