A Friends Reunion in Singapore
SG FTW!
2/5
After a four hour flight to Seattle, I went to bed at the airport hotel worrying about how it would feel to sit on a plane for fourteen hours direct to Singapore.
2/6-7
I worried needlessly. In the morning, after joining our travel companions (A&D) at the airport, I realized it was actually going to be seventeen hours in the air!
The Singapore Airlines flight was pleasant, even in economy. The attendants were beautiful and friendly, the food decent. Our friends were traveling with a 5 year old and a toddler. The latter actually had access to an airline-provided bassinet mounted to the wall in front of his parents’ seats.
The daylight flight was smooth and incredibly long as it hugged air traffic control across Alaska, Japan, and the South China Sea.
Approaching our destination, we spotted a large number of oil tankers loitering in the waters around the island. Was this related to trouble in the Red Sea?
Our Singaporean friends (D&C) meet us at the airport upon our arrival in the evening of 2/7. We split passengers between their car and a taxi to the Initial Residence in Novena/Balestier and ate a dazed dinner together at a modern Cantonese restaurant nearby.
2/8
I woke at 2am and was unable to fall asleep again. Around 5, J and I got up to find breakfast. A&D had already been to a nearby 24/7 Indian restaurant, so we decided to give it a try too. We had huge dosas and sweet, hot coffee for breakfast. We mentioned our friends to the owner, but he didn’t seem to understand. This is likely because we went to a different 24/7 restaurant on the same street.
It was already hot and humid before sunrise, and my camera was foggy for the first pictures of the day.
J and I walked to Little India, enjoying exotic scenery along the way. It felt good to be overseas again, dripping in sweat and always wanting a cold, sweet drink.
We stopped at Tikka Center for a second breakfast and to cool down under the fans. A new generation of hawkers had set up coffee stand that was sock filtering some delicious drinks. We decided to wait around the area for A&D to join us for lunch.
That evening, we tried soy sauce chicken rice from a well-rated restaurant by the hotel. Apparently, a better and more famous option was a block in the other direction.
View from the pedestrian bridge outside our hotel.
Ornate shophouses.
Shrine.
No use crying over spilled shrimp.
Entering Little India.
Side street.
Sri Veeramakaliamman Temple
Cattle guards.
Flower shop.
Back alley thinker.
Colorful boxes.
Tan Teng Niah.
Blues clues.
Inside Tekka wet market.
Lanterns.
J and the brew.
Lattice.
1940.
Mosque.
Security bars.
Sea Foam.
High-rise dryers.
Inside Tekka center.
Our first hawker meal.*
Above the wet market.
Fruit stands.
Chicken rice.
2/9
After lying awake in bed for hours again, J and I took a bus to Chinatown.
The buses in Singapore were clean, frequent, and air conditioned. We chose pay via Apple Pay/wireless credit by tapping at entrance and destination.
Chinatown was quiet in the morning, though getting ready for Lunar New Year festivities.
J and I had chicken rice from a hawker stall, chatted with a traveling Italian gelato entrepreneur, and walked around the area until meeting D for some of his favorite chicken curry at another dystopian feeling hawker center.
We spotted stray cats and our first jungle fowl, so it felt a little like we were home.
Afterward, we cabbed to D&C’s apartment complex to swim in the rain, eat hot pot, and see how loud 4 kids and six adults could be inside.
Buddha Tooth Relic Temple.
Old and new.
Durian man.
Little dinks.
IN.
My favorite building due to to how ugly it is: People’s Park Complex.
Inside People’s Park Complex.
Another angle.
Covered street.
Freshly painted shop houses.
Windows 95.
The master at work.
Jungle fowl rooster.
Burning fake money.
Mini-splits.
Building detail.
Building detail.
Chicken curry.
2/10
We joined A&D for a pre-sunrise dosa breakfast, then walked around the abandoned Whampoa Food Centre where a kind man gave one of the kids a large plastic toy.
