Singapore – Where to, Gumshoe?

Singapore (Day 97): 12 Hour Layover

June 5, 2016

Last night, we slept for most of our 7 hour red-eye flight from Melbourne to Singapore. They served two meals during the flight – a snack at 2am and a large breakfast two hours before we landed. We landed at Changi Airport just after 5am (Singapore is two hours behind Melbourne). Our connecting flight to Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) would leave Singapore at 5:25pm, so we had around 12 hours for our last partial day in Singapore. With the way our flights worked out (Tim: i.e. how I planned and booked the flights) and since we wanted to fly Singapore Airlines, it was great we were able to spend ~35 hours in Singapore for “free”.

We took our time leaving the terminal since it was so early. We went to the washroom and both washed our faces and brushed our teeth. By the time we left the airport it was around 6:30am and we headed to the City Hall SMRT stop in the city. The train connecting Changi to the downtown core makes it really easy to explore the city on a layover. The train ride takes about 20-30 minutes.

We walked towards Collyer Quay to see the Merlion and views of Marina Bay Sands when it’s quiet. The city was so peaceful at 7am on a Sunday morning. There were a handful of people by the Merlion with their tripods trying to catch the sunrise, but unfortunately it was really cloudy so there wasn’t much to see. Given Singapore’s blistering heat, it was good the day was mostly overcast.

Our only plan for the day was to eat chili crab at Jumbo Seafood for lunch so our day was pretty relaxed. Since they didn’t open until noon and it was 7am, we went to look for a small breakfast at the La Pau Sat Hawker’s Market in the CBD. Online it says the market is open 24 hours, but I think it just means they don’t technically shut down the market. Vendors can open whenever they want. There were a few stalls open for breakfast and some that had some Chinese BBQ that didn’t want to serve it even though they were open.

We shared an iced coffee and a toasted breakfast sandwich (egg salad half and a Singaporean spicy tuna half). The coffee was good but the sandwich was pretty mediocre. I went to one of the Chinese BBQ stalls to order BBQ duck with noodles, but the vendor said “not yet” and there were no noodles for it. I couldn’t really understand what he was saying. My general consensus of the hawker’s market vendors are that they are fairly rude. I think this is just the way they are in general, but it’s very harsh and abrupt. For example, when I got to the stall, the guy says “what do yo want?” (in not a very nice tone).

Anyhow, we left La Pau Sat and walked towards Marina Bay Sands to check out the Gardens at the Bay. We didn’t get to walk on that side of the bay in May, so it was nice to be able to see it today. The Gardens at the Bay grounds are quite large. Most of the gardens are free to walk around but there are some parts that require admission like the Flower Dome, Cloud Forest ($28 SGD for both), and the walk between the Supertree Groves ($8 SGD). We didn’t end up going into any of them and just walked around the grounds. We heard that the Flower Dome and Cloud Forest are really cool but we didn’t think spending $56 SGD was worth it for us today. Maybe in the future when/if we come back.

After taking our time in the gardens, we walked towards Clark Quay for lunch. Jumbo Seafood is a famous Singaporean restaurant that specializes in chili crab. I didn’t know what to expect but just knew that it was something that we should probably eat. We didn’t get to have it in May and when we asked Marcus if we should eat it (Marcus is Singaporean) he said we have to eat it and order the fried bread (mantou) to use to dip in the chili sauce. So we did as the Singaporean said and ordered one chili crab and 8 pieces of mantou (we ordered 4 at first then wanted more).

There are actually two Jumbos around Clark Quay’s river walk and we went to both of them to see if they had a table. One of them said without a reservation there was no room so we went to the one we originally thought we would go to. The hostess said if we wanted a seat inside the restaurant as opposed to sitting outside in the heat, we had to share a table with others so we agreed. We were seated with four other people. Two girls and another couple. They brought out a dish of peanuts and filled our cups with tea. We later found out on our bill that the peanuts and tea were $1.20 SGD pp. I know Tim doesn’t like to eat crab (only due to the effort outweighing the reward) so I was happy he was willing to try it out. The crab came covered in a sweet and spicy chili sauce. It was really good. Are there any places in Vancouver who do chili crab? Marcus’ suggestion about the mantou made it even better. The mantou were super fresh and were cooked perfectly. We could’ve ordered more but we were both full so eating more mantou with the chili sauce would just be pure gluttony.

After lunch we made our way back to the City Hall SMRT stop to get back to Changi Airport. We were starting to get tired so heading to the airport earlier sounded like a good idea. When we got to Changi we used our Priority Pass membership (4 free lounge visits courtesy of the BMO World Elite Mastercard) to get into the SATS Premier Lounge in Terminal 2. We had 2.5 hours to kill so sitting in the lounge and showering was good use of the pass.

