July 1, 2008: First, apologies for this being so long...I don't know how it happens!
We left for the Phuket airport at the crack of dawn for our flight on discount airline Asia Air. Getting onboard, Kailani was putting up a fuss and wouldn’t stay in Sean’s arms. Next thing we knew, she was crying about her arm. The flight attendants were nice enough to offer ice packs throughout the flight, but she was still crutching it with her other hand. After a couple hours, we were in country #12. At the Singapore airport, it was pretty plush with foot massaging machines, internet and showers, all free, as well as a 24 hour medical clinic that we stopped into but decided not to wait for the doctor to come while our luggage went around a carousel. We jumped on their MRT (Mass Rapid Transit). It reminded me of Hong Kong as it was clean and efficient and said “Please mind the platform gap.” in perfect British English, as well as Chinese and Indian, I think. Although, people-wise, it’s definitely a land all of it’s own with Malay, Chinese and Indian cultures, as well as a good portion of expats, all living together. Very cool!
We arrived to the middle of the city, near Little India, to Hangout at Mt. Emily hostel - not your average hostel. It’s actually one of the hippest hostels I have ever seen, very clean and modern, decked out with Ikea furniture. It’s not the cheapest, but reasonable for Singapore standards. If only it had at least one thing framed hanging on the wall. Our private room had its own bathroom and view of the city. (No dorm sleeping for us. I wouldn’t subject anyone to sharing a room with Kailani!) On the top of the building, there was a lounge area with a view and an ankle pool, although it wasn’t full. At the bottom of our building, there’s a restaurant with free, unappetizing breakfast. They also offer lunch and dinner, but it’s nice enough that I don’t really have anything to wear. Next door, there’s also a nice park with playground. We figure we haven’t been to one since the indoor one at a Manila shopping mall. But then again, who needs one when you have a pool or a beach! Next door on the other side, there’s a nice bar where you can lounge on the deck in the evenings.
Luckily, Kailani’s arm didn’t seem to bother her after her nap. So, I guess we saved a doctor’s visit. We went down the street to some random dive for a late lunch of one of Singapore’s dishes, chicken rice. We were still pretty wiped out from the early rise, so we didn’t manage to do anything else besides wash stinky beach clothes and go to the bar next door for dinner (which consisted of appetizers, we weren’t too hungry) and a couple pretty good Bloody Mary’s for me and Sean tried the Singapore Sling.
Singapore has a pretty long list of tourist attractions to offer and I was also looking forward to hitting all their food stalls. With only 5 days there, we were originally just going to jump in right away and see what we could tackle. But, the next morning, Sean was still feeling wiped out. So instead, we decided get business done our first day - hit the post office to pick up a package we had mailed to us via Post Restante that never arrived, mail home another package of junk, get a new SIM card for the phone and do some shopping. Most would think of shopping as picking up local handicraft souvenirs or getting a new wardrobe. But for me, that meant going to a natural health food store. They haven’t existed in the past 2 months of trekking throughout the Philippines or Thailand, So, it felt like I was back in civilization again! We also haven’t seen a laundry machine in that long, which hasn’t been a problem to hand wash most of our clothes. But, my poor jeans (only warn occasionally), our sleep sheets and our towels haven’t been washed since the UK. Also in the Philippines and Thailand, you can’t really find anything “natural” there (except coconut oil and aloe vera in lieu of lotion in Thailand). So, we went to a store called SuperNatural for non-chemical laundry liquid and body products. It sucks to have sensitive skin like me! I got so excited over all the organic food, that I walked out with a large bag (a reusable one, which the guy commented I must not be from Singapore, because nobody ever brings their own…) FULL of kombucha, Newman’s Spelt Pretzels, wheat free vegan chocolate cookies, some fruit to eat for the day and other snacks. It’s probably a good thing that we didn’t have a fridge, or even a kitchen for that matter, or else I would have bought sheep yogurt, goat milk and everything else in the store. I say “good thing” because the prices were EXORBITANT. A 16 oz bottle of High Country Kombucha, produced in Colorado, ended up costing $18.50 Singapore dollars ($13.60 USD). One bottle! I made Sean turn away from the register as the guy totaled the bill. AND after all that, I didn’t walk out with any laundry liquid or body products! Somehow, I never saw them on the shelves…
Then, we had lunch and witnessed Singapore’s “real” national past time, shopping. We strolled down Orchard Road, their big shopping street with side-by-side mega malls. Although Sean commented that the guys look pretty “normal”, we both noticed that there were some extreme fashionista Asian women, mostly decked out with short, straight bangs, pale skin, lots of eyeliner, high heels and short, what Sean calls “garbage bag” mini dresses. Inside one mall, Paragon, they had stores like YSL, Gucci and Versace. There was also a Shu Uemura “Tokyo Lash Bar”, where you could get very obviously fake lashes of every length and thickness as well as blue ones, ones made of lace, or spider webbed ones. That was a trip!
