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Singapore in 36 hours or less – Part 2

October 21, 2011
Travel
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Our second day in Singapore started off by sleeping much later than we intended. Taking red-eye flights in on Friday night must have worn us out! As quickly as possible, we ate breakfast then made our way to Sentosa Island to see what that was all about.

Ok, let’s be realistic. It did not matter what was on Sentosa Island. Chris heard that they had a flow rider, which I would equate to being surfing’s answer to a treadmill, and he knew that he had to go!

In addition to the flow rider, Sentosa Island had a ton of other fun sounding activities in which, unfortunately, I was ineligible to participate. Pregnant Brittany on Sentosa Island was a major drag. In theory, I would have been totally game for indoor skydiving, Segway rides, ziplining, the luge, the trapeze, and even flow riding. Sorry Chris!

(Click to enlarge.)

Chris decided to “sponge” as he calls it [boogie boarding for the other hodads out there] because it had been a long time since he had sponged and he had always wanted to try it on a flow rider. It looked like a lot of fun! I was pretty jealous that he got to go, not that I would have been any good at it, but I certainly would have given it a try.

After his time was up on the flow rider, Chris got ready for lunch by putting on his favorite man skirt my ie lavalava. After all, we were in the tropics, so it was totally appropriate. [You may recall that he wears these things not in the tropics as well.]

Once again, I got to satisfy my desire to stuff my face with leafy greens! Oh how I miss salad! I talked Chris into ordering a Wasabi Seafood Pizza because I was intrigued. Bad move. It wasn’t all that I had hoped for.

After bailing from Sentosa Island, we were headed in the direction of Chinatown when we noticed throngs of Indian guys decked out in yellow walking down the street. Our cabbie told us that the Indians in Singapore celebrate Diwali early and that they would be at a temple in Little India walking on hot coals. Crazy!

We immediately changed our destination to Little India hoping to witness this event! Unfortunately, the cabbie left out one critical detail; the big celebration wasn’t to take place until 6 PM. We were hours too early and had an awful time finding a cab back to Chinatown.

For some reason, no cabs would stop for us. We are still not sure what was going on. We walked for what seemed like forever, attempting to hail cabs the whole way. Our walk too us out of Little India, through the Arab Street District, and to Marina Bay before we were finally able to snag a cab! In retrospect, this was not the most direct route to Chinatown, but we decided to stay on main roads to increase our chances of finding a cab.

Finally, with just two hours before we needed to head to the airport, we made it to Chinatown. Our first stop was a big market with anything and everything that you can imagine for sale! The next stop was McDonald’s. Don’t judge. Chris was having a BigMac Attack and I was happy to indulge in some ice cream.

All in all, I enjoyed my trip to Singapore and would definitely go back.

Singapore in 36 hours or less – Part 1

October 18, 2011
Travel
3 Comments

Singapore is one of my favorite places that I have visited this year. I really hope that I have the chance to come back someday.

Before arriving in the tiny city-state, I had mixed feelings about it. I’m sure many of us remember that Singapore had some bad press a few years back when a young American man broke the rules and received what many Americans felt was an unfair punishment. It made me feel like I was going to visit an extremely oppressive country, but that certainly wasn’t the case. Instead of getting into that here I will just say that rules are rules and usually breaking them has consequences. When we choose to visit other countries, we must be respectful of their rules and keep the local penalties for breaking them in mind.

Now that we have that out of the way, on to our trip! We both arrived early Saturday morning, Chris from Tokyo and me from Chennai, promptly dropped our bags off at our hotel, and set out to explore the city.

I took a chance with a boutique hotel and it was awesome. Check out this room! We have considered doing something like this with the ‘kid’ bedrooms in our house to make them bigger. This may have cemented that plan.

Especially coming from India, Singapore was a huge treat. I was able to eat fruits and veggies with reckless abandon, brush my teeth with and drink the tap water, and wear ‘normal’ clothes. It was so wonderful!

On day one we had a relaxing breakfast, of breakfast burritos, and strolled around for a few hours. Our first stop was the Singapore Flyer, a huge ferris wheel with views of the city. It made me think of riding the ferris wheel at the end of the Champs Elysees in Paris.

 

Next up was a visit to Raffles, a historic hotel famous for inventing the Singapore Sling. Chris tried the real deal while I sipped on a fruit juice concoction that was a similar color to a Singapore Sling. We both enjoyed eating the peanuts from big bowls on the bar and dropping the shells on the floor.

 

We spent the next few hours wandering around before heading out to the Singapore Zoo for a night safari. The Singapore Zoo is pretty interesting in that they use a lot of natural barriers to separate animals that would typically have a predator/prey relationship. This gives the illusion of the lion area being seamlessly connected to the giraffes and zebras, but without endangering the giraffes and zebras. A really awesome concept. I wish we had better photographs, unfortunately, flash photography was not allowed and the pictures are not salvageable.

Day One of our Singapore trip was wrapped up by heading to Clarke Quay for dinner. Clarke Quay has a very lively nighttime scene, filled with bars, restaurants, and street vendors. Our dinner was good, but I feel like we didn’t get the full Clarke Quay experience since I couldn’t go bar hopping at all. I suppose that I could, but it didn’t seem all that appealing in my current state.

Whew! That was a long day! Day Two coming soon!