The Stats Premier Lounge had Singaporean/Malaysian food, drinks (alcoholic and non), and sandwiches. Since we just had a sizeable lunch, we didn’t eat anything until we were about to leave. I tried a small bowl of laksa, which they make for you on the spot and Tim had spaghetti and meatballs.

We headed to the gate to board our flight to HCMC. The flight was only an hour and 45 minutes. They served us a meal and it was basically time to land. Our descent down into HCMC was a bit scary because when we were going through the clouds the plane was going up and down sporadically. I was squeezing Tim’s hands and some people were yelping every time the plane made a sudden movement. However, the 10 year old girl in front of us was having the time of her life. She was saying it was like a ride and how it was so much fun. At least someone enjoyed it.

We passed through customs without any issues as we got a 3 month multi-entry visa before we left home. Vietnam is the only country we’ve been to on this trip that didn’t require a form to be filled out upon arrival. I guess they don’t care about any details about your trip in the country. We got our bags and headed out to take a taxi to our hotel.

There were a lot of stands with taxi signs before you get outside. We didn’t stop to see how much they would’ve cost. But according to Lonely Planet, they are usually flat rates and would cost 300,000 VND ($17 CAD) for a trip into the city. We lined up at the taxi queue and didn’t recognize any of the taxi names. I was looking for the two legit taxi companies that were deemed as being “ok”. We thought since the taxi queue at the airport should only have legit taxi companies, we lined up. We told the taxi driver to turn on the meter, which he did.

When we got to our hotel, he said the ride was 400,000 VND plus the 10,000 airport fee (which was expected). I know this was a lot higher than what Lonely Planet and the airport website said a metered cab was supposed to be (average 180,000 VND). But since we had our luggage in the back, what are you supposed to do when you don’t agree with the price. (Tim: The meter actually said it was supposed to be around 150,000 VND plus the 10,000 airport fee, but he quoted the 400,000 price using the timer that ticked up instead of the actual fare meter… e.g. the car was idle for 4 minutes during our ride). Anyway, we learned our lesson. Only stick with Vinasun or Mai Linh Taxis. I thought seeing the legit taxi company cars would be more obvious, but there was a sign saying you can’t pick which cab you want (so what are you supposed to do?!).

We’re staying at the Platinum Hotel for 3 nights. It’s located in District 1, which is where the bulk of the touristy things are in HCMC. The staff was friendly when we arrived and gave us a welcome drink. The lady showed us to our room. It’s fairly small and clean enough. We’re only paying $35 CAD a night so I guess my expectations shouldn’t be super high.

We’re both really tired. Our June 5th has been a pretty long day. We were in 3 cities today, making our way back to the Northern Hemisphere – getting closer and closer to home. HCMC is 3 hours behind Melbourne.

Steps today: 26,000

Singapore (Day 67): 23 Hour Layover

May 6, 2016

We had a good rest in Singapore at the Bliss Hotel. The bed was very comfortable, but if you’re a light sleeper, I wouldn’t recommend this hotel. You could hear everything in the rooms next door as well as what’s going on in the hallway (a lot of people got up early, probably to catch flights). We washed up and headed out for the day at 10:00am. Our first stop on our day in Singapore was to go to Maxwell Food Centre for some Hainanese Chicken Rice.

Singapore is known for its hawker markets and this was a priority for me on our layover here. I love Hainanese Chicken Rice, and at home, my favourite is from Cafe D’lite in Aberdeen or Mamalee’s in Kits (which used to be called Cafe D’lite), so that’s what I was comparing Singapore’s rice to.

Bliss Hotel is located right beside the Chinatown SMRT station, which is only about a 6 minute walk to the Maxwell Food Centre. The chicken rice stall that is the most famous is called, Tian Tian, and according to Trip Advisor, it opened at 11am. When we got to the market, we found Tian Tian and it was already open. There was no line up, which was surprising, but I guess it was only 10:30am. I ordered a medium sized chicken rice plate ($5 SGD = $4.75 CAD). We read online that Tian Tian had a former disgruntled chef who left them to open his own stall, called Ah-Tia, a few stalls down at Maxwell. We tried one from each stall to see whose was better. They tasted the same to both of us, the rice at Tian Tian was a bit softer (and better) than Ah-Tia (But Ah-Tia’s set was only $3.50 SGD and it included soup).

So what’s our verdict on the chicken rice in Singapore? The rice itself was the best I’ve had, but I wasn’t that blown away by the chicken. They served me all white meat so maybe it isn’t fair to fully judge, but I actually like Cafe D’lite’s chicken better. The white meat was juicy but it wasn’t as flavourful as I would’ve hoped for and the chilli dipping sauce was very spicy (not a sweet and tangy spice like at home). Maybe I hyped the chicken rice too much in my head, but in actuality, Vancouver does have some of the best food and I don’t take that for granted.

