Here we are, landed in Singapore and waiting in customs. The line is huge and we are at the end. I think I am ready to scale back up the stairs and fly home now. It took 45 minutes in the line after a long flight.
Fast forward a bit and we’re on our train toward our hotel. A bit more fast forward. Alright here we are in our hotel. It has a view of the city which I guess can look okay at sunset but other than that, Singapore is more of a pit stop to our next destination. Oh, but the food here is pretty good, that’s one positive!
We’re hungry after the flight, we’re delirious too. We get out of customs, get on the train which was challenging to even get a ticket for since the machines don’t accept card. We had to go withdraw cash at an ATM then go back to the machine.
Ok train ride wasn’t too bad, not too long, got a seat etc etc. Not too long of a walk to our hotel, perhaps 10 minutes. It is soooo hot out here probably close to 40c and humid. We stayed at Ibis Styles MacPherson by the way. It is a little bit out of the main area. So the hotel does have a shuttle but it only runs at certain times, which didn’t really match to the times we needed.
Alright, we’ve dumped our stuff, now we are starving. Wait we were starving ages ago, by now we are properly delusional. Katie had heard of this vegan Korean place called The Boneless Kitchen. So we started our walk, perhaps a 20 minute walk from the hotel. Oh hello, a huge queue outside the restaurant! The food was pretty good, I wouldn’t go back because serving size left me more hungry than before. So with all this in mind, make sure you book or you will be waiting in line. At least we saw a cat on the way home. The day has been salvaged.
Day two… I mean day one because yesterday was pretty much not a day right.
We woke up the next day with high hopes. We went down to the breakfast area — but not to have breakfast. There is a gym right next to the breakfast and pool area so that was our pre-breakfast destination. No one was in this air conditioned to the frost gym though it was completely transparent with glass on every side. We were staring out at perhaps 60 people stuffing their faces with food while we were stuffing our legs on the bike. Anyway it seemed to inspire a few people after about 10 minutes and before we knew it, it was over encumbered with up and coming female powerlifters.
We had breakfast after that, thankfully it was some special Indian occassion this week so it was quite vegan friendly and pretty delicious too. Alright, Katie has another thing on her list to do today. Lets get it out of the way so we can enjoy the day. Alright I know I am sounding a bit negative again on this new day but trust me, after this one thing to go it gets good, like pretty good.
So we went on a train to Mustafa Shopping Centre. Basically it is Little India which means lots of ingredients to look at it. Also it meant that because this place was so stocked the aisles were barely about to fit one person through and there were many of us in this building. Katie of course had filtered out chaotic reality and was bathing in the scents of all the spices for a good perhaps 7 hours, ok perhaps just 45 minutes but 45 minutes damn, what the heck meanwhile I am avoiding getting into full on crashes with people clammering around the aisles. I was basically avoiding agents in the Matrix. Ok we are leaving thank god we have travel insurance because my health right now is on the verge of exploding. I should actually just highlight this paragraph and colour red. And Bold! and Strike through! I don’t even care if grammarly has a fit!
Alright we had lunch somewhere. Pretty sure it was in the cheapo section of Singapore which by the way is surprisingly delicious. Alright just remembered the area is called Fortune Centre and the place we ate at was called The Green Bliss Habitat. The food was great, well priced and a good ambience to the restaurant / cafe. We orderded a noodle dish with mock duck and some fried enoki mushrooms. A soursop juice was also an addition later on. The first nice experience I have had so far here.
Times are changing! Anyway can’t fit anymore food so off to Marina Bay Sands, but not to check in, just to check out. You can actually get to the top of this iconic and expensive hotel without being a guest though you cannot enter the pool area. Looking in the pool area didn’t look that amazing though, full of sugar daddies with 1/5th their age girlfriends, lol. The view I guess is amazing to some, to me it was just looking over a smoggy city. I am not a city lover, so I just kept thinking of the food.