After that, we got pretty sick of carrying a bag full of groceries. So we headed back to our hostel. Sean was still feeling wiped out and then proceeded to get very sick. I hope it wasn’t that his body went into shock with such healthy food after not having it in a couple months! And, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t anything he ate for lunch, because we shared. But, it could have been a bug that I had, but worse. Because I wasn’t feeling well two days before we left Thailand. All I know is he was sicker than anything I’ve ever seen in him. Kailani and I went downstairs to the “fancy” restaurant for dinner. Unfortunately, there were no others close by. I had to play a movie on the PSP (held under the table to be discreet) to keep her entertained and quiet. When we finished our Chilean sea bass, we brought some plain congee up to Sean.
On day 2, we were still taking it easy. I was still on a mission to find laundry liquid and body products. We finally found body products at a store called Brown Rice Paradise, and laundry liquid at a chain grocery store, Marketplace, which is similar to Andronico’s or Droeger’s in CA. They had cantaloupe from Japan that costs $100 Singapore dollars (~$66 USD), although it did appear absolutely perfect. Then, we went to Japanese for lunch. Sean was able to stomach some udon. Later, we hit the park next to our hostel for some playground time and research on Bali. We felt good enough to adventure out that night, so we went to the Lavender Street Hawker Centre. Hawker Centers are basically food courts, ie a bunch of food stalls, and they are ALL OVER this city. Our guide book mentioned that this one is less frequented by tourists. But I swear, Sean was the only white guy (and only half-white at that!) that I saw there. We went to the stall with the longest line and found they had dumpling noodles. It tasted great! We also got a couple dim sum plates simply because it sounded good. Sean mentioning that the siu mai was one of the best he’s tried, even though he was still only able to eat one bite. Of course, we had to wash it down with some of Singapore’s Tiger Beer, the replacement for Thailand’s Singha and Chang.
The next day, we ventured to the Singapore Zoo. Normally, I’m not one that likes to see animals all caged up. But, this zoo was really a world class zoo, with natural surroundings that made the animals not appear caged. They also had a great selection of exotic tropical animals – all the one’s that are really fun to see, and they looked happy to be in that climate! They had the world’s largest collection of primates, including a bunch of free roaming orangutans that hung out on the tree tops above the trails where you walked. It really made you feel as if you were just walking through a jungle with paved walkways, not your typical zoo. We had such a good time there, we ended up staying until they closed, rather than what I thought would be a couple hours. We figured we were on a roll, so we decided to walk next door to see the Night Safari next. The Night Safari’s grounds are entirely different, but are under the same management as the zoo. It focuses more on nocturnal animals. For that one, our feet were getting tired, so we took a guided tour on a tram, followed by seeing a show that was pretty entertaining.