Along the Whampoa River, we found the pristine and sparking Whampoa Park with activities from toddler to elderly. The river was home to numerous fish, turtles and large snails.
We stopped to admire large incense logs getting burning in front of a neighborhood Buddhist temple. The female monk gestured for us to come inside and make wishes for the good luck of our relatives. We obliged, and got small bags of candy and water as parting gifts.
At midday, we meet the full posse at Sun Yat Sen Nanyang Memorial Hall, then went to a Lunar New Year’s ceremony at D’s mom’s apartment. It was a honor to be part of the family tradition, which mostly involved eating.
For some reason, we all went to the Marina Bay Sands mall and waited in crazy lines for bubble tea. The mall was swarming with people and felt packed, which is quite an accomplishment since the spaces are so huge. I ended up getting coffee and soft serve ice cream from Ralph Lauren, which are words I didn’t think I’d ever type.
That evening, all the adults got dressed up and we took D’s 90s Mercedes station wagon to get Peking Duck. J and I rode in the rumble seat.
We had planned to walk home after dinner, but I started raining heavily so we caught a cab.
Dosas before sunrise.
An empty hawker center.
Another empty view.
Basketball bush.
Shredded street.
Jumbo incense.
Baby papaya.
The tan man.
Quite the lobby.
Looking up.
Mall view.
Gothic gal.
Colorful bunch.
J and I.*
Peking duck.
2/11
The posse went for a hot stroll through the sprawling Singapore Botanic Gardens. Everyone was getting sweaty and tired pretty soon into the walk, partly due to the struggles of managing 4 hungry kids.
J and I broke away to the historic Raffles Hotel in search of the origin of the Singapore Sling, but the line at the Long Bar was was too long. Lot of young Chinese women were using the hotel as a setting for photoshoots of both smartphone and professional quality.
Everyone meet for lunch at a mall food court, then J and I went for more snacks at another mall food court. Unlike at home, the malls in Singapore are actually busy and full of excellent food.
Pond.
Patient zero.
Wes Anderson would be happy.
2/12
After kaya toast and brewed coffee, our Balestier hotel crew took the bus to Arab Street.
We wandered around in the drizzle, waiting for Sultan’s Mosque to open for visitors.
Afterwards, the full posse met at National Gallery Singapore to wander around the historic buildings, get a tour of D’s office, walk along the river, and eat lunch at another mall.
Some of us enjoyed a hot walk along the Singapore River to meet at at our next mall for dinner, though the dinner proved lackluster due to management changes.
Camera shaped building.
The colorful ladies.
Sultan’s Mosque seen from an alley.
Alley plants.
Emergency stairs.
Honeycomb.
Inside Sultan’s Mosque.
Tiles for miles!
Mosaic type.
Mall desserts.
Double walkways.
War memorial tower.
Funny bridge sign.
Former police station, currently FABULOUS!
Old and new.
Interesting high-rise.
Car dealership?
2/13
That morning we went to the Flower Dome and Cloud Forest at Gardens by the Bay. As usual, it was hot and rainy outside, so we barely got to see any of the landscaping around the park, including the massive tree sculptures that are part of every photo of Singapore.
Later, we ate and amazing lunch at a restaurant called Wild Coco specializing in nasi lemak. It was the best meal I had in Singapore, mostly due to the heavily coconut flavored rice.
That evening, we went an abandoned mall surrounded by nightclubs for an old Shanghai coworkers reunion at a tiny Japanese bar.
After dinner, the girls got massages while A and I hung out on the hotel deck with sore shoulders and no beer.
Tunnel hunk.
Inside the flower dome.
Rain.
Inside the cloud forest dome.
Vertigo testing walkways.
Cloud foresters.*
The best meal in town.
Slice of life.
My underwear.
Plant store.
Improvised planter.
Getting supportive in here.
The Meeti Suite.
Contemplating eating chicken guts.
2/14
A day of rest involving grocery store snacks, watching a lion dance ceremony, seeing monitor lizards in a canal, and swimming and Indian food at D&C’s. I bought Valentine’s Day candy for J but ate all of it while she was taking a nap.
