Singapore
I'm just going to start by saying please pardon this blogpost. It's not the most high quality one I've ever produced. The photo and video quality is poor, and I'm sweaty in every photo, but I still love it because travel isn't perfect and not every photo will belong in a magazine. But it's exactly how I experienced it, so enjoy.
Monday, June 8th
We arrived in Singapore at 7:30pm and took the metro towards our hostel and walked from there. There had been some confusions with which place we were staying, because apparently there are two places with the same name, so after working out some issues, we will be moving to the other location tomorrow. We are very thankful for how helpful and sweet the staff here has been, but it just isn't what we had planned for. After working out these details and going to get cash, we headed back down to the metro stop where there was a food court. I got crispy noodles (mee hoon?) which were really good, but I struggle to eat hot food when it's so hot and humid outside. I've been sweating since we arrived here, and I have a feeling that's going to be the case for the entire rest of my trip. We came back to our hostel on a different street and came upon a fully lit stadium with crowds cheering and chanting and singing inside. Apparently it is the 28th annual Southeast Asia games going on, and it was so cool to see the crowds going crazy in the stadium...just wish I could have seen the actual sport haha.
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| Our first hostel...not so appealing |
Tuesday, June 9th
So the start of our Tuesday involved walking across town in the pouring rain to our new hostel, the OTHER Green Kiwi. This one is near the Sultan Mosque right along a quaint little shopping street with chairs outside that make for good people watching. We took a little time to our selfs to recoup and sit on the patio before heading out and about. As we were leaving, we could hear singing from inside the mosque that was so beautiful and unique. We started our little journey by going down Haji Lane, which is full of trendy shops, but everything was closed since it was too early. We headed towards a nearby cluster of malls called Bugis and stopped for an ice cream sandwich along the way. I tried durian fruit ice cream which came wrapped in a pink and green piece of bread, and boy was it strong. I know many people here like it and i want to try all the foods that I can't really get at home, but not only is durian stinky, it also tastes like onion. I would say I'm not a fan, and the taste stuck with me the whole rest of the day. At least I gave it a shot eh?
From the ice cream street stall, we went into Bugis mall to take a look at all the shops. It was so huge you could easily get lost. After taking a look at everything, we headed back onto the street where I spotted a cat cafe on the top floor of a building across the street. We decided to investigate, so we headed up three flights of stairs and found it! That's something I wanted to do while I was traveling, so we bought some drinks and went inside. All the kitties were sleeping when we got there, but as the time went on, they all woke up and got very feisty. Charlotte and I made several new friends which we named Mr. Cat, Fluffy, and Grumps. Poor cats were chased around by children and adults trying to take photos of them. Mr. Cat joined us for a while sitting on our table and looking out the window. It was quite an experience, and made me wonder why they chose such an asocial animal for the concept...hmm.
After our feline bonding time, we walked a ways to Little India to have lunch and look around. We ate at a Komala Vilas where I had quite a large pancake type thing filled with potatoes and onions called Masala Dosai. After lunch, we walked down the street, stopping at a beautiful building called the Sri Veeramakaliamman Temple, where people were sitting and praying. It was beautiful to watch and very calming. We went back up the street the other way. The whole neighborhood was filled with beautiful fabric stores and jewelry stores shining with gold. We walked back towards our hostel and this time Haji Lane stores were open, so we made a quick trip down the road. I bought these strange pieces of cookie in a bag and promptly ate them in the hostel room afterwards. After getting all settled into our room, which is meant for 8 girls but only has us, we went back to Bugis for dinner and a movie. We had some amazing sushi and topped it off with Llao Llao frozen yogurt before seeing the movie Aloha. Both Charlotte and I spent a large majority of the movie laughing and looking very confused, because it was one of the strangers films I've ever seen.
