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Published: March 1st 2018
HE SAID... Today we were flying from Sri Lanka to
Singapore.
We checked out of Pearl Grand Hotel at 9pm and made our way (via a pre-arranged transfer vehicle) to the Bandaranaike International Airport, which is also known as Colombo Airport. After an hour on the road we arrived, and the place was bustling. We navigated security, checked in, queued for ages at the immigration counter and then wandered through the duty free shopping area. We picked up a few gifts with our remaining rupees, including a moonstone and a Sri Lankan flag fridge magnet, before heading to our gate lounge.
Ren caused a stir at the gate lounge security gate, as her bag had to be scanned twice and a security officer had to manually rummage through her bag, pulling everything out and checking it. She didn’t seem to find what she was looking for, so she smiled at Ren and waved her through to the holding area. We eventually sat down at midnight and waited for our 1am flight.
The flight to Singapore was only three hours, but the time difference made it feel like six hours. The flight itself was comfortable, as we managed by
accident to get two seats together at the back of the plane. The service crew were excellent, and it was fantastic to have a few red wines after a month in Sri Lanka where red wine is so damn expensive. Our 2am meal (stir fried fish in dry chilli and Chinese wine) was tasty enough, as was the baby shrimps with potato salad.
We touched down at Changi Airport at 7:30am, made our way through the bustling terminal to the Arrivals section, waited in a queue at immigration and finally picked up our packs from the carousel at 8am. We jumped into our transfer vehicle and promptly fell asleep as we made our way into the heart of Singapore, arriving at our hotel (Amoy) around 9am. We checked in, dropped our packs in our small but comfortable room and walked to a small cafe close to our hotel (Dean and Deluca) for breakfast. I had fresh orange juice, yoghurt,
croque madame (ham and cheese on toast with a fried egg on top) and tea, while Ren had fresh fruit, doughnuts,
huevos rancheros (fried egg, guacamole and tortilla chips) and tea.
After breakfast we walked back to our room
to shower and freshen up after our early morning flight. We then charged headlong into the lunch time madness for a self-guided walking tour of Singapore’s Chinatown. We made our way to Thian Hock Keng, Singapore’s oldest Chinese temple, then continued on through Ann Siang Hill Park to the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple, a serene place we had visited on a previous Singapore layover. We walked a short distance along South Bridge Road to the Sri Mariamman Temple, the oldest Hindu temple in Singapore, browsed the stalls on Chinatown Food Street and then made a bee line to the Maxwell Road Food Court, arriving mid-afternoon.
We’d heard a lot about this food court from a variety of food-related television programs (including Anthony Bourdain and Adam Liaw), so we were looking forward to it. I ordered
fried kway teow from the Marina South Delicious Food stall, while Ren opted for
Hainanese chicken rice from the Tian Tian Hainanese stall. The food was incredible. We sat at round plastic tables set up in an aisle between the stalls, and we had to hold everything down on the table to stop it being blown away by the fans overhead. We shared a
watermelon soyabean milk smoothie to finish the meal, which was cold and refreshing. As we were eating, an old man came up behind me and tried to get my attention. He was a cleaner at the market, and when I turned around he pointed to the floor beside my feet. I looked down and saw my wallet lying on the ground – it had fallen out of my pocket. I was so grateful for his honesty.
Feeling refreshed from our fabulous lunch, we ambled back to the hotel, picking up a few cold beers from a nearby 7/11 on the way. As we walked into our room, we noticed two small bottles of wine and a ‘Sorry’ note on the bedside table from the staff at Amoy. After we’d checked in that morning, we found ourselves temporarily stuck in the lift when we were being shown to our room, so we had to walk up one flight of stairs. We thought nothing more of it, but the staff who were trapped in the lift with us obviously felt it warranted an apology. It was becoming very apparent that the service at Amoy was extraordinary.
We were completely exhausted,
so we crawled into bed and crashed. We would have stayed there all night, but the doorbell rang at 7pm – the service staff were checking if we were in before turning down our bed. Obviously there was no need! Fortunately for us, we were now awake, and we didn’t want to waste any more of our time in Singapore. We quickly got dressed and headed out to Lau Pa Sat Festival Market for dinner. Ren had researched this place prior to our arrival, so we went straight to the Best Satay No. 8 stall and ordered a plate of chicken and beef satay sticks. It was a fantastic meal, which we shared at a round plastic table in the atmospheric and smoky dining area.
