Singapore - Saturday

Saturday morning I woke up early and headed down out street, Jalan Besar, to find a café and work on my blog as Elizabeth slept. I found a nice little café, had a big plate of watermelon and pineapple and a large bottle of water for S$3.70. What a steal! And it was early in the morning so sitting outside was not too unpleasant as it wasn’t all the hot, yet. I returned to pick up Elizabeth around 9 am and we headed back to our now regular Indonesian restaurant for a spicy breakfast of Gado-Gado, mine with egg and Elizabeth’s without. We kept the spice at bay with glasses of fresh lime juice (which is really lime-ade as it had plenty of sugar in it, but compared with most beverages here was not that sweet). Then off to the coffee shop next door for our morning coffee. After just 48 hours in Singapore (even though it feels like we’ve been here weeks with all that we’ve done) we already have a regular breakfast joint, coffee shop, and hawker stand in Chinatown. It’s so nice to be able to integrate yourself into another culture so quickly – I’m glad Elizabeth and I are very similar in this respect.

After our nice long walk on Friday we decided to do another on Saturday. It is very nice to get some good exercise during the day, and what a great way to see and learn the city. Saturday, however, we planned our walk a bit better and thus did not get lost. We took a very direct route from Arab Street to Chinatown making the walk feel really quite short.

Once in Chinatown we stopped at a Hindu Temple where you could walk in, see what was happening, and for a fee take photos. I didn’t pay the fee, so no photos, but the temple was amazing. There were murals all on the ceilings, statues and flowers everywhere. It’s like a Catholic church, but 20X more amazing, more colorful, more detailed. Something was going on when we were there, I’m not sure what, but they had areas from which you could observe what was going on and places you couldn’t go because religious things were happening there. Although I will admit that there weren’t vey many signs to keep people out, there were some white people (tourists obviously) that did not see the signs and barged their way right up to the front so they could get a good photo. Even if they didn’t see the sign, they obviously were incapable of reading the situation well enough to stay out of area they shouldn’t be in. And they walked up there with such conviction as if to say they knew they could be there, not with the normal hesitancy you should exhibit in a place of worship you are not familiar with. Either way, it was so frustrating to watch them Elizabeth and I decided to leave.

After that we headed down to the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple, obviously, a Buddhist temple. Once again, a very amazing place with extremely intricate and colorful decorations. Plus everything here was in 3-d. What would be murals in a catholic church were carvings 6-8 inches deep along the walls here. Every wall was covered with Buddhe statues of varying sizes. No wall or ceiling space was left undecorated. I do have a few photos of this temple to upload later, but please note they do not, in any way capture the detail, color, or splendor of the temple. My little camera just can’t do it. I’ll try to find some better photos from the internet to show you a more realistic image of what it’s like there.

Next was the Singapore City Museum, a museum that discuses the experiment that is Singapore, what goes into creating a successful city, and the benefits and challenges of being a city, state, and country in an area smaller than New York City’s 5 boroughs.

Because Singapore is not only a city but a country, they have to provide within the city limits many services that can in other densely populated areas be moved to the suburbs or rural surrounds, such as water and sewage facilities, cemeteries/crematories, military training facilities, water catchment/reservoirs, airports, all the housing and all the business where people live and work. Because they have such little space, and because they value their green space so much and try to preserve as much as possible, they have to plan all development of the city 40-50 years in advance. Buildings must be multi-purpose as much as possible, and they build up and down (into the sky and under ground) to make sure they use space as effectively as they can. When you learn about the immense amount of effort that must go into planning Singapore to keep it a nice and useful place for it’s residents it really is amazing. Plus, much of the country – I believe it’s about 20% - is parkland. They have many national parks here as well as beautiful boulevard along many major roads and parks and trails lining much of the coastline. It reminds me a lot of Minneapolis. It would be so easy to stay fit and active and healthy in this city.

Now museum always have too much information in them and we were getting tired and hungry so we left around 1:30 to grab lunch at the neighboring food hawker center. What a disappointment, there was nothing there we wanted to eat, so we headed back over to our favorite Chinatown food hawker center and went to the same stall where we had our first ever meal here in Singapore. We’re regulars there now too. (As I am at the place I am currently sitting and writing this blog, a little café down Jalam Besar road where after only 2 days they know what I want and how I like it prepared. I could get used to this city quickly!)

Another fine lunch in Chinatown. We stopped at a fruit stop after lunch and picked up some sliced fruit to munch on in the afternoon – watermelon, jackfruit, dragon fruit – picked up another Chinese pastry for desert (I haven’t much liked any of the many Chinese pastries we have had yet), and then walked back to our hotel. We got back much earlier than we expect – just after 3 pm – making the day seem quite long. We napped/relaxed for the next few hours before heading out for dinner.

Side note: I did some exercises in our hotel room Saturday – that was interesting. I had to take everything we had with us and put it up on the bed (with Elizabeth) to give me just enough floor space to do a push-up. The reality of being in a big city, there is little room to move.

For dinner we decided to head to a well known Chinese restaurant chain here in Singapore that we had been recommended to by a customer of mine from Ortolana. I can’t remember the name right now but the abbreviation is DTF. There are about 20 here in the city but none near us, not within walking distance when you’re tired. So we decided to take the MRT to a new area of town, one we had heard much about, Orchard Road. There were 2 locations quite near the subway station so we thought we could do that. We did not know what we were getting ourselves into when we showed up at Orchard Road.

It must be the shopping capital of Singapore. Malls lined both sides of the street; high-end fashion stores everywhere (there were two Louis Vuitton stores within 2 blocks), and more people than we had seen yet in Singapore. The best part about Orchard Road was the holiday decorations. We arrived there at night and the streets we lit up with Christmas lights, huge Christmas trees, and decorations. It actually felt festive – even with the 90* weather. I think it was the darkness, but this was the first time I have felt the holiday spirit in the Southern Hemisphere and it was full on! I could really get into the Christmas season on Orchard Road.

We walked up and down the street admiring the sights before heading to dinner. The food was good and it was nice to sit at a restaurant with air-con and a more proper environment than we’re have recently. We has some nice tea, some nice conversation, we enjoyed ourselves.

After dinner we went back out on the street, bought some wonderful chocolates at a Ferrero Rocher store and sat down and watched the people. For what I’m sure was an hour we analyzed every passing white person/couple/family that we saw, guessing where they were from originally, why they were in Singapore (holiday, work, live here), and anything else we could come up with. WE never were able to confirm with any of them but it was quite entertaining. I’m sure we were pretty close on at least a few of them.

Then back on the metro and back to our hotel.

As I was writing my last blog post last night I just could not believe how much we have done in the short time we have been here. By the time we got back to our hotel room Saturday night we had literally only been in Singapore for about 54 hours, and we had seen so much! We had been to many of the vibrant ethnic neighborhoods more than once– Little India, Arab Street, Chinatown – along with many tourist areas – Marina Bay Sands, Clarke Quay, Orchard Road. We have become regulars at three restaurants in town – our hawker stand in Chinatown, our Malaysian restaurant in Arab Street, and our coffee shop. We had been to multiple museums and places of interest – ArtScience Museum, Buddha Tooth Relic Temple, Singapore City Museum. We had walked much of the city. It is just amazing what we’ve accomplished in such little time.  We practically feel like locals here. Hopefully we can find a way to stay!

With than I’m signing off for now, will check back with you later.

Best!