We heart Singapore!

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It really is too bad that we only planned to stay in Singapore for such a short time because we both instantly fell in love with the city and could easily have stayed 2 weeks here. Well, we could but I don’t think my Visa would have been able to stay that long.

Singapore is a very beautiful city but it is also a very expensive city. It’s pretty much equivalent to Vancouver in cost and would have to be a trip all on its own. I am going to start to save my pennies as soon as I get home so I can come back….maybe for a honeymoon.

We stayed at a place called The Hangout @ MT. Emily, which is a funky cool budget hotel. Their slogan is “No Frills. Just fun accommodation.” It is a cool concept for a hotel, as they don’t off a lot of the usual hotel things like room service or posh rooms but they have all the basic comforts you need and have decorated the place in bright happy colours and simple furniture. The rooms remind me of an Ikea bedroom showroom. It is extremely clean and comfortable and they have 24 hour self serve laundry (which is really rare when traveling) and a beautiful roof top deck area where you can lounge and take in the view. And they had the beast shower we have had since we started our trip with non-stop hot water and a rain shower head. Heaven!

We arrived into Singapore rather late after about 13 hours of bus travel through Malaysia so we didn’t do much the 1st night other than eat dinner and have a couple of beers. The next morning we started the day of with a trip to Fedex so we could ship home a 12lg box of stuff that we no longer needed for our trip. Even with sending all that home our bags still feel freakin’ heavy! Oh well.

We then hit the streets for some shopping. Geoff’s backpack had a blowout and needed to be replaced so we went to one of the many malls and did what I do best – shopped!

After shopping and lunch we decided to play tacky tourist and checked out the Singapore Flyer, which is the world’s tallest observation wheel. Basically, it is a giant Ferris wheel with enclosed glass pods that fit 22-24 people that takes you up to 165m for a 365 degrees panoramic view of Singapore. It was so cool!

That night we headed to Clarke Quay, which is this awesome food and shopping district located along the Singapore River. At night it is lit up like Las Vegas but without the cheese and there are so many restaurants it took us over an hour just to pick one. We settled on a Mexican restaurant called Muchos and had ourselves a huge mexi-feast complete with jugs of margaritas and beers. Yum! This is also the club district so there were all kinds of music and people and just a great place to walk around and people watch.

I love everything about Singapore. The people are so nice and friendly. The streets are extremely clean and safe. No graffiti anywhere. You aren’t actually allowed to chew gum on the streets! It is laid out very well and the transit systems are so easy to use. There are also taxis all over the place. Everywhere there is amazing architecture, new and old, and so much to do and see that I have to come back and really spend some time here. There is so much history and charm to this city that I understand why it is so popular.

Sadly we have run out of time in Singapore and are now headed to the Philippines to spend the rest of our vacation on beaches and in jungles. I don’t know how reliable the Internet access will be but I will try to keep the blogs coming.

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