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| The view from our beautiful new hostel |
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| The ice cream stall |
From the ice cream street stall, we went into Bugis mall to take a look at all the shops. It was so huge you could easily get lost. After taking a look at everything, we headed back onto the street where I spotted a cat cafe on the top floor of a building across the street. We decided to investigate, so we headed up three flights of stairs and found it! That's something I wanted to do while I was traveling, so we bought some drinks and went inside. All the kitties were sleeping when we got there, but as the time went on, they all woke up and got very feisty. Charlotte and I made several new friends which we named Mr. Cat, Fluffy, and Grumps. Poor cats were chased around by children and adults trying to take photos of them. Mr. Cat joined us for a while sitting on our table and looking out the window. It was quite an experience, and made me wonder why they chose such an asocial animal for the concept...hmm.
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| Haji Lane |
Wednesday, June 10th
We strolled down the streets of Singapore to a little cafe called Artistry and had a leisurely cup of ginger lemon tea first thing in the morning. From there, we went over to Chinatown and walked down a long market street with tons of cool knick knacks. Those are always very tempting to me, but I resisted the urge to buy things. Down the street a ways, we came upon a beautiful building called the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple. We roamed around inside while I took my time taking in all the tiny, intricate details of the place. It was extremely ornate. The walls were covered in thousands of little statues and I tried my best to look at as many as humanly possible.
We were getting pretty hungry after all the walking we had done, so we made a stop at the Maxwell Food court. It was so hot that I didn't even want to eat, especially hot food, but we managed to find a table after quite a bit of searching and Charlotte disappeared in the crowd to go collect her favorite dishes from Singapore. Meanwhile, I was sharing the table with a woman who turned out to be very friendly and very interested in me. She decided to tell me a lot about Singapore and its people and its food, and it was quite fun bonding with a local while we both waited for our friends. Charlotte kept coming back with more and more dishes which all smelled amazing. She brought back carrot cake (not at all what you think!) and popiah. Carrot cake in Singapore comes in two different kinds: black and white. It's actually cubes of radish mixed with egg and soy sauce or something along those lines, and once you get over the name, its really tasty. After our little lunch refresher, we headed to a massive shopping area called Orchard Road where of course we picked up some Llao Llao frozen yogurt. We also browsed a few stores of which there were like millions upon millions and I picked up a few things from H&M, because I needed clothes that weren't so hot.
We strolled down the streets of Singapore to a little cafe called Artistry and had a leisurely cup of ginger lemon tea first thing in the morning. From there, we went over to Chinatown and walked down a long market street with tons of cool knick knacks. Those are always very tempting to me, but I resisted the urge to buy things. Down the street a ways, we came upon a beautiful building called the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple. We roamed around inside while I took my time taking in all the tiny, intricate details of the place. It was extremely ornate. The walls were covered in thousands of little statues and I tried my best to look at as many as humanly possible.
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| Artistry |
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| Chinatown |
We were getting pretty hungry after all the walking we had done, so we made a stop at the Maxwell Food court. It was so hot that I didn't even want to eat, especially hot food, but we managed to find a table after quite a bit of searching and Charlotte disappeared in the crowd to go collect her favorite dishes from Singapore. Meanwhile, I was sharing the table with a woman who turned out to be very friendly and very interested in me. She decided to tell me a lot about Singapore and its people and its food, and it was quite fun bonding with a local while we both waited for our friends. Charlotte kept coming back with more and more dishes which all smelled amazing. She brought back carrot cake (not at all what you think!) and popiah. Carrot cake in Singapore comes in two different kinds: black and white. It's actually cubes of radish mixed with egg and soy sauce or something along those lines, and once you get over the name, its really tasty. After our little lunch refresher, we headed to a massive shopping area called Orchard Road where of course we picked up some Llao Llao frozen yogurt. We also browsed a few stores of which there were like millions upon millions and I picked up a few things from H&M, because I needed clothes that weren't so hot.
After all the walking and shopping, we needed a little break at our hostel just hanging out in our bunk bed talking with each other. When we regained some of our energy, we ventured back out to one of the foodcourts and picked up dinner. I took a liking to the crispy noodles that many of the food courts had, even though that dish was always piping hot and it was so hot outside. The things I'll do for good food haha. We went back to the hostel and the night was winding down when we heard something outside. We opened our window and watched a beautiful firework show form the hostel to end our night. This will be a very fond memory for me looking back on the trip.