Shrouded in the warm evening air, we wandered back to hotel and enjoyed our complimentary wine and snacks (peanuts and chips) as we caught up on our writing and checked out our photos. We then crawled into bed and crashed – a second time.
We woke late at 8:30am – it was our first real sleep in for the trip! It was also time to take advantage of the comforts offered at Amoy.
I enjoyed a coffee from the Nespresso machine, and we both called family in Australia and England from the mobile provided in the room, which offered complimentary local and international calls.
We once again walked to Dean and Deluca (a small cafe close to our hotel) for breakfast. I had fresh orange juice, yoghurt, the breakfast stack (beef patty, hash brown, caramelised onions and guacamole) and tea, while Ren had fresh fruit, doughnuts,
croque madame and tea.
With rain in the air and an overcast sky, we headed out for a walk around Chinatown on this cooler Singapore morning. We wandered the stalls on Pagoda Street, Temple Street and Smith Street, walked past the tiny green Masjid Jamae Chulia mosque, stood outside the Sri Mariamman Temple and explored the downstairs wet market and upstairs food hall in the Chinatown Complex.
We continued our walk, passing the Chinatown Visitors Centre and Buddha Tooth Relic Temple on our way to the Maxwell Road Food Market, where we quenched our thirst with a mango soyabean milk at midday. We then walked through the Telok Ayer Park on our way to the Amoy Street Food Centre, which we were scouting for
our planned mid-afternoon lunch. We explored both levels of the centre before making our way back to the hotel in the misty rain, passing the Siang Cho Keong Temple on the way. We also walked through Ann Siang Hill Park on our return journey (one of the highest points in the area), so we managed to get a few panoramic shots of the Singapore skyline.
We arrived back at the hotel around 1pm and crashed for an hour and a half – our Sri Lankan travels were beginning to catch up on us. We woke an hour and a half later and walked to the Amoy Street Food Centre for lunch. The stall we’d planned to eat at was closed, so we decided on the Yuan Chan Famous Lor Mee stall, which had been very popular earlier in the day. The noodle dish was OK, but it wasn’t a standout. It was mid-afternoon and the stall was about to close, so the noodles were not as steaming hot as we’d expected.
We then ambled back to a shop near the Sri Mariamman Temple that had caught my eye during our morning walk. The shop was called East Inspirations,
and a print of a cat in Chinatown had grabbed my attention. The artist (Beth Chong, Beilexian) had a number of prints displayed in the shop front, but I decided to stay with my first choice. We also picked up a birthday card and a beautiful tea set at the shop, which they bubble-wrapped for us – we just hope it makes the return journey home…
With our Singapore shopping complete, we walked back to our hotel in the misty afternoon rain. We showered and organised our packs, as we had an early flight the following morning – it was the final leg of our journey back to Australia, and we were leaving the hotel at 4:30am.
We headed back to Lau Pa Sat Festival Market for dinner. We wandered around the stalls and decided on Lai Heng Fried Kway Teow. Ren ordered
fried carrot cake (white), while I opted for
fried kway teow – after all, the stall was named after the dish! Both meals were fantastic, and the woman was incredible, cooking multiple dishes at once and running the entire stall by herself.
We finished our meal and wandered around the market stalls before heading
back to the hotel. We stopped off at a Chinese bakery (Tan Hock Seng) right beside our hotel and picked up some almond biscuits to have with a cup of tea. It had been a fantastic last night in Singapore, and a very relaxing way to finish our travels. We had a 3:30am wakeup call booked for the following day, so we retired to our room and prepared for an early-ish night and a long day of flying…
SHE SAID... Our last day in Colombo had been relatively relaxing. Our fight to
Singapore wasn’t until 1:10am, but knowing that our travels around Sri Lanka were going to be full on, we were kind to ourselves and had booked a room for the extra night before the flight.
We left the hotel at 9pm and got to the very hectic Bandaranaike International Airport at 10pm. The drop off area was three vehicles deep and the queue to get into the airport was as long as the building itself. Despite all this, we (incredibly) managed to check-in and clear customs/immigration in just over an hour. We were glad that we hadn’t heeded the airline’s recommendation of getting there
five hours before departure – three hours was more than ample. We had plenty of time to peruse the shops and spend our last few rupees on small souvenirs for ourselves, and still had to sit at the gate lounge for over an hour before we boarded.