Good luck aftermath.
Appetizing signage all around.
Monitor lizard.
2/15
The group met for breakfast of Malaysian food at the airport before our 2 hour flight to Phuket, Thailand.
Upon arrival, we got to skip the massive immigration line since on one of our party was a Thai national.
After a forty minute shuttle ride as the meat of a child harassment sandwich, we arrived at our rental villa in the hills above Kamala Beach. Except, it wasn’t our villa according to the surprised red headed man who greeted us. Oops, we were two houses up.
After settling in, the boys and I rode into town on the free two row shuttle truck to get some essential items from a grocery store full of sun-dried Russian tourists.
That evening, a personal chef had prepared an amazing spread of Thai dishes for the group. We decided that night to have him come back for the two remaining dinners.
A nice airport breakfast.
Our villa pool.
Remote control finder/sucker/breaker.
AC snake.
The two row boys.*
Our first chef’s meal.
2/16
We took the shuttle to the beach and tried to make the most of it with the crowded conditions and grumpy kids. We enjoyed some fresh cold coconut, ordering around 10 coconuts for the group at reasonable cost.
For lunch, we went to recommended spot nearby. With bamboo furniture and sand floors around us, we enjoyed our lunch in the warm shade.
That evening we swam, played cards, Pictionary, and listening to the evening prayer from the surrounding mosques.
Horse. Water. Russians.
J found her surf brand.
2/17
In the morning, we took a Millennium Falcon of a shuttle bus to downtown old Phuket. Everyone split into smaller groups. D and I walked around looking at the cool older buildings. The scenery was dramatically more interesting than the crusty development near the beaches.
We all reunited at Tu Kab Khao Restaurant for what was probably the best Thai meal I’ve ever had. Lots of regional dishes and flavor combinations I had never had before, all fresh and incredibly flavorful. Unfortunately, I didn’t take any photos.
That evening, we had the chef’s dinner and a rematch in Pictionary were the guy’s team won (again). I started to feel under the weather.
Whatever cold had started with the Seattle group had passed to J and now me.
Millennium Falcon van design.
Sky hooks.
Weird bar.
Former school.
Shrine.
Old mansion.
Old gas truck.
Full iron bumper.
Corner shop.
Box sitters.
Patchwork wall.
Belt and no road initiative.
Empty shop.
Delivery boxes.
Machete wipers.
Rainbow delivery boxes.
Building shell.
2/18
Due to the sickness, all I wanted to do was sleep. After painful decompression on the flight back to Singapore, we checked into our second hotel and I went to bed without dinner.
It’s a shame, because the Oasia Hotel: Downtown was an amazing building. The lobby was on the 12th floor of the green tower, with a large multi-floor opening cut out to allow a lawn, lounge seating and landscaping, all with a pleasant breeze and view of the city.
The upper hallways were moody and minimal, and the finishes of the small rooms were well considered and interesting. The whole place felt a little Japanese, except without the lost decades.
The view from my sick bed.
Getting green over here.
2/19
I met our hotel group for breakfast then slept the rest of the day while the heathy people did their thing out in Singapore.
That evening, our full group meet for dinner at a far away, open air hawker center. But I was exhausted and without appetite, so I took a cab home fore the rest.
2/20
We boarded our flight back to Seattle. This time, I was a 14 hour flight due to the flow of the jet stream! The downside, turbulence.
I retuned to home with no sense of smell and a phlegmy cough. I was the last of our group to catch variant was going around, but I was thankful I at least got it at the end of the trip.
On all but the last exhausted days, I had a blast.
Singapore is a great melting pot of what makes international travel exciting: cultures, food, and scenery all jammed together in a very organized and safe city-state with English as a shared language. Massive interesting skyscrapers mixed with ornate old shop houses. Bustling and shiny malls next to the dreariest malls in existence. Hot and tropical with easy access to tropical fruit, good coffee, and coconuts.
Singapore is clean, but not sterile or perfect. That’s how we all should be!