2018 Singapore

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Traveler 2018 Singapore
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- May 26, 2018
- 🌙 26 °C
- Altitude: 36 ft
- Singapore Central Singapore Community Development Council Marina Bay Marina South City Park 1.282464, 103.8602521°16’57” N 103°51’37” E
Arrival Singapore
May 26, 2018 in Singapore ⋅ 🌙 26 °C
After 16 hrs of surprisingly pleasant flight (Singapore Airline is truly the best!), we arrived at our hotel: Marina Bay Sands.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_Bay_Sands

This hotel is legendary and massive! With hundreds of shops, restaurants, theaters and rooftop infinity swimming pool! We actually saw a show about this hotel at the Travel channel once, never thought we would actually stay here one day.

Hotel room is big, the bathroom is really nice, love the balcony overlooking the bay as well.

This is our home for the next 5 days. Can’t wait to jump into the famous pool, and explore the city tomorrow.Read more
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Traveler 2018 Singapore
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- May 27, 2018
- 🌧 28 °C
- Altitude: 36 ft
- Singapore Central Singapore Community Development Council Marina Bay Marina South City Park 1.282456, 103.860261°16’57” N 103°51’37” E
Day 1
Day 1: Singapore
May 27, 2018 in Singapore ⋅ 🌧 28 °C
Day 1: Singapore

After a very nice breakfast buffet at the hotel (the pancakes they served were all precisely same size and really yummy), we walked to the beautiful Garden by the Bay park.

The Flower Dome in the garden is a lovely botanic garden that has unique flowers from all over the world, and the Cloud Forest features a very tall indoor waterfall and a winding walkway through the vertical rain forest.

We then crossed the river on the pedestrian bridge that double helix shaped, towards Singapore Flyer, the massive ferries wheel (one of the biggest in the world!). From the bridge, you can also see our hotel and the art museum at a nice angle.

The view from the Singapore Flyer is very similar to the view from our hotel room.

Steve and I then visited a Fish Spa, where you put your feet in the pool, allowing the fish to eat the dead skin off your feet. At the beginning I screamed a bit because it’s so ticklish when the fish were nibbling my feet. But after a while, I got used to it, and started to feel very relaxing. My feet feel so smooth afterwards!

After a longer than intended nap time at our hotel room, we went to Candlenut, a restaurant specializing Strait-Chinese cuisine, very unique Singapore food. The food was very good and the deserts (all 5 of them when eating their tasting menu) were even better! Check out the gold on top of my tiny bit size cake!

The plan of visit the rooftop infinity pool was canceled after realizing how tired we all were. Heading straight to bed after an amazing day!Read more
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Traveler 2018 Singapore
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- May 28, 2018
- ☁️ 27 °C
- Altitude: 36 ft
- Singapore Central Singapore Community Development Council Marina Bay Marina South City Park 1.282429, 103.8602451°16’57” N 103°51’37” E
Day 2
Day 2: Singapore
May 28, 2018 in Singapore ⋅ ☁️ 27 °C
Day 2: Singapore

We met with our tour guide Anna this morning. She is a proud Chinese Singaporean, who has vast knowledge of the history and architecture of this amazing city.

We started our tour with a Temple in Chinatown, where seamen preyed for safe passage when crossing the ocean to reach Singapore for the past hundred years. There is one very unique thing in this temple that you won’t find it anywhere else in the world. There is a figure on the beam that’s holding up the roof, it supposed to be a British person. Because when the British East India company colonized this city in 1800s, they were the much hated overlords of the common people. Having this British guy holding up the roof in a very uncomfortable position was a subtle way for the people to show their hatred.

Food is super important for this city. Due to its diversity of different cultures, the food here are a wonderful fusion of many flavors. The best places to experience this are the many hawker centers in the city. We visited 4 of them today and tried 8 very different dishes. Oh my goodness, everything we ate tasted amazing!! I was so full at the end of the tour I had to cancel our dinner reservation for tonight.

