Well, if that isn’t an auspicious start to a vacation I don’t know what is. After nearly 3 months of daily attempts to use miles to get an upgrade on our tickets to Singapore, it finally worked…the day before we were leaving. No, scratch that – the day we left. See, the only way it was all going to work is actually if we left the prior evening; so, we did. Fortunately, I am an organizational freak (and that is putting it mildly), so we were essentially all packed, both of us had been working late every night that week to make sure that things were taken care of and in the end, it all paid off as I stretched my legs out for the long, but now business-class flight to Singapore. Finally, all of my travel for work really, really paid off in these free tickets!
After what was surely the best flight to Asia that Jen or I had ever had – full of sleep, great food, movies, etc., we arrived at 6:30am on the 31st in Singapore rested and ready to rock and roll. We are, indeed, a bit intense and we do not, even had we been flying coach, ever sleep when we get in from these flights. It is very much our strategy to hit to the ground running. Singapore airport was every bit as efficient as you would expect it to be – from landing to sitting in a taxi, including immigration, customs, getting our bag and hitting an ATM, was only 30 minutes. The US could learn a lot from that.
I have come to a conclusion in my first Singaporean day – the taxi drivers here are the best in the world. They speak English, have meters and take tremendous pride in their honesty (big change from say Bangkok or KL), are still relatively cheap, are super-friendly and, despite all of the above, still drive like maniacs. I love it.
Once we arrived at the hotel – the new St. Regis just off Orchard Road, where, again, all that travel for work was paying off in a completely free stay, we were awed. The hotel really was brand new and it was gleaming. Service was excellent and they had our room ready despite our arrival at 7:30am. We settled in and were out by 9am.
We wandered around Orchard Road for a bit, learning the area but really looking for a Dim Sum place that had been recommended for breakfast. After a 15 minute walk or so, we arrived – and it was closed, opening at 11:30. Second conclusion of the day – Singapore is a late place. This was breakfast, after all, that we were looking for.
So, plan B – we were off to Little India. I didn’t expect much and was really pleasantly surprised. The shop houses were very colorful and there definitely wasn’t the sense that this was still the same old Singapore. It was beautiful and just a touch gritty, but all in a good way. After wandering by some temples and walking a bunch of the streets and alleys, we arrived at the Tekka Center Hawker Center. This is what we had been waiting for – the first foray into famed Singapore street food. Jen is not exactly the world’s biggest fan of Indian food so we had to keep things pretty moderate. Nonetheless, she was willing to give it a shot – hence the Chicken Biryani photo below. It was great – sweet and spicy, the perfect mid-morning snack.
We continued to wander Little India, stopping in at Singapore’s old spice mill on Cuff St. I had noted in my guidebook that they said you couldn’t miss the place because you could smell the curry for a block as you walked up. They were right. It was extremely strong – strong to the point that when I walked in the store to buy some curry for my mother-in-law I literally could not breathe. I waited 5 minutes to effect the transaction, but I was not a happy camper. I have no idea what that curry is going to do to our luggage.
We next meandered over to the Arab Quarter where we walked along its clean streets and looked into all the refurbished shop houses. It was even more colorful than Little India, but was far more sterile and thus missing some of the charm. We next walked through the Bugis Street market catching whiff after ever-so-powerful whiff of durian. Oh, it was awful. I think it best if I don’t even continue to talk about it as it is turning my stomach now just to think about it.
Oddly enough, since we didn’t really know anyone in Singapore, we were meeting one of my best friends from high school for drinks at Raffles and lunch. He was randomly passing through with his roommate back in Dublin on a trip around Malaysia and then on to Australia so it was a pretty awesome coincidence. While we waited for him, I knew that one of Singapore’s best tailors, Jack’s Custom Tailors, was located nearby and I desperately needed a few new suits and Jen wanted some dresses made. We stopped in there, got what we needed and then got measured up and went on to meet my friend. There really is nothing like a bespoke suit, so I am pretty excited for those when they’re done in a few weeks.
So now the big question – is a Singapore Sling really worth it? The answer is simple – No. They are terrible. First off, due to all of the ridiculous hullaballoo, purchasing the drink requires you to take out a second mortgage on your home. S$ 24 for one of those things! Secondly, there is no alcohol in them – it is like drinking bad fruit punch. We were really disappointed. Fortunately, we were with good company and were busy laughing it off and talking about all of their and our Asian adventures. The hotel was certainly beautiful and, I guess then, at a minimum, you can say it was a pretty fantastic setting.
We then headed off to the Albert Hawker Center for lunch. Some HK fried noodles and ginger fried pork and rice later, we were very, very happy. I got to tell you, these Hawker stalls are the only way to go. With all of the shopping, beautiful hotels and other such finery that Singapore has to offer, it can be a mighty expensive place. But, with these hawker stalls, you know that there is always that one opportunity to save some money and eat better food than you could anywhere else. The stuff is just awesome. We’d also go to Newton Circus Hawker Center for dinner later that night (for Beef and Chicken Satay and some seafood dried noodles), and, then, all of Jen and I’s meals all day cost less than $15 for both of us. Awesome!
My friend was then off for sunny Sydney, so we parted ways and headed back to our hotel. We were getting exhausted and it had been a long day. That said, though, we actually had another social engagement. One of Jen’s friend’s from high school was living here now and we were excited for her to show us around bit. At this point, as you can imagine in Singapore’s heat, Jen and I had walked about 15 miles since the morning and were a bit, shall we say, grungy. Imagine our surprise when Jen’s friend called and said – “hey, we’re going somewhere a bit fancy that may have a dress code – you should get dressed up a bit.” Well, please also bear in mind that we are spending the rest of the trip hiking around with tribes in the jungle, so we really didn’t have a lot to wear. We managed to get our only finery and we headed off to Asia Bar on the 70th (no, that is not a typo) floor of the Swissotel. From there, sweeping views of the entire city surrounded you. It was really something. Better still, we arrived before sunset and were able to see the magical transformation of Singapore by day to Singapore by night. We were also, strangely enough, able to witness the Singaporean army practice for their National Day celebrations in a week (we were informed that they had already been practicing for over a month, complete with fireworks shows... and then the day of the show, you can't even watch it live! Everyone watches it on TV from their homes! Only in Asia). We’ll miss the actual festivities so it was interesting to watch the army parades and parachuters drops from the sky.
We were teetering on the edge of exhaustion and at about 7:30pm finally had to call the quits. We parted ways with Jen’s friend who will see on our way back through, headed over to Newton Circus for some quick dinner and then back to the hotel for bed sweet bed. I am writing this at 4:30am, so clearly not quite over the jet lag yet, though I presume that will pass soon enough.
It was an awesome first day. Singapore was certainly impressive and we can’t wait to come back in a few days. Now it is off to Manila in just a few hours.