Maxwell Food Centre only has ceiling fans so it was very hot inside. We had a bottle of free water we got from the hotel, and I drank it all in a couple of minutes. We saw a bunch of fruit juice stalls and got fresh watermelon juice for $2 SGD = $1.90 CAD.

After brunch, we walked towards the water to see Singapore’s Merlion fountain. Singapore has some really interesting architecture which I really appreciated. Before coming to Singapore, I knew it was a city full ex-pats but I didn’t realize it was so multicultural on its own. I would prefer to live in Singapore than Hong Kong, mostly because the city is quite attractive, clean, not as crowded, and everyone speaks English. I know you can move to Hong Kong or most cities without fluently speaking their native tongue, but I also understand that living in Hong Kong without being able to speak much Cantonese is restricting if you can’t really communicate well with coworkers on a casual basis.

We took a bunch of pictures around Collyer Quay, which is where you’ll find a good view of the Marina Bay Sands Hotel and the Merlion. The waterfront area was full of SE Asian tourists, mostly Thai. I think we got the most sun and truly experienced the Singaporean sun in those 15 minutes we were out. Any area with a bit of shade, there were people huddled together. For once, I saw the appeal of using an umbrella to block out the sun and I wished I had mine with me.

After we finished taking our pictures, we went to the Fullerton Hotel, which is across the street. It’s a beautiful looking hotel that used to be Singapore’s main post office. It felt so good to be in an air conditioned building. If you’re ever needing a reprieve from the Singapore sun, I highly recommend hanging out in the Fullerton Hotel’s lobby. They have free wifi and their washrooms are very nice.

After taking a break at the Fullerton, we walked down the street to another hawker’s market, Lau Pa Sat. This market is located in the middle of the downtown/financial core and is a popular lunch spot for office workers. We went to Lau Pa Sat at basically the worst possible time, 12:10pm. Lau Pa Sat is a nice looking market, but like Maxwell, there’s no AC. Since the sun had been scorching for a while now (34 degrees and humid), the the market was very warm. We did a few loops around the market to see what we were going to try. The main reason why I wanted to go to Lau Pa Sat was for their satays, but after we arrived I read that the satay stalls are only open at night (7pm and onwards) and are set up outside the market. I guess we’ll have to come back to Singapore another time.

Our meal at Lau Pa Sat was by far the sweatiest meal we’ve ever had. I don’t think I’ve sweat so much in my life while eating a meal. When I tried to put my elbows on the table, they would slip off because my arms were drenched. If we were to go back to Lau Pa Sat, I would try their Indian food, it looked really good.

After Lau Pa Sat, we headed towards Clarke Quay. There are shops in the area which we took our time to walk through (thanks to the strong AC). There are also a lot of bars and restaurants that aren’t open until dinner. Clarke Quay area seems like it would be more fun at night time, so during the day it wasn’t that interesting to walk around. You can take boat rides from Clarke Quay to Collyer Quay, where we were earlier.

Down the street from the Clark Quay area is a fun and colourful building. It used to be the Singapore Police Station and now it’s the Ministry of Culture, Community, and Youth. Inside the atrium area there’s a brief history run down of the building and police history in the city. Apparently Singapore used to be a crime ridden city back in the day.

We had about 3 hours until we planned on going to the airport. At this point in the afternoon, we were both feeling really tired from the heat and walking around with our day packs (old Macbook Pros are not light). We hung around the City Hall/Raffles area and took refuge in Raffles City Mall, which had a lot of internationally branded stores. We decided to hang out at the food hall to relax and sit for a bit before picking one of the stalls to eat from.

I was excited when we saw the choices we had for dinner because there was a “HK Style BBQ” stall. I told Tim I had been craving Cantonese BBQ for a while, so this was perfect. Unfortunately, this did not satisfy my cravings. While it was good, it wasn’t really the same. They poured a thick brown sauce on top of the meat and rice, which if I had known they did, I would have asked them to put it on the side. I think the sauce threw things off for me. Maybe I’ll find some good BBQ in Chinatowns in Australia.

At around 6pm, we made our way to the train station across the street (City Hall stop) and headed to Changi Airport. It was rush hour on a Friday afternoon, it was busy but it wasn’t too crowded. It’s hard to identify office workers in Singapore because they are dressed fairly casual here. I think because it’s so hot here, people just don’t care.