On day 4, we were still on a mission to sample everything Singapore has to eat in their Hawker Centres. This time, we took the MRT to Chinatown. Originally, we were looking for the Chinatown Complex Food Centre. But somehow, we ended up at the Maxwell Road Food Centre. Our guide book said that this was one of the best anyway. Again, I just chose the stall with the longest line. This time, I had rice porridge with fish. Sean didn’t luck out as much. He wanted the Dragon Soup Dumpling, but they were all out. Instead, he got the gyoza and chive pancakes, which were just OK. So then, he ended up also getting some roasted duck and rice, which ended up being better. We were stuffed, AND we were still a bit tired from all the walking the day before. So, we ended up deciding to see Singapore’s Chinatown by their old fashioned mode of transportation, a trishaw, even though it is now just a tourist attraction. I was happy when they settled for more than half of the quoted price, as I wasn’t expecting them to agree to that low. It’s basically a bike with a sidecar attachment. It was great! We hired someone to burn sweat rather than burning any CO2 into the air. Our guide showed us around, pointing out various buildings and temples while dodging people and cars. Later that night, we decided to try Singapura Restaurant because it was right down the hill from us. At first, we couldn’t find it. It ended up being in the ground floor of what appeared to be an apartment building. As we entered, Sean noticed a picture of Anthony Bourdain from the Travel Network show, No Reservations. The place appeared to be famous for their cold crab, which we of course got. We also tried the Kway Teow (sautéed broad rice noodles) and an excellent dish of scallops with broccoli. Overall, we felt like we stumbled upon a great hole-in-the-wall.
Our last day there, we figured we still didn’t get a chance to get any Indian food, although we WERE technically staying in Little India, granted our place was really on a hill above it. So, we headed to the Tekka Mall food court for lunch. I was a bit bummed that there was really only one Indian food stall. When I attempted to order something, their naan bread was still not done. So instead, I ended up with another Singapore dish, curry chicken noodles. (I think the later’s called Laska.) Eh, it was alright. After that, we packed up, took the MRT back to the airport and, after some free beer, playground time with Kailani’s new friend Noemi from France and spending the afternoon hanging out at the pretty nice Singapore airport, we finally took off to Bali via Singapore Airlines that evening.
We left for the Phuket airport at the crack of dawn for our flight on discount airline Asia Air. Getting onboard, Kailani was putting up a fuss and wouldn’t stay in Sean’s arms. Next thing we knew, she was crying about her arm. The flight attendants were nice enough to offer ice packs throughout the flight, but she was still crutching it with her other hand. After a couple hours, we were in country #12. At the Singapore airport, it was pretty plush with foot massaging machines, internet and showers, all free, as well as a 24 hour medical clinic that we stopped into but decided not to wait for the doctor to come while our luggage went around a carousel. We jumped on their MRT (Mass Rapid Transit). It reminded me of Hong Kong as it was clean and efficient and said “Please mind the platform gap.” in perfect British English, as well as Chinese and Indian, I think. Although, people-wise, it’s definitely a land all of it’s own with Malay, Chinese and Indian cultures, as well as a good portion of expats, all living together. Very cool!
We arrived to the middle of the city, near Little India, to Hangout at Mt. Emily hostel - not your average hostel. It’s actually one of the hippest hostels I have ever seen, very clean and modern, decked out with Ikea furniture. It’s not the cheapest, but reasonable for Singapore standards. If only it had at least one thing framed hanging on the wall. Our private room had its own bathroom and view of the city. (No dorm sleeping for us. I wouldn’t subject anyone to sharing a room with Kailani!) On the top of the building, there was a lounge area with a view and an ankle pool, although it wasn’t full. At the bottom of our building, there’s a restaurant with free, unappetizing breakfast. They also offer lunch and dinner, but it’s nice enough that I don’t really have anything to wear. Next door, there’s also a nice park with playground. We figure we haven’t been to one since the indoor one at a Manila shopping mall. But then again, who needs one when you have a pool or a beach! Next door on the other side, there’s a nice bar where you can lounge on the deck in the evenings.
