Kate’s Quests

I’m back from Singapore! And as they say…it was a “fine” city. That is the official running joke. You’re pretty much not allowed to do anything, although I can say that in the four days I was there, I saw the police all of one time. And they were stuck in traffic. You can be fined for eating, drinking, smoking , riding your bicycle where you’re not supposed to and the kicker…death to drug traffickers. It says it on the customs form when you enter the country in big letters. DEATH to drug traffickers. Gulp. Gave me pause and I’ve never even tried POT. Seriously.

So, I left the house around 10:30am on Friday morning. I took the train to the airport and got in around 2pm. The train had a delay. I’m not sure exactly why because I don’t speak Japanese, but I do know that everyone was annoyed. So getting in I checked in and took the seven hour flight to Singapore. I got in around 1am and found DJ. He took me back to the hotel and we went to bed.

The next morning we headed to Chinatown.
It was really nice and very busy. Along the way we ran into the largest Hindu temple in Singapore called Sri Mariamman Temple.

We were pretty tired after that and the Indian food that we had eaten for lunch. So we decided to rest a bit before going back out to the Chingay Parade. DJ slept for a good three hours and then we were ready. The parade was cool. There were a TON of people and I couldn’t see much through all the heads, but DJ managed to get a few pictures. I got tired quickly because I wasn’t tired while DJ took his nap so we caught a cab back to the hotel and ate at Prego (an Italian restaurant at the hotel).

Sunday we got up and headed down to Clarke Quay. We got lunch at Brewerkz, a local brewery and well, that was what you would expect. The beer was good though! We then wandered around the area and found the Merlion. I guess Singapore is the land of the Merlion so there are many of them.
That night we returned to the area for dinner. We ate at a Persian restaurant called Shiraz. I LOVED it. Thought it was excellent. It was very pretty there at night.

The next morning we got up early and took a boat tour. It was kind of cheezy and there was a constant recording telling you all the tour things, but you couldn’t hear it. So..we ended up on Kusu Island which is a tortoise safe haven. There are turtles in a couple different enclosures. Fun. Then we headed back to the city and wandered over to the Arab Quarter. We found some swarma to eat and although DJ wanted Indian food after that, I was totally full. We shopped and walked around and then headed back over to Clarke Quay for dinner. We found a Mongolian BBQ place that was pretty good and for dessert we wandered over to a place and I got passion fruit sorbet and a glass of champagne.

Then after dessert we figured that we could not leave Singapore without getting a Singapore Sling from the place it was invented…the Long Bar in Raffles Hotel. It was yummy. And that….in short was my time in Singapore!