Singapore (January 4-5)

::Still in progress. Pictures coming soon!::

Our time in Singapore was basically a very long layover. We flew in early, and left early the next morning, so we were only there for about 24 hours. We got up around 4 am to catch a 7 am flight from Kuala Lumpur. The flight was extremely short – in less than an hour we were in Singapore.

In case anyone wants to spend any time hanging out in an airport, Singapore airport is where you want to go. The place is huge and has numerous hotels, lounges, shops, restaurants, sitting/relaxation areas, and even a butterfly garden and movie theater. We stopped at the rainforest lounge to have a quick nap before heading out into the city. We each rented a little closed off sleeping area with the most comfortable beds ever. They also had showers and a spa area, as well as a small buffet with drinks. By the time we woke up and were ready to go, it had started to rain, so we had some coffee to kill some time and wait for the rain to stop. Before we left, we dropped our bags off at a baggage holding place and enjoyed not walking around with huge backpacks.

Off we went.

Our first mission was to find a certain hotel (I think it was the Ritz) that is known for having a really nice collection of modern art. It’s free to walk around the hotel and see everything, and since Singapore is a very expensive city, it was nice to find stuff to do that wouldn’t cost us anything. On the way to the hotel, we stopped at a 7-eleven to get some food, and I decided to try a 7-eleven mini chicken pot pie that turned out to be not as bad as one would think.

We got to the hotel, and the way we were greeted when we walked in the door made us wish we could afford to stay in places like that for our entire vacation. Money may not buy happiness, but it buys a bunch of people being REALLY nice to you. We went to the front desk and asked about the art, and at first they seemed confused, but invited us to wander around and see what we could find. After a minute, somebody ran up to us with a pamphlet they had found which detailed all the pieces including biographies of the artists and maps of the hotel showing where each piece was located. We looked around for a while, and then decided to move on to our next mission: food.

The only thing I really wanted to do in Singapore was to eat chili crab, a Singapore specialty. I had found some names of famous restaurants that serve it, and we went off in search of a place called “Jumbo Seafood” that is located in Clark Quay, an area that happens to be a must-see touristy place so we ended up killing two birds with one stone. To get there, we took a bus. When we boarded the bus, we wanted to make sure we were on the correct bus, so we asked the bus driver and later, he was super nice and reminded us when it was our stop (otherwise we would have missed it- we’re silly tourists like that). Clark Quay is just an area on the water with a bunch of restaurants and shopping. We took some pictures and then went on to find Jumbo Seafood.

We must have gotten there before the dinner rush (luckily J ). We asked about the chili crab, and they told us it was about $40 per kilo. I asked how big an average crab is and they said the smallest ones they had were a little over 1 kg. It was pretty expensive, but it was the one thing I wanted, so we decided to go for it. We sat in the outside portion of the restaurant, because even though it was a bit overcast, it was still a nice warm day. I looked through the menu for something to go with the crab. Everything was take-out-a-loan prices, but we got some rice for a price that didn’t take up my budget for the day. I asked about vegetables, because I couldn’t find them on the menu (I knew they were there somewhere, I just couldn’t find them), and I think I confused a trainee because he ran off and got his trainer and she came back and just said “whatever’s on the menu is what we have” and I kind of wished I could have talked that way to customers at Cheesecake Factory. I don’t think she was trying to be rude, though. I finally found a $12 side of broccoli and we got that, too.

The broccoli and rice came out first, and we got some complimentary tea and peanuts as well. The broccoli turned out to be the most delicious side of broccoli I have ever eaten in my life, and totally worth the cost.

Then came the chili crab.

Sooooooo delicious. Maryland steamed crabs are, of course, still at the top of my list, but Singapore chili crab might be dangerously close to tying for number 1. It came in this huge iron pot covered in chili sauce, the texture and consistency of which reminded me of a thick egg drop soup from Chinese restaurants back home. They had cut the crab in half and sort of pre-cracked the claws and stuff.

The people around us some how managed to eat the thing with chopsticks and only got a little bit of sauce on their fingers that they used one napkin to clean off. Being raised in Maryland, I can’t imagine how one eats crabs and doesn’t get covered in mess, and that’s more or less exactly what I did. I tried so hard at the beginning to be neat and clean and dignified, but eventually, I gave up and James laughed at me as I got messier and messier and finally had to ask a waiter for some extra napkins (but I laughed at James, because he had no idea how to get crab meat out of a shell). Luckily I was wearing a bib, so my clothes were safe. The table cloth was not. However, it was a paper table cloth, so I think they expected messy foreigners like myself, and they may have laughed at me, but I don’t care. It was delicious.

After late lunch/early dinner, we headed off to China town. The China town in Singapore is supposed to be super awesome, but it turned out to be like most China towns we’ve been to. We just walked up and down the streets looking at the shops, while people kept yelling at us to come eat in their restaurant. We kept saying we were full, but they didn’t believe us. I think we did end up going to Starbucks. We were getting kind of tired from lack of sleep the night before, and needed some caffeine. I was delighted to discover that they had the Peppermint Mocha, which is my favorite Christmastime Starbucks drink in the US, but they don’t carry at Starbucks in Japan because, sadly, Japan is not a fan of peppermint, for some reason.

After China town, we went to another shopping area of Singapore called Orchard Road, a big road that runs through the city and has most of the high-end, as well as regular people, shopping centers.

It was a really pretty road to walk down. It was all decorated with lights and of course all the store fronts were all lit up. We wandered around a few shopping centers, one of which had Ben and Jerrys, but I was unfortunately still stuffed at this point, and couldn’t have any L. I wanted to walk to a botanical garden nearby, but James thought it was too far away. It turned out not to be, but whatever. We ended up sitting in a Burger King in a mall drinking water for a little while. We walked around a little longer and then decided it was about time to catch the last bus to the airport.

There were some other touristy things that I had kind of wanted to do that I didn’t get to while we were there. Most things were really expensive, though, so I’m not too sad that we missed out. I had chili crab, and that’s all that matters. At this point in the vacation, we were also getting a little tired of running all over the place, and I don’t think either of us minded a day of not doing much.

We got to the airport, and although our flight was several hours from boarding time, we managed to find a very nice person from another airline that would check us in so we could get through security. After we went through, the first thing we wanted to do was to find the movie theater. We watched the end of an extremely crappy movie starring Clive Owen, and while waiting for the next crappy movie to start (Brothers, with Natalie Portman. If you haven’t seen it, DON’T), we found a shop that sold *gasp* Cool Ranch Doritos and *double gasp* Snapple. I bought both and they were both glorious.

After the movies were over, there was a sort of intermission before the next round of horrible movies came on. They were playing some kind of report-ish thing where some woman was wandering around the airport interviewing employees about airport safety. I think the point of the whole thing was “Singapore airport is safe” but it was lost in all the stories about engine malfunctions and plane crashes into water and planes catching on fire and lots of people making mistakes that resulted in lots of people dying. All of the woman’s interviews involved questions/comments like “So how much pain would that cause?” and “Wow! That must be an absolutely terrifying and horrible way to die!”

So right after that, we realized (with feelings of impending doom) it was time to head towards our terminal (we were in the opposite side of the airport, and the shuttles weren’t running so it would take about 30 minutes to walk over there). On the way, we stopped in the butterfly garden, but since it was dark, most of them were asleep so we only saw a few.

I slept a little longer on the floor of the waiting area and then we boarded the flight for Cambodia.