Luckily, Kailani’s arm didn’t seem to bother her after her nap. So, I guess we saved a doctor’s visit. We went down the street to some random dive for a late lunch of one of Singapore’s dishes, chicken rice. We were still pretty wiped out from the early rise, so we didn’t manage to do anything else besides wash stinky beach clothes and go to the bar next door for dinner (which consisted of appetizers, we weren’t too hungry) and a couple pretty good Bloody Mary’s for me and Sean tried the Singapore Sling.
Singapore has a pretty long list of tourist attractions to offer and I was also looking forward to hitting all their food stalls. With only 5 days there, we were originally just going to jump in right away and see what we could tackle. But, the next morning, Sean was still feeling wiped out. So instead, we decided get business done our first day - hit the post office to pick up a package we had mailed to us via Post Restante that never arrived, mail home another package of junk, get a new SIM card for the phone and do some shopping. Most would think of shopping as picking up local handicraft souvenirs or getting a new wardrobe. But for me, that meant going to a natural health food store. They haven’t existed in the past 2 months of trekking throughout the Philippines or Thailand, So, it felt like I was back in civilization again! We also haven’t seen a laundry machine in that long, which hasn’t been a problem to hand wash most of our clothes. But, my poor jeans (only warn occasionally), our sleep sheets and our towels haven’t been washed since the UK. Also in the Philippines and Thailand, you can’t really find anything “natural” there (except coconut oil and aloe vera in lieu of lotion in Thailand). So, we went to a store called SuperNatural for non-chemical laundry liquid and body products. It sucks to have sensitive skin like me! I got so excited over all the organic food, that I walked out with a large bag (a reusable one, which the guy commented I must not be from Singapore, because nobody ever brings their own…) FULL of kombucha, Newman’s Spelt Pretzels, wheat free vegan chocolate cookies, some fruit to eat for the day and other snacks. It’s probably a good thing that we didn’t have a fridge, or even a kitchen for that matter, or else I would have bought sheep yogurt, goat milk and everything else in the store. I say “good thing” because the prices were EXORBITANT. A 16 oz bottle of High Country Kombucha, produced in Colorado, ended up costing $18.50 Singapore dollars ($13.60 USD). One bottle! I made Sean turn away from the register as the guy totaled the bill. AND after all that, I didn’t walk out with any laundry liquid or body products! Somehow, I never saw them on the shelves…
Then, we had lunch and witnessed Singapore’s “real” national past time, shopping. We strolled down Orchard Road, their big shopping street with side-by-side mega malls. Although Sean commented that the guys look pretty “normal”, we both noticed that there were some extreme fashionista Asian women, mostly decked out with short, straight bangs, pale skin, lots of eyeliner, high heels and short, what Sean calls “garbage bag” mini dresses. Inside one mall, Paragon, they had stores like YSL, Gucci and Versace. There was also a Shu Uemura “Tokyo Lash Bar”, where you could get very obviously fake lashes of every length and thickness as well as blue ones, ones made of lace, or spider webbed ones. That was a trip!
After that, we got pretty sick of carrying a bag full of groceries. So we headed back to our hostel. Sean was still feeling wiped out and then proceeded to get very sick. I hope it wasn’t that his body went into shock with such healthy food after not having it in a couple months! And, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t anything he ate for lunch, because we shared. But, it could have been a bug that I had, but worse. Because I wasn’t feeling well two days before we left Thailand. All I know is he was sicker than anything I’ve ever seen in him. Kailani and I went downstairs to the “fancy” restaurant for dinner. Unfortunately, there were no others close by. I had to play a movie on the PSP (held under the table to be discreet) to keep her entertained and quiet. When we finished our Chilean sea bass, we brought some plain congee up to Sean.