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Thursday, June 11th
I started out Thursday by Skyping with my mom and dad back home, which is always nice when I'm gone for that long in such a different place. After I said goodbye to them, Charlotte and I went to a cool little area of town to have some breakfast and check out all the little hipster stores and bakeries while we were in that part of town. Our sweet tooths...sweet teeth?...kicked in and we headed to a bakery next to get some cheesecake as a pick me up because I was having a bad day. As per usual, we headed back to Bugis mall obviously for the air conditioning. Thank goodness for air conditioning. Little India wasn't too far from where we were staying, so we went back over to do some more exploring and to search for a ring with no luck. It's so cool to think that she lived there for 6 months just like I had in The Netherlands and knows all of these cool areas of town. We continued to explored Little India, checking out all the beautiful gold jewelry and the henna shops. We decided to both get some henna on our hands and I really enjoyed having it for the rest of the trip. People asked about it quite often.
To escape the heat, we once again went back to our hostel and watched a storm from our window. I loved sitting on the top bunk of that bunk bed and watching all the things that went on high outside our window. After the storm passed, we went over to a neighborhood called Holland Village in search of a place I had read about online called 2am dessert bar. Since we hadn't eaten dinner yet and of course the place we were going was (surprise surprise) in a mall, we stopped by a place called Sushi Tei first and had some dinner from the revolving sushi bar. We actually had quite a hard time finding the dessert bar after, but eventually found the almost secret entrance and went inside. It was the most interesting dessert menu I had ever seen. I ended up going with a strange coconut ice cream and merengue and caremel treat, and Charlotte opted for the 'chocolate H2O' which ended up being a really cool flash frozen hunk of chocolate ice cream with cocoa crumbles and everything delicious on top. To finish off the night we strolled back over to Bugis to see the movie Spy. After all the walking and heat of the day, a movie was the perfect way to top things off. After the movie got out, the entire mall was basically closed except for a karaoke bar/club thing which we could see into. I walked up to the door to peak inside and it was a local Singaporean band singing Bruno Mars, and it was once of the coolest experiences of the whole trip. Things like that make you realize that no matter where you are in the world, people aren't that different than you.
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| Hipster breakfast place |
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| 2am dessert bar |
Friday, June 12th
On our last full day in Singapore, it happened to be pouring rain for most of the day. We started our day by going towards the central part of town. We went to a mall called Raffles in search of a waffle place which we were never able to find. It was terribly confusing because it was basically three malls attached to each other and none of them seemed to have waffles, even though they had commercials for waffles playing. So we got frustrated and gave up on waffles, which turned out to be a great decision in my opinion, because it means that I got to experience Ya Kun Kaya and their wonderful kaya toast. Charlotte ordered it the way a lot of Singaporeans eat it, which will sound pretty strange to most people from the States I think. So kaya is a green coconut jam and you get that spread on really thin toasted brown break with butter, which is so so tasty. The part that I found weird is when Charlotte ordered a poached egg with it, dumped quite a lot of soy sauce in that, scrambled it all up and dipped her kaya toast in it. I was pretty nervous to try it but oh my goodness was it good. I definitely crave it since I've been back home.
Since it was pouring rain, we were trying to stay inside and dry. We thought we would buy some time by hanging out in a Costa Coffee for a bit with some tea lattes. The rain did not want to let up, so we headed back into the shops to check out some of the stores in that mall, most of which were the same as the stores in all the other malls, but oh well. We took the metro back to Raffles and walked from there to the Lau Pa Sat food court, which was in an amazing old building. They had so many different stalls that it was really difficult to chose a place to eat. I ended up getting wok noodles and a kiwi juice and we had a leisurely lunch while the hustle and bustle buzzed all around us.
Since we were already in the central area, we decided to walk around the bay even though it was still raining. We walked around the whole bay taking silly photos and dancing and singing in the rain while huddled under the same umbrella. As most people know, Singapore has a very well known building that looks like a large ship on top of a hotel. That building is called Marina Bay Sands and is located at Marina Bay. Charlotte was taking me to Gardens By The Bay, which is a tropical area with some huge manmade tree sculptures. To get to Gardens By The Bay, we had to go up to the very top of a mall, through Marina Bay Sands, and across some sky bridges. It was quite an interesting walk we took to get out to these huge trees. They're much bigger than they look in photos.
