Two Weeks Away

Today we had a (relatively) quieter day – I was meeting up with a couple of my ex-students, L and M, who live in Singapore. They were in excellent spirits and happily wandered around with us for a few hours.

L has a bit of an obsession about Korea (I think there’s a male popstar involved), so she was very keen to take us to a Korean place for lunch. However, she had also heard that Rendezvous restaurant in the Central shopping centre near Clarke Quay was great too, so we went there. It was tasty – a bit of pick and mix where you choose your meats and vegies and it’s brought to you with a plate of rice. I had a yummy rendang curry, squid/cuttlefish and baked eggplant.

Have bubble tea, will travel

Next was back to the shopping strip of Orchard Rd. We had to go pick up orders from Far East Plaza, so the girls took us to some of their favourite Orchard Rd places, such as the *SCAPE mall where they have flea markets and young designers and stalls, and we HAD to have Bubble Tea (apparently the “real” stuff here will change your life). I’m not 100% sure about changing my life, but the ginger milk tea with pearls I had was pretty nice!

We waved goodbye to the girls at Far East Plaza, and picked up our orders without any dramas – a bit of a sigh of relief since we’re leaving tomorrow morning!

Chinatown

The evening was taken up with a stroll around the Chinatown markets, which were so much less crowded than when we were there on Saturday night! We all bought more trinkets and souvenirs, but surprisingly, none of us had bought shoes today!

Dinner was again at the Chinatown hawker centre, where we stuck to some of our favourites – sugarcane juice, pork rice dumplings and Haianese chicken rice.

A wonderful last night of the trip!

Today’s focus was on more touristy stuff again, as well as some more shopping… Who’da thought?

We started out at Little India again, which seemed like a different place when compared to the weekend! At Mustafa we were actually able to get around easily, and found a new shoe section (yay for sparkly thongs!) and a huge kidswear section, which unfortunately smelled like someone had left a full nappy somewhere 😦

After paying for our purchases, we headed to Arab St and Kampong Glam, the Muslim quarter, next. Anything with “glam” in the name works for me! Arab St is a short section of shops alternating fabrics, carpets, more fabrics, haberdashery, perfumes, carpets, cafes etc. I didn’t end up buying fabric this time, but I did pick up some haverdashery and jewellery making supplies.

The gals at the Long Bar

Next stop was The Raffles for a Singapore Sling in the Long Bar. It’s still the same: expensive drinks, colonial decor, peanut shells on the floor.

The floor at the Long Bar – so untidy! 😉

The Sling helped us make a detour into Robinson’s, another department store on our way to the MRT, where all three of us made successful shoe purchases. I think we’ll all have to clean out our shoe collections when we get home!

On our way back to the hotel, we swung past Far East Plaza to pick up the necklaces I’d ordered on Saturday, and ordered some earrings to be made up for Mum. No haggling this time – I hope that means because I’d already bought something he was giving me a good price, but we were all so tired I couldn’t be bothered bargaining.

Tonight’s dinner was a Singapore must-have – black pepper crab. We’d been told by a few people that the best place is on the East Coast, where there’s a bunch of seafood restaurants all together on the shore, and the quality and price is good because of the competition. We eventually chose Long Beach restaurant, as it was the busiest one.

Coconut

I started out with a drinking coconut, which has completely converted me – a meal and a drink all in one! The coconut water is really refreshing, and the fresh coconut meat is soft and sweet – perfect! Food-wise, we had razor clams, prawns and cuttlefish (yum) before moving on to the main attraction: the black pepper crab. The crab meat was succulent and tender and perfectly sauced with the tangy black pepper. Wow! What a meal.

L & L with crab!

What a day!

Walking to Sentosa – turn left at the giant flower!

We decided to pack in as much as possible today, as we only have a couple of days left here. So we headed off to Sentosa Island first off, catching the train down to Harbourfront station and then walking the Boardwalk across to the island.

Universal Studios

First stop was the obligatory photo in front of the Universal Studios world, of course, closely followed by what was intended to be a brief stop in the American-style candy store, Candylicious. Yum.

Candy!

K and I headed off on the shuttle bus to find Underwater World, where they have a fish spa, where Turkish Hammam fish nibble at your feet to remove dead skin, before having a reflexology massage. This was incredibly ticklish, but highly recommended! My feet feel much smoother now.

Fiiiiish!

Then we headed back to the main Resort World section to see the giant Merlion statue and have a Pink Thyme Lemonade at Slappy Cakes (a make-your-own pancake place with hotplates built into the tables. The lemonade was nice though!) before catching the monorail back to Singapore.

Pink Thyme Lemonade

We grabbed some food from a food hall on our way through for lunch (avocado milkshake is really creamy and tasty!) before hopping in a taxi to take us to the zoo for our next two activities: The River Safari and the Night Safari.

The Famous Merlion

The river safari is based around the biggest rivers in the world, so there’s sections on the Amazon, the Nile, the Ganges, and even the Murray! (all of two metres of exhibits for the Murray though). We did the Amazon River Quest boat ride first. We were under the impression that it was an actual boat, but instead it was a mechanical boat on wheels that trundled around a water-filled channel, going past many animal exhibits and occasionally going down some “rapids” where we rolled down a 1m hill in the water. It was fun, but the rest of the safari was actually more interesting, with things like the beautiful giant otters (just like big dogs wearing flippers) and the phenomenal panda exhibit.

