Our Travel Blog

Still exhausted...

Today was Jess' first day of "work," but he got a call from the manager this morning telling him it wasn't totally necessary to go in. He went for a couple hours anyway. I enjoyed my new snacks while watching Grimm before getting up and out to go meet him and a couple coworkers for lunch. Apparently that giant thing (Ghee Dosa with Masala) is for one person...I didn't even eat half.

After lunch we ventured across the street because I spotted a store that might sell curling irons!! Ding ding... found one, and it had an interesting warning. There was also a group drumming very loudly and walking in and out of stores with a Chinese dragon. Turns out they were everywhere today. I was also super excited to see a whole section of convertible furniture in this store. Really neat stuff.

Had a refreshing Happy Hour beer (because happy hour is apparently noon to 8p) while trying to figure out our day. Decided to walk back to Bugis to see Deadpool, which gave us two hours to get there. In the meantime we meandered through the mall, bought some Famous Amos cookies, and took our time walking to Bugis. All the walks seem to be getting shorter and shorter!
At Bugis there were more Chinese dragons and drummers! We were still early for the movie so we went to Churro 101 and had a dark chocolate churro (Better than a boyfriend!).
Singapore movies are cheaper than at home, but the theatre seats are pretty snug. Worth another go though!

After the movie we went by Cold Storage (the grocery store) again, for more odds and ends. Since we realized we didn't really get any cohesive things the last two times we went. We can now make an actual sandwich!
Then we went back out to Sushi Airways. The food is really good, but we weren't $72 full by the time we left (which is what the total was), so we'll be looking for cheaper sushi options for future.

Oh yea... so then we went around the block to Laffio's again for some of their amazing waffle fries and the cheapest beer we've seen anywhere around here. Then back home, showered, and in bed to type this up by 10p because we are exhausted!
Chili crab tomorrow...

Jet Lagged

Jet lag is doing us in today (and strep throat..?). I coughed myself awake at 6:30am. I decided I probably wasn't going to be able to get back to sleep because of all the coughing, so I checked the sunrise/sunset calendar, and Google Sky Map to see where exactly the sun was going to rise.
Since I was only about 20 minutes from sunrise by the time I got around to checking it I decided it was worth it to just stay awake. The corner of our room faces sunrise, giving us a perfect view over the water.

I sat awake for an hour and snapped a few shots on my phone before finally deciding to wake Jess up around 7:30.

Once Jess was up we decided pretty quickly on where to go have breakfast. Jess found Clinton Street Bakery on Yelp, and the reviews looked promising. Like almost everything so far, it was about a ten minute walk, and the weather was actually really nice this morning.
Clinton Street's slogan is "Made with love and butter" and they combine maple syrup and butter for their waffles and pancakes instead of giving them to you separately; tastes sort of like caramel.

I had caramelized banana french toast and Jess had the Valentine's special, chocolate raspberry pancakes. It was the most perfectly cooked french toast I've ever had (super soft and fluffy, but a little crisp on the outside), and hot unlike most breakfast foods we usually end up with. The taste didn't even come close to Ruby Slipper in New Orleans (hands down probably the best bananas foster french toast you will ever get in your life), but definitely worth trying. Jess' pancakes were delicious, and also perfectly fluffy and hot.

After breakfast we headed toward Bugis Junction which is, you guessed it, another giant maze of a shopping mall. We realized this morning that Jess forgot his swim shorts, so it turned out to be a mission to find American sized swim shorts in an Asian country. The shorts were acquired (thank you Under Armor!), but I've been unable to find a curling iron under $80 so I can tame this humidity frizz.

Also turns out that most of the stores don't open until 10 and 11 on Sundays, and a lot are closed. The whole place was also sort of empty, except for a bunch of people setting up for a Valentine's Day scavenger's hunt.

The last picture is just a neat looking building on the way back to the apartment.

We got back to the room and went to check out the pool and have a drink. The water was freezing, but made the heat much more bearable once we got back out. Drinks were pretty good and decently priced for a hotel bar. Awesome views from the lounge chairs. We'll be taking more pictures from down there at some point.

After the pool we went out for kebab/shawarma. We walked by this place yesterday and it smelled amazing, and the meat tornados looked tasty. Neither of us had ever had shwarma, but the guy making it was really helpful to suggest appropriate sauces. Omg, it was so good and we will definitely be going back. It also helped that they had an upbeat 90s pop soundtrack playing loudly. Passersby would dance their way past us on the sidewalk.

We went back over to Bugis Junction since we forgot to go to Cold Storage (the grocery store) when we were there earlier. It started to rain on the way over (huge rain drops while the sun was still shining) and we decided to go see Deadpool. This meant we had to find our way back through the maze and figure out where the movie theatre is. Unlike this morning, this mall is now packed... shoulder to shoulder in some places. We finally found it, the line was incredibly long for tickets, and then Jess realized he was looking at the wrong location for showtimes, so we decided to postpone it.

