Singapore jaunt, Days 1, 2 & 3

This school holidays I’ve headed up to Singapore with my friend K and her 7-year-old, M.

We hit the ground running in Singapore. After the midnight flight, we were pretty tired, but couldn’t check into the hotel straight away.

We decided to have a jaunt on the hop-on-hop-off bus to kill some time before check-in, which set off from Suntec City. The top floor of the bus was the place to be: the best view (even for those of us who are afraid of heights). Unfortunately we didn’t take into account the possibility of rain… which began as a few refreshing drops and became a deluge of biblical proportions within seconds. After waiting for a few minutes for it to stop (it didn’t), we sloshed our way down the slippery steps and into the bus proper, where we dripped our way around the last 40 mins of the loop, shivering from the airconditioning.

Still looking like drowned rats, we killed more time at Suntec on our return, popping into Starbucks for a restorative (and spendy) latte, hitting H&M and INIQLO to look at clothes (and look we did — even though we had the intention of picking up something to change into from our still-damp clothes, most shops here only stock clothing up to size M — literally, the clothes say they go up to XL, but XS, S, M or the very occasional L is all that is on shelves). We also had yummy Malaysian food at PappaRich for lunch, before heading to the hotel to finally check in. Nap ahoy!

 

Fraser Place is lovely. Very family-oriented, the rooms are mostly apartments, and very well-sized for Singapore! Ours has two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchenette with a washing machine! Such a useful thing here — even without our unexpected shower, with the humidity plus swimming, we’re going through a few changes of clothes each day. The staff are friendly and helpful, too.

Our second day began with a visit to the Jacob Ballas Children’s Park at the Botanical Gardens. There’s some great attractions here for kids and parents alike: the water play area where we spent most of our time, the treehouse, the maze, the sensory garden (fish herb anyone?!?!)

The afternoon was spent catching up with a friend, C, who is a part-time expat. We swam in the amazing pool at her complex, before heading to Orchard Rd to do some shopping. It was interesting to see the high-density housing Singapore uses. It looks like something out of Bladerunner, but also has all the mod cons you’d want: a gym, pool, function area etc, and all in futuristic-looking buildings. Australia needs to look at this sort of thing…

Then it was the shops. After wearing thongs/flip flops all afternoon, I was keen to find some comfortable shoes (I’d brought “nice” shoes and walking sandals with me, but the sandals weren’t as supportive as I’d hoped). Unfortunately as we’d found with the clothes the day before, the shoes mostly only went up to a size 9 (which fit more like a size 8) and many of the shop assistants looked at me like I was from the moon when I asked for larger sizes. We finally lit upon a Skechers shop, and I had success finding a black and silver glittered pair of sneakers. Ahhh bliss! I was very disappointed that the ultra-cute animal-design flats didn’t come in my size though, but at least I had comfy shoes!

There was a pop-up Moon Cake market on one of the floors, with huge numbers of different kinds of mooncake, including Starbucks moon cake!

Since we were in the bowels of Orchard Rd (the basement levels go forever!) we hadn’t noticed the time, and it ended up being 9pm by the time we got back to the hotel! We’d found dinner at the food court and snacks (gourmet popcorn!) along the way, but we were pretty spent (in both senses) by the time we got a taxi back to the hotel.

Day 3 was a lot more cruisy. We started the day with a visit to Little India, wandering around the Mustafa Centre until the crowds had us all searching for a quiet spot.

This we found a few blocks away where a juice seller was peddling coconuts and sugar cane juice. We sat in a park nearby enjoying the installation art while we slurped our juices.

We caught up with another friend in the arvo, with a visit to Starbucks, and then moseyed over to Plaza Singapura so K & M could visit Hamleys toy store, and I took the opportunity to have a mani/pedi. Blue glittery polish!

I was amazed that the yum cha restaurant we popped into (Tim Ho Wan) had a Michelin star! I thought they were mostly for more formal dining, but this was pretty good.