I don’t know if you have heard of a fruit call Durian. People call it the King of Fruit here. It’s famous for its bad smell when opened and unique tasty flavor. Under Anna’s guidance, we had the chance to try it out. We had to hold our noses before we put it in our mouths, and try eating it without smelling it first. Only after we took the first bit were we allowed to use our noses again. Well, I have to say the taste is indeed very interesting, I cannot even describe it because it tastes like nothing I had ever eating before. After I took the first bit, I didn’t experience any bad smell. I guess Anna’s advice really worked! Will I eat this fruit again? Maybe.

Another very unique thing about Singapore is their public housing. 80% of people lives in public housing here, and they are the nicest apartment buildings in the city! Rich, Middle income and Poor people all living together at the same space. The only difference is that the rich people can afford to buy the unit and the poor people need to rent it. But the living conditions are exactly the same!! What a truly innovative way to offer equality among everyone!! Anna said we are going to learn more about the process more in our tomorrow’s tour. Can’t wait!

By the way, the public housing apartment building picture I showed in the post has the 2 levels of outdoor gardens (one at middle and one on the top) in the building. They are the largest in-building gardens in the world!

The more I learned about Singapore, the more I fell in love with it!

The day ends with a wonderful music and light show at the Garden by the Bay Supertree Grove.Read more
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Traveler 2018 Singapore
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- May 29, 2018
- 🌧 27 °C
- Altitude: 36 ft
- Singapore Central Singapore Community Development Council Marina Bay Marina South City Park 1.282486, 103.8603211°16’57” N 103°51’37” E
Day 3
Day 3: Singapore
May 29, 2018 in Singapore ⋅ 🌧 27 °C
Day 3: Singapore

We met with Anna again today, to check out more unique places and neighborhoods.

We started our day with an amazing tour of a unique museum called Intan. Alvin, the owner of the museum also lives here with his family. Started at the age of 7, Alvin became passionate about leaning his Peranakan (this unique culture started about 200 years ago when the Chinese men married Malay women) heritage, and he found he could do so by collecting antique pieces. The Peranakan families speak English at home, follow Chinese traditions for holidays, weddings and funerals, but follow Malay culture for food and clothing. The fusion of different cultures created some very interesting antique pieces that combined all 3 cultures. From our conversations with Alvin, you can tell he is very proud of his heritage, and very passionate about preserving it, which displayed in every corner of his house. After some traditional home made tea and treats, we left the museum/house with big smiles on our faces.

We then visited Little India, the Bugis Street and the Malay center. It’s so strange to step into The Little India, it transported us back to India! The smell, the color and the people, were exactly same as what we saw when we visited India. Same can be said about the Bugis Street too. I thought I was back to China already! Right next to the Malay center is Arab Street with a masque, and the very next street over is one of the most trendy places in Singapore with bars and live music.

Only in Singapore where you could be placed in a different cultures just a few blocks away!

However, the absolute favorite thing for today is our dinner. The restaurant is called Nox - Dine in the dark. What an unique experience we had at this restaurant! Everything about it is top notch with attention to detail. The food is amazing, the service is full of caring and gentleness, a truly must do experience if visiting Singapore.

We were greeted by our downstairs server with a warm smile, and he took a note of any dietary restrictions from us and served us drinks. We then put our phones and watches into a locker so nothing would create any light on our body.

A blind waiter then slowly lead us to upstairs, which is completely pitch black! You truly can’t see anything! There were 3 course meals, each meal comes with 4 dishes. You supposed to eat from the 6 clock position, then move to 9 clock, 12 clock and 3 clock positions, to consume all dishes. The challenge was actually when I need to pour water out of a bottle into my glass.

When we were not able to see what we were eating, our sense for tasting has heightened a lot. Everything tasted so much more intense and delicious. I especially loved the steak and fish dishes.

Through out our dinner, we were guessing what we were eating. After the meal, they gave us a sheet of paper to test how much we could taste. Believe or not, we got more then 80% correctly. The waiter then displayed all the photos of our dishes, and explained every ingredient in the dishes. It’s so much fun!

Another interesting day in Singapore!Read more
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Arrival Singapore

Day 1: Singapore

Day 2: Singapore

Day 3: Singapore