Ok off to the Art Science Museum. They have Alice in Wonderland exhibition on which sounded alright but it was super busy and the wait time was basically going into eat into our bedtime so we gave it a miss and went on to explore the less buzz word places.
So now we were looking for those big domes, one of them being The Cloud Forest. We somehow ended up walking in the opposite direction to the conservatorium where a band was playing. Nice place to get cool from the air con and dry my clothes a bit. Also a bit of WiFi to get our bearings on the map. All was well still because we found a stall which was selling coconut ice cream and another stall selling bubble tea. Lime and passionfruit was my choice on the menu and what a refreshing choice that was. This day is getting awesome and Singapore could yet redeem itself.
We then found the domes. The ticket, I forget how much – but it gets you into both. Flower dome was the first available to enter so went into it and it was pretty decent actually. Quite a few compositions were made on the camera this hour. Of course these domes are absolutely loaded with people so if you want uninterrupted viewing or photography, hang back and wait for a lull in the crowd in your area. We had only wanted to go to the Cloud Forest but to our surprise, there was much more to look at and feel good at in the Flower Dome. Also you get a small discount if you fly with Scoot Air and show your boarding pass. Conveniently we had them!
The Cloud Forest was next and it was still pretty awesome. It had a super lush canopy and you could walk up inside the middle of this fake tree that a huge waterfall was spurting out of. The plants in here were so lush. It felt good, like something out of the movie Avatar. The sun was beginning to set by the time we had made our way through the course inside this dome. Thankfully the Super Trees were not far away because they light up at night and cause quite a few people to stare.
You can actually buy a super tree walk in the canopy, but due to weather conditions they were not selling the tickets. Just as well though because from what we observed, it wasn’t that great. I much prefer to look at the trees rather than be at the top of these wirey structures looking down at the crowds.
So we made it just as the lights were turning on and the deep blue sky was providing a perfect canvas for them to show off their branches. There are so many compositions to capture here, unfortunately my camera battery had gone to bed for the day though Katie still had her DJI Osmo Pocket capable for the job. We must have taken almost 100 photos, so hard to choose just a couple for this blog post. If the Cloud Forest Dome was not like Avatar enough, the Super Trees at night certainly is.
Time to head to Chinatown for some NomVNom burger. I got the jackfruit burger which was of course delicious! And Katie, well she got the satay which was okay. Time to head home and charge up that battery. By the time we got back to the hotel we were exhausted. The heat in Singapore really depletes you, and almost twice as fast.
Day 2 – This morning we decided not to go to the Arts Science museum and catch the cable car to Sentosa island instead. In the end, we both wished that we had gone to the ASM. Katie had been to Sentosa almost 20 years ago when they still had the monorail around the island, and you could find komodo dragons just chilling out. Seems like much has changed since then. Sure, it was still jungle-y and there was a bit of wildlife around, but it was quite commercialised and very touristy. We wandered around for a bit – the noise of the crickets was almost deafening! At first Katie thought it was a recorded noise coming from hidden speakers, but we soon found that it was actually crickets!
After that we headed to Chinatown for lunch in a downstairs food court in Chinatown. there were a few veggo places in the food court. The one we found cost next to nothing and we filled up on good food – one of the best kway teows I’ve ever had!
After that we headed home for a little rest before venturing out again later to see Chinatown at night. We wandered around the brightly lit streets and came across a market stall selling Chendol. We had both never tried it before and so we gave it a go! Essentially it’s shaved ice with coconut nectar, red bean paste and pandan bits. It was very tasty and we both loved it!
Then we ended up finding a veggo place for dinner called Lotus Kitchen, where we had a lovely dinner of satay sticks, a potato salad, taro cakes and a yummy desert.
Katie really wanted to go to new ice cream place that had recently opened to try their ice cream, but we were both tired and it was going to take a long time, so we called it a night and headed home to pack for our flight the next day to Langkawi!
