I arrived in Singapore at the beautiful Changi airport. I had heard that Singapore is the country of the slow queue and customs was no exception (though in hindsight I found this was the only place I experienced it). My line only had about 10 people so I was happy, at first. Thirty minutes later I was left wondering what the holdup was as it only took me 30 seconds to get through.
Taxis are cheap in Singapore (properly cheap), but I decided to take the train instead. However, I was devastated to learn at the ticketing machine that I couldn’t use my credit card to buy a ticket. No bother, I’ll just head over to the nearby manned counter. Oh, they only sell shuttle bus tickets? Awesome. I had to backtrack up to the ATM to get some cash. Furthermore, the ticket machines will accept nothing higher than a $5 note for a single ticket (I had $50s). I had to sweet-talk the forex lady to give me some change (didn’t have to show any skin though). For such a high-tech and progressive country, this little bureaucratic curveball surprised me. Ticket dramas aside, however, the train was lovely.
Michelle met me at the train station and we headed back to her apartment where Ferdi greeted me with a coffee from their shiny new machine. It was delicious. Also delicious were the bacon and eggs Michelle cooked to accompany my drink. A fantastic welcome to Singapore! That evening we went out to dinner with some of their friends who had come from all directions for the wedding. It was here I learnt that dining out in Singapore is relatively expensive — unless you go to a hawker centre. Then it is very cheap; there doesn’t seem to be an inbetween.
The next day, I joined some of the crew from the previous night (plus Michelle) on a trip to the Universal Studios theme park on Sentosa Island. Fortunately for us it wasn’t too crowded, but there was a catch. This time of year there are forest fires in Indonesia, caused by farmers’ illegal slash-and-burn agricultural practises. The smoke (or haze as they call it) drifts over Singapore, dramatically affecting both visibility and air quality. While it is an annual issue for Singapore, this year was particularly bad (it even got its own Wikipedia entry). Nevertheless, we had a fantastic time there. A few pieces of advice for future visitors: buy an express pass (you save a lot of time) and keep the most thrilling rides for the end. I learnt the latter when going to Rainbows End years ago. I went on the Fear Fall first up and all the rides after that seemed too tame. Highlights of this trip included Michelle’s friend Jason playing with the Grover and Elmo puppets in the Sesame Street shop and the Battlestar Galactica HUMAN vs CYLON rollercoasters. If for some reason you have only time for one, choose CYLON for the thrillz. Also fantastic was the Transformers 3D ride and the mutual disgust from the males about being forced onto the Treasure Hunters ride. The castle in Far Far Away was actually big and impressive, unlike the castle at Disneyland LA (which is a little underwhelming). I’m not sure if this is contrary to popular opinion, but I think I preferred this Universal Studios to the one in LA.
Once the rides were closed, we went to see what else Sentosa island had to offer (although we only scratched the surface). A shop called Candyland had some great offerings. My favourite were the Russian-roulette styled Jelly Bellies, where beans of the same colour/appearance had drastically different flavours (inspired by Bertie Bots Everyflavour beans from Harry Potter I’m sure). A few examples: lime or lawn clippings, buttered popcorn or rotten egg and juicy pear or booger. Lauren bought some of these and we tried them out while waiting for a table at the Hard Rock Café. The “trick” flavours were simultaneously accurate and disgusting.
After dinner, I stayed up late having a man-to-man with my new brother-from-another-mother Ferdi. I felt that we had some great bromance time that could’ve gone on for hours, but my brother Paul was arriving early the next morning and Michelle (the voice of reason) ordered me to bed. Once Paul joined us the next morning, we went to a hawker centre for breakfast. The highlight of this trip was the receipt. We ordered one plain parata, two parata with onion and three lime juices, but the way this was portrayed on the bill was simply fantastic. It is probably the best receipt I have ever received.
Paul and I had a bit of time to kill before we could check into our apartment in Little India. While he used the time to work, I spent it playing Ferdi’s impressive guitar collection. I hear his interests have shifted somewhat from guitars to watches, so if you’re reading this Ferdi: I can look after those for you buddy 🙂 The haze was particularly bad today, so we were masked up whenever outside. After a while, Paul gave up on his as he didn’t think our style of mask did anything. The locals were on his side as hardly any of them wore masks. It was Diwali festival time and our walk to the apartment was quite an experience. There were people loitering everywhere and the streets were lined with beautifully decorated arches. While we have raved about AirBNB on this blog, it is worth pointing out that I have experienced a peculiar trend: failure to supply sufficient quantities of toilet paper. I’m not sure if this is simply bad luck or that hosts expect the guests to supply their own. Anyway, this was the third time it happened to us so, future AirBNB users, perhaps something to check when being shown around the house.
We had just enough time for a supermarket trip before meeting both Ferdi’s and our families for dinner downtown. Paul and I share an interest in broadening our culinary palettes whenever possible (aka trying weird stuff). Two things that caught our eye were starfruit and pomelo. While you can probably get these in NZ, they were cheap here. The starfruit tasted like both a fruit and a vegetable with a stringy-like texture. The pomelo looked like it would be great and it was, but there was far too much rind for my liking.
The next day we had a family outing to the Singapore botanical gardens. It was a good recommendation by Dad, but he actually intended for us to go Gardens by the Bay. Since our intended destination was across town we decided to stay put. It was really nice there, but also very hot. The highlight for me was seeing a komodo dragon!
In the afternoon we headed to the Long Bar at the Raffles hotel for an iconic Singapore Sling, where it was invented. There were bags of peanuts everywhere and it is customary to just throw the used shells onto the ground. I came in expecting several strata of old shells but it was actually pretty clean (disappointingly). With an “anything goes” rule for discarding shells, it quickly deteriorated into throwing wars between Ben, Paul and me. Kristina would have been thoroughly unimpressed!
Given that a Singapore Sling sets you back $27, we did not stay there long. Our next stop was the “Batman Building”, with very sleek interior design and a quirky way of retrieving their wine bottles. The bottles are stored in a column behind the bar running up to the ceiling. The waitresses, dressed like fairies, would attach themselves to an electromechanical pulley system and “fly” up to fetch your bottle. It sounds weird (because it is) but was quite interesting to watch.
The following day we had the Stag and Hens parties. Kristina was arriving today but not in time to make the Hens party. The guys celebrated the day on a huge yacht, by far the biggest I have been on. It was a day afternoon in the life of a tycoon! We cruised out of HarbourFront, went around Sentosa Island and anchored off Lazarus island. We lucked out with the weather too. Unlike the usual haze, it was relatively clear — I even saw a hint of blue sky. The agenda for our time in the bay consisted of meat, beer and music. I felt like I was in a PG-rated version of the Wolf of Wall Street. Sitting on the boat was never going to cut it for the Roper boys, so before long we had escaped to the shore. We were keen to score some fresh coconuts, but the trees were too difficult and tall to climb. Instead, our technique was to try knocking them out by throwing an old coconut we found on the ground at them. It was fairly laborious, but Ben and I managed to get one each. Paul was in charge of opening them with a rock — it was a great trip back to the stone age.
Back on land, we met up with the Hens for the next stage of the festivities. There were other fresh arrivals meeting up here too (Kristina included). We had a great time recounting tales of the day and of our travels to family friends, but left early as we were both quite tired.
Stay tuned for more Singapore!
Tim and Kristina's Big Adventure! 