The Amazon ride

Mega-Otters

The Fire Foxes (red panda) are gorgeous, and they look like foxes! They were all sleeping when we came through unfortunately, but one of the pandas was awake and munching on some of his 20kg of bamboo for the day! He really looked like a human wearing an animal suit – not sure if it’s because they have thumbs, or whether it’s just that the black patches around the eyes make them look so fake, but they really look human!

Irony in the Panda Enclosure

Panda lunch!

Sleepy red panda

The fish didn’t quite have the same emotional appeal, but there were piranha who all turn to stare balefully en masse at any humans who look into their tank, stingrays and all sorts of aquatic mammals too.

Panda themed mango slushie

Next stop was the Night Safari. Nicely played by the Zoo, all of the other exhibits close at 6pm, but the Night Safari doesn’t open its doors until 7pm for a 7.30 start, so there’s an enforced hour of sitting around either eating overpriced food or shopping in the overpriced gift shops! 🙂

Fire!

The gals waiting for the show (tired!)

The Night Safari is completely worth the wait though. As you wait for it to open, there are fire breathing dancers, and then the Creatures of the Night performance showcases some of the better trained animals in this part of the zoo, such as otters who recycle, civets who dangle from the ropes above our heads, and gorgeous owls who stare thoughtfully at the audience. There was even a large boa constrictor who was casually draped around a “volunteer”s shoulders as he looked increasingly worried.

Beautiful owl

Spectacular civet!

Since the queue for the tram ride around the exhibit was about 300 people deep, we decided to do the walking trails first. The Fishing Cat trail was first up, and included my favourite, the fishing cat, who was obligingly posed, trying to fish while the noisy humans kept scaring away all his fish.

Fishing kitty

There were bats, deer and mouse-deer, more civets, small-clawed otter, larger animals like the lions and various cattle, but we were a but disappointed in the leopard. He seemed to take us in dislike, as it was over in one side of the enclosure when we were on the other side, then we walked to the other side prompting it to move to the other side, and then it all happened again! It even came right up to the edge of the enclosure to look at the other groups as we were scurrying between the two sides… ah well!

The elusive leopard

The servets were absolutely gorgeous, coming right up to us to check us out, and allowing us to take photos even though it was really dark by this point. Wish I could fit one into my carry-on, but I don’t think Dinah would be too impressed!! 🙂

Servet

We ended up back at the main entrance area as the crowd was diminishing somewhat, which was perfectly timed. The queue for the tram only had about 20 people in it now, so we were able to hop onto the first tram that arrived, and it took us for a wider circle of the exhibits. This time we saw more of the larger animals, and closer, such as the hyenas, pigs, hippo, rhino, and the elusive tiger that we couldn’t see earlier (but he was safely behind glass!)

We returned to the hotel utterly exhausted but really happy. We experienced a lot today!

Today was another shopping day – yay!
K arrived late last night, and wanted to get some clothes made while she’s here, so first stop was Far East Plaza again to talk to some tailors. We went to the one I’d been to before, and they did a good job working with K’s ideas – and they can get her dress and jacket done by Thursday night! Gorgeous silk fabrics, too. I was thinking of getting some stuff copied, but the tailor we were talking to said the things I wanted copied weren’t really worth having them make, since they don’t really work with stretch fabrics. Bummer!

I looked around for more jewellery, and ended up buying some loose pearls to make my wedding jewellery, rather than getting it made up. As soon as they hear “wedding”, the price goes up to the thousands, and even when I say I have a beer (or diet coke) budget, the jewellers don’t really seem to want to compromise on their ideas!

Next stop was the Orchard ION mall – another huge centre with lots of high end and medium-end shops. The food hall was amazing – lots of international food and very very fresh seafood.

Crabs waiting for lunch…

We unearthed a Swarovski shop which had a good sale section, and I found some cute charms (a martini glass and a champagne bottle) on sale, to add to the gorgeous charm bracelet K gave me for my birthday.

Charm bracelet

A few of the gals back home were interested in picking up some Sephora makeup so we headed upstairs to the store, which is one of the biggest, apparently! Unfortunately, being big didn’t mean they had the same makeup as the US ones, so even though I had a list of 10 things to look for for various people, I could only find one of them! Shopping fail for me…

Eventually we took the train back to the hotel. Our station at Clarke Quay has some fantastic advertising on it – “Fabulous Seaweed” is my favourite!

Station advertising

After sharing a bottle of duty free Veuve, we giggled our way downstairs to try the hotel’s buffet dinner. We started with prawns, mussels and sushi, and worked through curry crab (messy!) sambal chicken, eggplant salad, thyme fish, satay skewers, then finished up with cheese, shot glass desserts, ice cream (including purple yam icecream!) but gave a miss to the Durian mousse (ergh…)

We managed to roll upstairs, just, for an early night – we’re planning on Sentosa Island and the Zoo tomorrow, which will be a big one.