On day 2, we were still taking it easy. I was still on a mission to find laundry liquid and body products. We finally found body products at a store called Brown Rice Paradise, and laundry liquid at a chain grocery store, Marketplace, which is similar to Andronico’s or Droeger’s in CA. They had cantaloupe from Japan that costs $100 Singapore dollars (~$66 USD), although it did appear absolutely perfect. Then, we went to Japanese for lunch. Sean was able to stomach some udon. Later, we hit the park next to our hostel for some playground time and research on Bali. We felt good enough to adventure out that night, so we went to the Lavender Street Hawker Centre. Hawker Centers are basically food courts, ie a bunch of food stalls, and they are ALL OVER this city. Our guide book mentioned that this one is less frequented by tourists. But I swear, Sean was the only white guy (and only half-white at that!) that I saw there. We went to the stall with the longest line and found they had dumpling noodles. It tasted great! We also got a couple dim sum plates simply because it sounded good. Sean mentioning that the siu mai was one of the best he’s tried, even though he was still only able to eat one bite. Of course, we had to wash it down with some of Singapore’s Tiger Beer, the replacement for Thailand’s Singha and Chang.
The next day, we ventured to the Singapore Zoo. Normally, I’m not one that likes to see animals all caged up. But, this zoo was really a world class zoo, with natural surroundings that made the animals not appear caged. They also had a great selection of exotic tropical animals – all the one’s that are really fun to see, and they looked happy to be in that climate! They had the world’s largest collection of primates, including a bunch of free roaming orangutans that hung out on the tree tops above the trails where you walked. It really made you feel as if you were just walking through a jungle with paved walkways, not your typical zoo. We had such a good time there, we ended up staying until they closed, rather than what I thought would be a couple hours. We figured we were on a roll, so we decided to walk next door to see the Night Safari next. The Night Safari’s grounds are entirely different, but are under the same management as the zoo. It focuses more on nocturnal animals. For that one, our feet were getting tired, so we took a guided tour on a tram, followed by seeing a show that was pretty entertaining.
On day 4, we were still on a mission to sample everything Singapore has to eat in their Hawker Centres. This time, we took the MRT to Chinatown. Originally, we were looking for the Chinatown Complex Food Centre. But somehow, we ended up at the Maxwell Road Food Centre. Our guide book said that this was one of the best anyway. Again, I just chose the stall with the longest line. This time, I had rice porridge with fish. Sean didn’t luck out as much. He wanted the Dragon Soup Dumpling, but they were all out. Instead, he got the gyoza and chive pancakes, which were just OK. So then, he ended up also getting some roasted duck and rice, which ended up being better. We were stuffed, AND we were still a bit tired from all the walking the day before. So, we ended up deciding to see Singapore’s Chinatown by their old fashioned mode of transportation, a trishaw, even though it is now just a tourist attraction. I was happy when they settled for more than half of the quoted price, as I wasn’t expecting them to agree to that low. It’s basically a bike with a sidecar attachment. It was great! We hired someone to burn sweat rather than burning any CO2 into the air. Our guide showed us around, pointing out various buildings and temples while dodging people and cars. Later that night, we decided to try Singapura Restaurant because it was right down the hill from us. At first, we couldn’t find it. It ended up being in the ground floor of what appeared to be an apartment building. As we entered, Sean noticed a picture of Anthony Bourdain from the Travel Network show, No Reservations. The place appeared to be famous for their cold crab, which we of course got. We also tried the Kway Teow (sautéed broad rice noodles) and an excellent dish of scallops with broccoli. Overall, we felt like we stumbled upon a great hole-in-the-wall.
Our last day there, we figured we still didn’t get a chance to get any Indian food, although we WERE technically staying in Little India, granted our place was really on a hill above it. So, we headed to the Tekka Mall food court for lunch. I was a bit bummed that there was really only one Indian food stall. When I attempted to order something, their naan bread was still not done. So instead, I ended up with another Singapore dish, curry chicken noodles. (I think the later’s called Laska.) Eh, it was alright. After that, we packed up, took the MRT back to the airport and, after some free beer, playground time with Kailani’s new friend Noemi from France and spending the afternoon hanging out at the pretty nice Singapore airport, we finally took off to Bali via Singapore Airlines that evening.
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