After hanging out below the trees for a while, we headed back the same way we had come in and continued our walk around the bay. We passed the ArtScience Museum which was designed to look like a lotus blossom and I fell in love immediately. The building with the backdrop of the gloomy sky and the city skyline just looked so perfect together. The photo doesn't do it justice, so you'll have to take my word for it. On and on we walked around the bay, stopping to watch a high school band play and to get some water. We walked until we reached the large Merlion sculpture (and what looked like all the tourists in town as well) and whipped out the selfie stick, because you can never have enough selfie stick photos.
Afte your little tour of the bay, we headed back to the MRT to get back home, and I found a ring along the way. We were exhausted as usual from all the walking and heat (sensing a theme of Singapore?) so we went to the Amsterdam cafe and had some mocktails. How could we resist going to the Amsterdam cafe? We ended up back at Bugis to end our last night in town and had sushi and Llao Llao one last time before heading back to the hostel for our last night in Singapore. We were so lucky to have the room to ourselves for a few nights, but the last couple nights the room was full of older ladies who all snored like bears. It was hard to get sleep and I was thankful to be leaving the next day.
Since it was pouring rain, we were trying to stay inside and dry. We thought we would buy some time by hanging out in a Costa Coffee for a bit with some tea lattes. The rain did not want to let up, so we headed back into the shops to check out some of the stores in that mall, most of which were the same as the stores in all the other malls, but oh well. We took the metro back to Raffles and walked from there to the Lau Pa Sat food court, which was in an amazing old building. They had so many different stalls that it was really difficult to chose a place to eat. I ended up getting wok noodles and a kiwi juice and we had a leisurely lunch while the hustle and bustle buzzed all around us.
Since we were already in the central area, we decided to walk around the bay even though it was still raining. We walked around the whole bay taking silly photos and dancing and singing in the rain while huddled under the same umbrella. As most people know, Singapore has a very well known building that looks like a large ship on top of a hotel. That building is called Marina Bay Sands and is located at Marina Bay. Charlotte was taking me to Gardens By The Bay, which is a tropical area with some huge manmade tree sculptures. To get to Gardens By The Bay, we had to go up to the very top of a mall, through Marina Bay Sands, and across some sky bridges. It was quite an interesting walk we took to get out to these huge trees. They're much bigger than they look in photos.
After hanging out below the trees for a while, we headed back the same way we had come in and continued our walk around the bay. We passed the ArtScience Museum which was designed to look like a lotus blossom and I fell in love immediately. The building with the backdrop of the gloomy sky and the city skyline just looked so perfect together. The photo doesn't do it justice, so you'll have to take my word for it. On and on we walked around the bay, stopping to watch a high school band play and to get some water. We walked until we reached the large Merlion sculpture (and what looked like all the tourists in town as well) and whipped out the selfie stick, because you can never have enough selfie stick photos.
Afte your little tour of the bay, we headed back to the MRT to get back home, and I found a ring along the way. We were exhausted as usual from all the walking and heat (sensing a theme of Singapore?) so we went to the Amsterdam cafe and had some mocktails. How could we resist going to the Amsterdam cafe? We ended up back at Bugis to end our last night in town and had sushi and Llao Llao one last time before heading back to the hostel for our last night in Singapore. We were so lucky to have the room to ourselves for a few nights, but the last couple nights the room was full of older ladies who all snored like bears. It was hard to get sleep and I was thankful to be leaving the next day.
Saturday, June 13th
We took it easy on our last morning and had a little free breakfast at the hostel before heading to the airport. Boy I miss all the kaya toast, dragonfruit, and Llao Llao. I'd go back to Singapore just for all the food! We took an obligatory photo with a giant durian at the airport and went on to grab one last kaya toast while we still could. Both of us picked up some sushi for the plane ride, which sounds strange I know, but then they told us we weren't allowed to eat outside food on the plane! I spent the whole plane ride sneaking sushi into my mouth from under my jacket and hoping that the smell of salmon wouldn't give me away.
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