Finding Cold Storage was another adventure, but my sense of direction has been a huge help so far. If we both had Jess' sense of direction we would be in big trouble. ;)

Grocery stores here are a huge headache. They're tiny, very congested, almost completely foreign brands, and in the center of these big malls.

Figuring out how to get back out of the mall while carrying multiple grocery bags, a large jug of laundry detergent and a case of beer was not quite as easy as getting in. Then we had to wait in a really long time to get a cab. The walk is not bad at all, but carrying all that would have been awful.

The jet lag had really kicked in by this point. I laid in bed for an hour researching where to find curling irons in Singapore (still not a lot of luck) while Jess worked on some school work.

I then spent probably another hour looking at all the local restaurants and eateries online before resorting back to Dominos for delivery, because neither of us wanted to leave the room again. 

We settled down with our teeny tiny pizzas (9 inches!?) and Tiger beer and watched the Amazing Race (yay, my first recording).

Updates from here on will probably be a little more sporadic, since Jess is starting work tomorrow and we don't want to burn you guys out too early on our trip.

We're slowly starting mental lists of all the things we want to do while we're here, and for such a small country there is a lot!

Our 48 hour first day

 
 

Despite almost being late for our flight, we made it with enough time to grab a pretzel from Auntie Anne's and line up for boarding.

The first flight was 14 hours long. Thankfully, the plane was almost empty! We got two rows of 3 seats to ourselves at one point, and each managed to get a few hours of sleep thanks to our pal Benadryl! Jessie spent most of the flight watching Supernatural, and Jess played video games and watched Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Thanks, pirated tv shows! The food was edible, but we definitely felt awful the next day.

We landed in Japan at about dinner time with a 1.5 hour layover. We booked it past the Ultraman photo op, in a quest for sushi before our flight. Success! Sushi Kyotatsu to the rescue! "OMG so good arglebargleblrr" -Jessie. Afterward, we hung out in the United Lounge for just long enough to drink a coffee before having to line up to get back on the metal tube we had just spent so much time in.

Seven hours later, despite thinking we'd be detained, caned, or killed ("DEATH TO DRUG TRAFFICKERS" on their customs declaration form), there was barely a customs check when we landed in Singapore. Our driver took us to our serviced apartment at about 2am in a van that had seatbelts and seats sized for infants.

The building hallways between the front desk and our room aren't air conditioned, so that was an unpleasant first experience. At this point, it's 3am and we're wondering what we've gotten ourselves into. We check all the cabinets and find that we have two forks, two spoons, two water glasses, and two wine glasses. No plates (we found them the next morning, along with a teapot and some coffee/tea mugs). One pot, one pan. The couch sounds like a whoopie cushion. After eating probably the worst room service "caesar" salad and "pepperoni" "pizza," we pass out.

The next morning, the view from our room is incredible. Lush, green, and water.

Being hungry (and not wanting to tempt fate with more room service), we set out for coffee and lunch! We headed across the street to an area that has a New Orleans vibe (not quite sure what this neighborhood is called), had an iced coffee at a place called "Le Frenchie," walked around a little bit and headed to Suntec City for lunch.

Suntec City is a giant office complex / mall / hotel / dining area / labyrinth, which also happens to be where Jess' office will be while we're here. We walked around in circles for about an hour, looking at all of the directories for the place we were trying to go to lunch. We finally found appropriate directions and ended up almost exactly where we entered the mall in the first place. Had we turned right instead of left, we would have been there in 20 seconds instead of 60 minutes. That said, we found a grocery store and a really cute kitchen store that does cooking classes that smelled SO GOOD.

For lunch, we had dim sum at Din Tai Fung. We ended up ordering way too much food, but ate it all. Xiao long bao, pork and shrimp shumai, some chili wonton thing, dates with gelatinous rice cake, spicy cucumber, and delicious jasmine tea.

The walk back to the room was much quicker than our trek to lunch. Jessie spent a good amount of time deleting Ally McBeal and Star Trek recordings from 2014 on the DVR and putting in a new recording schedule. While putting away our purchases we found plates and bowls.

Jess took a few minutes to try to figure out how to un-whoopie cushion our couch, while Jessie researched local honey in Singapore. Turns out they don't really have bees and people don't understand honey. 

After a reboot, we ventured back out for dinner. By this time Jessie is feeling much sicker than when we even left our house in Herndon, so it was a quicker adventure than we hoped. We did find that the neighborhood across the street is even more New Orleans-y at night (music, DJs, tons of food, outdoor tables). After getting out of the crowded area we found a much more mellow spot called Laffio with a great looking menu (Potty Mess, anyone? no, really... that's the name of the dessert we had served in a flower pot with a tiny shovel instead of a spoon). We met the owner, Doreen, who gave us her phone number so we can text her if we need directions or have any questions about the area.

Oh yea... and there's a cat cafe.