The flight went past in an absolute blur. I really dislike super early morning flights that don't allow you to sleep the night before… we usually take about 24 hours to recover from them. We were both asleep before take-off, and I woke up to find the food trolley a row away from us. The service and meal on Singapore Airlines was on-point as usual. We both opted for the fish with fried rice, and it was delicious. We inhaled our meals. We had skipped dinner in Colombo because our late afternoon scoffing of
short eats (an umbrella term for Sri Lankan fried or baked snacks) – a
seeni sambol (caramelised onion relish) bun, a vegetable bun and fish patties – had filled us up.
No sooner had they cleared our food trays that we were both asleep again. I woke up in a tired haze as the plane was preparing
to land, groggily filled in both our Singapore emigration cards and promptly fell back asleep.
Singapore's Changi Airport was straightforward to navigate, even with a slightly long queue at immigration – we were out with our luggage in under an hour. A driver from our hotel was waiting for us, and we rewarded his friendly banter by promptly falling asleep again. 😊
Next thing I knew, the car door was being opened by the doorman at the hotel. The Amoy Hotel is set in an old temple in Chinatown and the front entrance is through a small museum of the temple. Our room was ready for us at 9am, which was a massive relief. The staff taking us to our room were super embarrassed when the elevator refused to move, and we had to walk up a flight of stairs – not really a big deal at all, but they couldn’t stop apologising.
As tired as we were, we dropped our bags and made it in the nick of time for breakfast at Deluca and Dean, a cafe around the corner. A part of the cafe was cordoned off for guests from the Amoy, which included a
table with yoghurt, bread rolls, fruit platters and mini pastries (including a gorgeous custard filled doughnut that I still think about). From the hot menu, I had
huevos rancheros (eggs on tortillas smothered in salsa) which was tasty but not really a proper
huevos rancheros. Andrew had a
croque madame (a grilled ham and cheese sandwich, topped with a fried egg) – which was the better choice.
After breakfast I crashed for a few hours while Andrew shuffled around and organised himself. I managed to drag myself out of bed at about midday and we set off on a small walking tour of Chinatown, taking in the temples in the area. Our hotel was near the business district and we were swarmed by a lunch-time crowd. We knew this part of town from previous visits, and it was so fabulous being back in Singapore – a sleek and sexy, steam-room of a city.
We explored all the small and large streets in Chinatown. First we stopped at the small but beautiful Thian Hock Meng Temple. It’s one of the oldest and most important Buddhist temples for the Singaporeans of Hokkien descent. It’s dedicated to Mazu, a Chinese goddess
of the sea, and was built by early Chinese Hokkien immigrants in thankfulness for safe passage to Singapore.
We then walked to the massive Sri Mariamman Hindu Temple with its ornate
gopuram (gatehouse tower) that sits over the colossal wooden temple door. This is the oldest Hindu temple in Singapore and serves the sizeable population of Hindus of Indian descent.
Our main destination was the gigantic Buddha Tooth Relic Temple and Museum complex. We’ve visited the temple before, but I like re-visiting it, as I always find new and interesting details to admire in the richly ornate over-the-top interior decor. After visiting the Temple of the Tooth in Sri Lanka, I was mildly curious as to how many Buddhist temples around the world claim to have a relic of Buddha. Research for another time…
We ended up at the Maxwell Hawker Food Court, as I had been craving a plate of
Hainanese chicken rice from the Tian Tian stall ever since we’d booked this trip all those months ago – and it was seriously superb. Andrew had
fried kway teow from the Maria South stall, which was nice enough but not brilliant. We also shared a soyabean
milk flavoured with watermelon. It calmed my mouth down after the chilli hit from my chicken rice, and cooled us down for the walk back to the hotel. Singapore, we adore your food!
We got back to our hotel room to find that we’d been left two small bottles of red and white wine by the hotel staff with a very sweet 'I'm sorry' card for the fact that the lift hadn't worked when we arrived. How very lovely of them! It is little details like this which keep us being faithful to the Far East Hotel group when in Singapore.