We were flying out of Terminal 3 at Changi, which is different from the terminal we arrived in. Terminal 3 was much nicer and is the largest terminal at the airport. This was the first airport we’ve been to that you go through customs before you clear security. Once we got through customs, we were in the shopping area (which is pretty good) and we realized we didn’t even go through security yet. At Changi, you go through security when you enter your gate area, right before boarding. It’s a different system and one that I don’t really get the logic behind. If you wanted to buy anything from duty free, you had to buy it at least 90 minutes before your flight because you couldn’t take it through security with you. Also, people are waiting around any way and usually once you go through security and customs, you just need to relax before your flight. The way it is at Changi, you still have one more thing to line up for and another stage to deter you from buying a bottled drink from a restaurant.

We boarded our flight to Melbourne and it left at 9:15pm. The flight was quite full and our seats weren’t the best. We were in the middle of the plane right in front of one of the washrooms. The only upside was that no one was behind us. I was surprised that the flight time was only 6 hours and 20 minutes (online I read it was 7 hours and 20 minutes). I slept for most of the flight and only woke up when it was time for breakfast.

Singapore Airlines is really good. I would recommend it if you have the chance. They’re part of Star Alliance and they don’t charge fees the way Air Canada does (on reward tickets). It’s too bad they pulled their Vancouver route a few years ago.

Steps today: 26,000

Taipei/Singapore (Day 66): Heading South

May 5, 2016

Our three nights in Taipei went by really quickly. We were flying out later in the afternoon and going to Singapore. We woke up pretty late and took our time packing up. Mom went to get us breakfast and made us some milk tea (which was really yummy). She had to go out for lunch with some old friends, so Tim and I were on our own.

Before we knew it, it was already 1pm! Originally we thought we’d go for beef noodle, but the places we had in mind weren’t that close to the apartment. We decided to go back to Tonghua Street to go for a quick lunch at Formosa Chang’s and grab bubble tea for later. We headed out without checking the weather, a jacket, or an umbrella (Tim: foreshadowing). While we were walking we felt a couple of heavy rain drops and knew it was going to be a huge down pour. We quickly got undercover and into Formosa Chang’s for lunch.

We walked really quickly back to the apartment to try to stay as dry as possible. Luckily we were both wearing clothes that would dry quickly since everything else was packed. We got back to the apartment and did the final pack up and waited for Mom to get back from lunch before heading down to meet Uncle Albert.

As mentioned in my last post, I’m a sentimental person so it was sad leaving Taipei. It has become the closest place we had to a home this trip. We have had a lot of good memories here with family and friends, so when we said bye, I obviously cried (but tried to hide it as best as possible…). Tim is touched that I showed so much emotion to his Motherland.

The drive out to Taoyuan Airport is around an hour from the city. It’s extremely kind of Uncle Albert to drive us back and forth from the airport so many times this trip. They are building an airport train line out from Taipei Main Station to the airport, but it’s completion has been delayed quite a bit. Hopefully the next time we visit it will be done.

We were flying Singapore Airlines (both for the first time) and we left out of Terminal 2 of the International Terminal. This was the first time we have been to this terminal and it’s really nice. They had a good selection of luxury brands, Taiwanese souvenirs, and duty free shops. Comparing the prices of Longchamps back at Taoyuan and Incheon, they are about the same. If the USD was stronger (like it was a few months back), than Taoyuan would be cheaper since their prices are in NT.

I was looking forward to flying with Singapore Airlines since I’ve always heard good things about it and it’s consistently ranked one of the best airlines in the world. After my first flight with them, I would have to agree, it’s probably the best airline I’ve flown. The flight attendants were all very friendly (and pretty), they gave you a hot towel when you sat down to wipe your hands/face (and we were in economy), they came around with drinks (great drink selection) more than 5 times on a 4 hour flight and their meals were good (you get Haagen Daaz ice cream).

The movie selection was also great – they had over 150 movies (those are just the Hollywood movies) to watch, including some really recent releases. I ended up watching “The Intern” with Anne Hathaway and Robert De Niro (I liked it!), 3 episodes of the “New Girl”, and Anthony Bourdain in Tanzania. There was no turbulence on this flight so it was more enjoyable than the flight a few days ago.

We finally landed at Singapore’s Changi Airport after what felt like a long flight. It was 10:20pm when we landed, we went through customs and headed for the SMRT to get us into the city. We packed an overnight day pack so we didn’t have to pick up our backpacks (they’re going straight to Melbourne) (Tim: fingers crossed).

We booked a hotel near the Chinatown SMRT stop through Expedia. It was $139 CAD a night and is in a relatively good location – about an 8 minute walk to a couple of the hawker food markets I wanted to go to. After a couple of transfers, it took us about 35 minutes to get to our hotel. We arrived at our hotel just before midnight. We checked in, washed up and relaxed. The hotel room is quite nice – clean, rainfall shower head, and a large bed.

Tomorrow we’ll have until about 7pm until we have to go back to Changi for our flight to Melbourne at 9:30pm.

Steps today: 8,000