Sunday, June 19, 2011

Singapore by night!

In our quest to explore more of Singapore together, we turned to nocturnal activities like the Night Safari at the Singapore Zoo! One thing that I didn't realize before going, was that P has never been to a zoo in all of his adult life, and can only vaguely remember going as a child. SO, as soon as he was given the zoo map with pictures of all the animals on it.. well, let's just say that I have never been to the zoo with someone so enthusiastic in my whole life. And I was a preschool teacher. The highlights were the giraffes, and the gigantic fruit bats. Because we took my old crappy camera with us, the photos didn't turn out as planned, but here's a selection of the animals that we saw!



To continue the theme... last night we decided to go for our own little wander through the zoo that is Singapore in order to take pictures of the downtown core at night, when the most beautiful sites are inevitably lit up with lasers and neon lights.

We started at the lookout on top of the Swisshotel in Raffles City for a birds-eye view:


And since we were in the neigbourhood, we stopped at the famous Raffles Hotel for a  Singapore Sling! (don't worry, mine was virgin!)  



Next we went to the waterfront to check out the Marina Bay Sands Hotel and the Esplanade Theater...



And ended up at the Fullerton Hotel!


From there it was a hop and a skip to Boat Quay!


That's when we spotted the start of the laser show back at Marina Bay...


We ended the evening in my absolute favourite 24-hour food joint: Cheese Prata!!! Where you can get literally anything cooked inside a delicious prata, with a delicious curry for dipping! And of course, Iced Milo to drink!! I didn't take a picture last night, but here is one from our last jaunt to this joint.


Seeing Siem Reap!

We spent the last two weeks exploring a bit more of Singapore and decided to spend a weekend in Siem Reap, Cambodia. P wants to see as much of Asia as he can before we leave, and Angkor Wat was high on his must-see list! We took the bus to Kuala Lumpur and an early morning flight to Siem Reap. We were lucky to find a gorgeous 4-star hotel for CAD $30 per night that included a buffet breakfast and 30 minute foot massages! It was a dream! We spent our first full day exploring the temples of Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom and the little temples in between by tuk-tuk and on foot and it was magnificent!



The 40-degree heat was hard to bear, but it wasn`t as humid as in Singapore so it wasn`t too bad. Mostly I had to put up with P launching into the Indiana Jones theme song every 5 minutes as we climbed through the temples!

The people in Siem Reap were sooo wonderful and so was the food! It was a good break from the greasy fast-food Chinese food we've been eating at the food courts in Singapore. Although.. we sat down for one meal at a cute little restaurant (starving!) and ended up finding multiple bugs in our meals! As the seventh bug crawled out of P's rice, we just had to give up and got ice cream instead.

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Singapore is wonderful...

... if you don't get caught in a monsoon rainstorm without an umbrella (daily).

... if you love shoe shopping! (and who doesn't?).

... if you thrive in alpine-cool indoor environments and steambath-like outdoor environments.

... if you appreciate a close proximity to bubble tea at all times.

... if you LOVE rice.

... if you remember not to enter through the exit door or exit through the entrance (BIG no-no!).

... if you live for taxi driver confessionals.

... if you appreciate space-tastic architecture and nightly laser light shows.

... if you tend to make friends easily with small household lizards.

... if you are really good at adding expletives to the ends of your sentences-lah.

... if it makes your day that ordering your hot tea to-go means drinking it out of a plastic bag with a straw.

... if you absolutely hate to recycle anything