Driving in Singapore Part 3

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Raffles Place

Today, we are in the Central Business District (CBD). This packed urban jungle is filled with the world’s most powerful financial houses and banks. Looking up through my car’s panoramic tilting roof, I can see the reflections of the buildings. Inside this shadowy urban concrete jungle, we lose our sense of direction immediately. Singapore roads are not in grid. There is no convention to the road naming or the road construction. Roads meander and cross other meandering roads. To top that, most narrow streets in CBD are one way.

Boat Quay

After many turns, the concrete urban jungle thins out. The view of Singapore River emerges in front of us. We arrive at an area called Boat Quay. This place is known for its riverfront outdoor restaurants, bars, and traditional restored shophouses with colorful shutter windows.On weekday evenings, people descend from the CBD skyscrapers and they follow aromatic smells of world cuisines at Boat Quay.

Foodies find Singapore to be a culinary goldmine. The ensemble of homegrown delights and traditional dishes of Chinese, Indian, and Malay origin, can easily be found throughout the city. Some favorite dishes include chicken rice, laksa (lemon grass vermicelli soup), char kway teow (stir-fried rice flat noodle), yong tau fu (stuffed tofu), roti prata (pancake bread) , satay (sliced barbequed meat on skewer), and nasi lemak (coconut rice with accompaniments). They are not only delicious but also very inexpensive. On the opposite spectrum, restaurants offering haute cuisines from nearly every corner of the world complete the Singaporean menus. From unpretentious hole-in-the-wall places to grand palaces with bird’s-eye panoramic views, restaurant designs are just as diverse as the menus...@driving-vacation

More pictures...

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