I’m back in Singapore. I kinda had itchy feet towards the end of last year, right around the time Scoot airlines announced starting flights to Perth, and they had an awesome sale… so here I am! 🙂

This time I’m here with L and K – K is meeting us tonight, and L flew over with me. We landed at some ungodly hour, and took a taxi straight to the hotel. The taxi driver was doing his best to make his car airborne – I quite appreciated his taxi computer which kept popping up “Please slow down”! We did reach the hotel in one piece though, and went straight to sleep, after marvelling at the french door-like windows out to nothingness on the 16th floor. Thank goodness the windows are locked, or my fear of heights might kick into overdrive!

Day 1 was a bit of a wandering around kinda day. We headed out to explore Clarke Quay, but it was pretty dead since it’s a night spot, so we walked up to Orchard Rd for shopping. Shopping, shopping, shopping! We’ve come across shops with some very interesting names. Heavenly Wangs, Wonder Buns, Skinny and the Crack Factory… all much fun.

Skinny and the Crack Factory. Hmm…

After trekking through a number of large, very airconditioned malls (and finding very interesting things like the mega-blingy shoe shop Anna Nucci which has lovely but pushy sales assistants… until you decide not to buy, when they get quite nasty! After doing some research online, it seems that each pair of shoes you might be interested in is the last pair in that size in the whole city, so you’d better buy them now…) we stopped for a mani-pedi (it’s a holiday after all!) which provided a bit of a rest for our tired feet.

Anna Nucci’s fabulous shoes. (I got told off for taking the photo…)

Then the malls continued, with Paragon, the very high-end one, filled with Gucci, Prada, and lots of other shops out of my price range. You can tell, because some shops only had about three items in each one!

Next we headed to Tangs, another big department store, again filled with *very*attentive* staff. All except one lass at the MAC counter, where I actually wanted to buy something, and she was more interested in her own makeup than helping others buy some! So I didn’t, and we headed up Scott’s Rd to Far East Plaza, home of jewellers and tailors. I was planning on just looking, but ended up ordering a set of necklaces for my bridesmaids, to pick up later in the week. I asked for a quote for the style of necklace I’m thinking about for the wedding, but since the price started at $850, I don’t think I’ll be going for that one in real pearls and stones!

Chinatown

A bit exhausted after the haggling session, we decided to head out to dinner. We’d heard Chinatown was pretty happening that night, so we stayed on the train and went straight there. It was pretty packed! There were hordes of people all through the markets lanes, and when we finally made it to the food hall, it was teeming. We picked up some of the awesome steamed rice dumplings (the bbq pork one is the best!), some roast duck, a strange glutinous rice dish, and some sugar cane juice to wash it down. We got talking to a couple of American guys who, in the course of the conversation, told me I really needed to visit Chicago, since two of the three places I’d visited in the US were the “most overrated cities in the US”! R will be happy – he’s wanting to go there when we head to the States later in the year…

You can tell this place has good food by the length of the “Q” – this is where we got the yummy rice dumplings

Roast Duck… still with heads.

Sugar cane being juiced

We left the Chinatown Centre and walked into huge crowds. Unbeknownst to us, there were huge Lunar New Year celebrations happening, even though there’s still a couple of weeks to go. Roads were blocked off, there were huge lit lantern displays and a concert.

Chinatown – party time!

After watching for a bit, we decided to head back to the hotel. Unfortunately I read the map upside down, and we headed directly away from the hotel for a while, but realised soon enough! Interesting sights on the way home included the well-named Ministry of Manpower and a huge fireworks display!

Very footsore after yesterday’s trek around the city, we thought we’d have a less strenuous day today. Hmm. We thought we’d check out some of the electronics offerings, and walked over to Funan Mall, only a few blocks from our hotel. Unfortunately we forgot that it was Sunday and things open later in the morning, so we had a lot of time looking in windows before the shops opened!

Seats at the sushi shop in Funan Mall

Interesting food at the food hall in Funan Mall

The offerings of electronics was varied and large, but the prices weren’t that different from home, so it wasn’t really worthwhile buying anything there. Since we’d heard Mustafa Centre in Little India was pretty good on electronics prices, we decided to head there next.

A section of the fabric section at Mustafa Centre

When we hopped off the train and into Little India, it felt like another country altogether. Crowds of people were walking in the streets instead of keeping to the footpaths like everywhere else in Singapore, and we felt like the only tourists there for a while! The Mustafa Centre is like a huge department store crossed with markets – not a lot of personal space, huge amounts of stuff with not a lot of organisation, and hundreds and hundreds of people thronging the place.

Instead of electronics, I found some awesome other stuff – an incredibly blingy abaya to use as as dancing cover-up (even blingier than the one I got in Morocco, if you can believe it!) and some fabulously blingy cheap shoes. We did check out the electronics section, since L was looking for some stuff, and it was even busier than the other levels! We found what we needed and got out as quickly as we could – we were both getting a bit claustrophobic in there!

We wended our way back to the hotel for a bit of a sit down before we head out for dinner, and then we will head out to the airport to collect K who is flying in tonight! Fabulous! 🙂