Day 27 - Singapore Arrival
We were excited to visit Singapore. It wasn't originally on our travel list, but was necessary for a decent connecting flight to New Zealand. Upon further investigation, we learned that Singapore supposedly has the world's best airport, is the world's best food city, is the world's cleanest city, and home to the Marina Bay Sands Hotel!
Being that the Marina Sands is so expensive, we decided to spend the first night in a hostel at the Little Red Dot. This was my first time at a true international hostel with a shared bathroom, etc. This hostel is a bit different from the traditional hostel with dorm bunk beds in a big room. This hostel had pods for each person with a shade at the end to make sleeping private. It was better sleep than I expected. The hardest part is trusting your stuff. Luckily they had free lockers that we could lock up our important items. Definitely much cheaper to stay here in this city as we only paid about $40.
Food hawkers are a must in Singapore. Being next to Little India, we had lunch at an Indian food hawker. Think of it as an area for food trucks to park and serve, minus the trucks as they are permanent. Almost like a less organized food court, but on the side of the road. For $7, we got two naans, Chana masala, and aloo gobi. We didn't even know how much of a deal this was since we hadn't seen the prices throughout the city.
We wanted to walk around the different neighborhoods, but quickly took shelter in a Starbucks. Holy cow what a storm!
The rain really never stopped that afternoon and evening. It did lighten up enough for us to walk around with umbrellas. We had the "must have" Singapore Sling at the Long Bar at the Raffles Hotel. An old school drink, updated to accommodate tourists. It was fruity and would be perfect in the afternoon on a hot beach. Being $20 each, we made sure to eat enough peanuts to skip dinner. That wasn't exactly the plan, but we seem to have a tendency on this trip to turn a happy hour into a dinner. The atmosphere at the bar was British colonial and each table had a huge tub of peanuts and everyone threw the shells on the floor.
Kristen had been wanting to see Hunger Games 2 so it seemed like the perfect night. Being that I hadn't seen the first one, it was actually pretty good. The one interesting item at the theater was that they serve salty and sweet popcorn. The sweet looked like regular popcorn, but tasted like carmel corn, but not as cruncy.
Day 28 - Day 2 in Singapore
We got up early as we were hoping that the Marina Sands would let us check in early. So at 9 am, we got in the "Check Out" line and convinced the gentleman to let us check in 5 hours early! At almost $400 a night (1400 standard check in to 1100 standard check out), I see that as a $95 "savings". The hotel is amazing. Room was great with an amazing view. We both got a workout in using their huge and nice gym. I only lasted about half the time as Kristen as the infinity pool on the roof was calling my name. This view was what we were paying for. It did not let down. Unbelievable and a truly unique experience.
After a few hours at the pool, we decided to try and hike to the main lookout hill and check out the views of Singapore. We first walked to Little India again to visit one of the popular Indian restaurants. It was not a hawker, but a traditional sit down. Despite being $40, it was the best Indian I have ever had and Kristen said best she has had outside of India. Maybe Singapore is a great food city. They have all sorts of different nationality neighborhoods similar to Little India.
The hike wasn't close to the subway so we paid a cab $20 to take us there. Less than ten minutes into the hike, we saw the same black looking clouds as yesterday. We picked up the pace some, but the thunder started. We had no interest in being caught in this storm. We jogged about a mile down hill to catch a cab. Luckily, there was a bus stop, so we were able to navigate ourselves back to the hotel for $4!
The rain came and went fairly quickly, so we were able to enjoy the last of two evenings in Singapore. After catching a gorgeous sunset from the 57th floor infinity pool (we actually caught a red sun between two buildings, but had already put away the camera in the room), we got dressed for a night out. We saw the hotel's amazing 20 minute light and water show that was pretty cool. The water show was a bit of a disappointment, but the lasers that they threw off the huge hotel was super cool.
We walked to Clark Quay to check out a bar called Beer Market. The bar had about 40 beers available. The cool thing was that it acted like a stock market with prices changing every 30 minutes. The more the beer was ordered, the higher the price went up. The less others were ordered, the price went down. A pretty cool concept. We enjoyed a couple different beers here!
Orchard Street was supposed to be set up similar to 5th Avenue in NY: High end stores decorated for Christmas. It definitely was not in the same class as 5th Avenue as far as decorations go, but every single high end store that I have ever heard of (and many that I haven't) were on this street. The amazing thing was that they were also all at the shops at Marina Sands and at the mall were we saw the movie last night. How can such a small city/country need all of these expensive shops? We later learned that they have the most millionaires per square mile of any country in the world. Not a huge accomplishment since it is really one big city on a small island. But it does highlight that there is a lot of money in the country.
We strolled the streets taking in the decorations until we saw an odd ice cream cart. The guy was selling blocks of ice cream in between slices of bread! We got in line and ultilmately realized you could get the ice cream between thin sliced bread or in between two thin wafer crackers. We chose the wafer crackers. We ordered two different kinds and he simply cut a small block off his bigger block of ice cream. It tasted like soft serve ice cream, but it was hard enough to go between two wafers. I have yet to see another cart or item in the grocery store.
We made our way back to the hotel via subway. The network of subways has been excellent here, many stops, very clean, and easy to navigate. However, it felt as if we always had to switch lines or trains to get to where we wanted to go. They do have clear glass gates that protect people from falling on the subway track when the train is not present. A great need in the US.
Day 29 - Half day in Singapore/ flight to New Zealand
Our flight to New Zealand was not scheduled until 6:50 pm. We attempted to get our check out moved from 1100 to 1400! Another "savings" of $57 since we got an extra 3 hrs out of our stay. Doesn't sound like much, but it got us enough time to workout and hangout at the pool again today. A nice and relaxed travel day! The weather was much better today, so the views and pictures were much clearer.
We were excited to check out the Singapore airport and went early on purpose. It turns out that it is the coolest airport that I have visited. So much to see in the different three terminals. We saw the outside garden walk, the airport museum, and a few other exhibits that I fail to remember their names. One of the best discoveries was the free OSIM uPhoria foot massagers all over the airport. I've tried a fair share of these over the years and this was by far the best one. It may just be the family Christmas present next year.
Our flight went by quick on the way to Auckland despite being 10 hrs. I had a lot of TED talks, pictures, magazines, and blogs to catch up on.
Click here for Singapore Pictures
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