I had intended to stay up and write my travel notes that afternoon, but no sooner had we walked in the door that I crashed on the very very comfortable bed. I woke up at some point when Andrew made me a cup of tea, but then Andrew crashed too, so it was the perfect excuse for me to keep napping. We were awakened by our door bell going off at 7pm for our turn down service!
Even though we weren't that hungry after a big lunch (and the variety of snacks from the open mini
bar in our room), we decided to go to La Pau Sat for satay. La Pau Sat is a normal hawker centre during the day, but at night a section of Boom Tat Street at the back of the centre is closed off to traffic and filled with seating and satay stalls. We chose stalls 7 and 8 for their good reviews, and shared skewers of chicken and beef satays with the most delicious satay sauce. We thoroughly enjoyed our meal and waddled the short block and a half back to our hotel.
As we had predicted when we booked this mini break in Singapore, all we had done on our first day was walk around Chinatown, eat and sleep. And the Amoy Hotel was the absolutely perfect choice for that.
We had a big sleep in the next morning, not waking until 8:30am. We wandered down to Dean and Deluca, and this time I had the
croque madame (given I had food envy the day before). The down side of having an included breakfast (as nice as it was) in a place like Singapore is that we weren't hungry for lunch until much later in the day,
which meant missing out on a hawker stall we’d really wanted to try.
We walked around Chinatown again, walking down streets and lanes we hadn’t explored the day before and ended up at the Chinatown Complex, which has a wet market downstairs. We walked around looking at all the fish and seafood, trying not to get our feet wet on the slushy floor. The fruit and vegetable area had some produce that I hadn’t seen before. However, the produce didn't stack up to the freshness of the produce in Sri Lanka. I suppose that’s the downside of living in a very small country, where built-up spaces have taken over agricultural land.
We checked out the very local hawker market upstairs, and apart from a family of possible expats, we were the only non-locals there. Unfortunately we weren't hungry at all, even to sample any sweets. However, we were getting very thirsty, so we crossed over South Bridge Road and walked back to the Maxwell Food Centre to get another soyabean milk we’d loved the day before. This time we chose mango, and it was even better than the watermelon version.
We walked back to the hotel via
the Amoy Street Food Centre (to check it out for later). We had a longer than expected nap when we got back from our walk, and didn't wake until 2pm. Sadly, the Noodle Story stall at the Food Centre we’d earlier got really excited about trying, had sold out by the time we went back. So we went with our second choice of Yuan Chun Famous Lor Mee, which was good, but not as rave-worthy as my lunch and dinner had been the day before. I haven’t had many lor mee dishes, but I was assured this is a good stall for it. Lor mee is a Hokkien dish of dark thick sticky gravy with springy yellow noodles and bits of fried fish. Not the prettiest dish, but very filling, and I can see how this would be considered comfort food it you grew up eating it.
We walked back to Pagoda Street to buy a print that had caught our eye earlier in the day. It was a very cute sketch by local artist Beth Cheong in the very lovely East Inspirations shop (which I think was run by her parents). We also bought a small teapot and
cups, and I could easily have bought about 50% of the stock in that shop!
We walked back to the hotel in the rain and settled in to have a relaxed afternoon and gather our strength for dinner. We walked back to Lau Pa Sat for dinner (again), as it was so close and the satay had been outstanding. This time we tried stall 21 for
fried white carrot cake, which is a radish dish I love, and Andrew had his go-to-dish of
fried kway teow. Both dishes were fabulous. We will definitely come back to La Pa Sat on our next visit to Singapore to try more of the stalls.
We walked back to the hotel via a local sweets and pastries shop, where we bought some traditional almond biscuits for our nightly cup of tea. We booked a wakeup call for 3:30am and a taxi to the airport for 4:30am. And that marked the end of our short stopover in Singapore.
So to sum up: Singapore… mostly, we ate and we slept. 😊
Next we catch two flights to take us home. We will write again from our plane seats and the odd airport lounge.
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Siewch
Siewch
Singaporeans can never agree on how to eat Hainanese Chicken Rice...
I see you poured the chilli over the chicken. There isn't a set protocol for eating chicken rice and Singaporeans will actually argue over how to eat it - whether to pour the chilli, ginger and soy sauce over the chicken, or dip it, and in what order :-)