My Massive Home Away From Home

I've been getting some requests for a view of my current accommodation.
So here's a brief walking tour of the mega-complex I'm calling home for the next little while.

Foreground: The complex housing the convention centre, shops, casino & theatres
Background: Hotel towers and Skypark
Left Rear: The Singapore Flyer - Gigantic Ferris wheel

My room, my floor, tower 3

This is one of my favourite features. When you enter the room, you deposit your key card into the receptacle and, automatically, the curtains open and the lights come on. And no more pesky "Do Not..." cards to hang on your doorknob. Just push the button.

First thing you see inside the room
is the party shower, big enough for 4 or 5. 6?

Phone by the toilet which means that instead of cutting short my conversation with Michael the other night, I should have just put him on hold and switched offices.

The main room. Unseen closets and small coffee area off to the left.

View of the lagoon from my window. Note Lion King and Elvis Costello on side by side billboards at street level.

Construction on, in and around the property continues on a massive scale. Below is what will be the art museum.

This is just a small piece of what will be a huge nature & recreation park on the ocean side of the hotel. Photo taken from my only visit to the Skypark so far.

I haven't included any photos of the Skypark because I haven't taken any and there are plenty of good ones out there already. Just do a Google image search or visit the Marina Bay Sands website.

As difficult as it is to wrap your head around the size of this place, it's twice as difficult to try to imagine the number of people it takes to run it. Think about it. Casino staff, convention centre staff, assorted front and back of house staff for the dozens of food an beverage outlets, room service waiters, bellboys, concierge staff, front desk staff, house keeping, laundry, security, cleaning staff, gardeners. Literally, thousands and thousands of people.

Because my security pass allows me to pass through portals that the normals are not allowed to enter, I have been to the staff areas in the bowels of the hotel. Row upon row upon row of lockers, a huge staff dining room, even a staff-only 7-11 store. The laundry is massive and they have the coolest system for staff to retrieve their dry cleaned or laundered uniforms. There is a long wall of narrow doors, each door with a push button code panel beside it. You punch in a number, presumably your staff I.D. or similar, or swipe your security pass and the overhead track behind the door rolls around to present your uniform at the little door which then unlocks for you. Fantastic.

We are allowed to use the staff laundry service for free, but it takes a good 3 or 4 days to get your clothes back. Perhaps I'll be washing my smalls in the sink.