To sum this up...Singapore is f'ing amazing. Seriously the most cool/friendly/impressive/clean/exciting/ and also /expensive city. We had a great hostel (our first shared room pod hostel) between Chinatown and downtown Singapore.
Year of the monkey!
With the upcoming Chinese new years Chinatown was especially decorated and festive. We spent the whole first day wandering around Chinatown before Debra called it a night. The nerd in me took over and I spent a few hours playing games at the Alienware Arena (sick).
A face of pure joy..
We had a pretty big list of sights we wanted to see in Singapore so the next day we headed straight for the Garden by the Bay. If you've ever seen pictures of Singapore these are the iconic man made 'trees'. We spent the day touring the flower dome and cloud forest (think botanical gardens taken to the next level).
As you walk around the gardens by the Bay (and Singapore in general) you are always somehow looking at the Marina bay sands towers. Debra's dad had been to Singapore years before and gave us a lot of suggestions, one of them being the Casino at the Marina bay sands (it was still being built when he was here). It is another of the iconic Singapore images. This is the world's most expensive casino built by Las Vegas Sands. It consists of three skyscrapers connected by what I would call a "cruise ship" on top. After spending the day with it ever looming in our view we gave in and went to spend the night at the casino. We changed into the nicest travel clothes we have (Debra looks amazing, I look homeless) before spending the next 9 hours gambling with multiple daily budgets on the roulette table.
We saw it from everywhere, this was from inside of Cloud Forest.
The casino is beautiful. The n/a drinks are free and the limits 5 times higher than we normally gamble. After losing a few daily budgets on some strange variations of blackjack I gave up and we spent the rest of the night betting the minimum on roulette. Debra never loses and after 9 hours of excitement /amazement /an untold number of expressos we some how walked out netting 20 Singaporean dollars ($14.45 USD woo). This hotel was bigger than any we've been to in Vegas and the money being lost was incomprehensible. Multiple times throughout the night there was over 20,000 dollars on the table. It's a weird feeling watching someone lose 10k and being excited about winning 20 dollars. This was also the quietest casino we've ever been to. Vegas seems to numb your senses with lights and noise. This casino was silent and the gamblers very serious. Debra and I were the only two that would get excited about winning. We finally called it a night around 3am and went back to our humble hostel pod.
So incredible. It's too bad we didn't get a picture of the ceiling which was basically a huge shining chandelier.
We took it easy the following day and spent the morning wandering the streets. After being terrified by the cost of food and drinks in average restaurants (10$SGD+ for food 14$SGD for beer) we joined the locals at a food court, the Amoy Street Food Centre. These food courts are all over the city and saved us from blowing our whole budget and was one of the highlights of the trip. Picture a 2 story outdoor mall with rows and rows of small food vendors. We tried multiple vendors and ended up with Indian food, salads, teh (tea) and coffee tarik (so damn good) and spent less than the cost of one beer at all of the restaurants. We then spent the night organizing pictures and drinking wine with some of the long term hostel residents.
The next day was a rush through the other tourist places in Singapore. We started the day at Maxwell food centre (yet another incredible food court) and had our fill of amazing food and our new favorite teh tarik for 50 cents. We spent the day at the Asian Civilization museum before checking out Merlion park for sunset and finally heading to garden by the Bay for their night time light show. (Cool!)
Before calling it a night we took the subway to the riverside Clark quay (hip food places/bars/clubs) for a beer I have been craving for the last 6 years. New Zealand Speights! Holy shit I found a place with it! It was completely worth the 15$SGD a pint.
We had another full day planned and headed out to Chinatown to wander the large older mall and eat at another food court in the basement level. Yet again the food was cheap and amazing! There were many dedicated vegetarian booths with all sorts of faux meats. We then took an Uber to the Singapore zoo. Regarded as one of the world's best zoos, holding the largest colony of orangutans, and winning the prestigious cleanest toilet award in 1997 AND 1998 (thanks Wikipedia) this zoo was incredible.
This is Debra's Fancy Walk
We spent the day running between every exhibit and taking in all the sights before moving over to a separate Night Safari. The night safari (worlds first nocturnal zoo) is Jurassic park like. You board a electric tram tour and drive silently through open animal exhibits to see all different types of nocturnal animals. We ended up ridding the tram 3 times before walking through the rest. After all day on our feet we were exhausted but our night was just beginning.
Because of our 4 am flight to Bali we returned from the night safari around 11pm and decided to stay up until 2am when we would take an Uber to the airport. Debra was able to get a little sleep and I raced over the the Alienware arena to pick up a commemorative gaming mouse as a souvenir.
It's hard to be sad when you're boarding a flight to Bali but leaving this incredible city/country put that to the test. We had a perfect trip in Singapore and definitely plan on returning some day (hopefully when we don't care about spending 14$SGD on beer).
