Yesterday we had a single day to explore Singapore – a long layover of sorts on our way to Cambodia.
Upon arrival, Mike declared Singapore may just be a city he’d be happy to live in – a city perfect for the mildly OCD like himself.
The clean an manicured view of the city from our 23-story hotel room at the Conrad Centennial.
Leave it to Singapore to serve up a hot breakfast of traditional American breakfast items, Singapore noodles, and Indian samosas! My kind of meal!
We walked a few blocks south of our hotel to the marina area – love all the interesting buildings they have here – can you see the textured dome peaking out of the trees?
On our way here we heard many things about Singapore such as:
“More American than America!” and
“Dream City for the OCD” and I’ll add my own personal one –
“Giant Shopping Mall Disguised as a City” (seriously, there is a huge underground network of malls you can walk through and never go outside – and when you do get above ground there’s more malls & shopping!)
You can get McDonald’s PROSPERITY burger around every corner (Starbucks too!)
Something about the city reminded me of New York City, without the attitude. They liked their NYC too!
We made our way around their public transit system, the MRT, just like I would in NYC. First up, Little India
Oh the smells. Good and bad at the same time!
I spent a good hour or so going in circles in this indoor market. Here’s the downstairs part.
I stayed upstairs where most of the designers had their own booths.
Came away with a gorgeous silk 3-piece outfit that I bartered for – not sure if I’ll ever wear it but someone will for a photo shoot!
Next up – Chinatown. Here, the indoor mall area shrine in-between the escalators.
The streets were beautiful – all decked out with stapled-on pink blossoms for the celebration of Lunar New Year that’s going on right now.
Must be a LOT of work transforming all the trees to have blooms! Some were real blooms, some were not.
After Chinatown, we were on a bit of a detour before ending up at Clark Quay for lunch.
Love the colors on this building
It was getting pretty toasty out at this point
So we ducked into a Mexican cafe with AC. Mikey very very happy when he gets Mexican.
Have I mentioned yet how clean Singapore is? They have some SERIOUS laws here. Besides death penalty for drugs (saw a scary movie about it in Brisbane before we left!) No gum chewing. No graffiti. This is the closest to graffiti you’ll get in Singapore – an ad for Motorola.
Restrooms are clean and interesting though!
Since Valentines Day had just passed, there were still remnants of it across the city.
Thought this was cute
This is another one of their super-futuristic funky buildings – the hub in the center is the entry/exit to the MRT at Orchard Road
Orchard Road is like the Beverly Hills of Singapore. Ion Mall is their Phipps Plaza (if you’re familiar with Atlanta you’ll get it)
Not sure if it’s a daily, quite regular thing during the Lunar New Year Celebrations here, or if we happened to be at the right time at the right place but we caught sight of performers about to head into the mall so we followed them in for a fun show.
Everyone stopped what they were doing, came out of the shops to watch
Up close and personal!
The best part was watching the kid’s reactions
After that, we felt satisfied with our tour of the day, and knew we needed to head back to the hotel to pack and get to bed early since we had to get up at 3AM for a flight. Conrad upgraded us to an executive suite so we had a fruit and chocolate snack waiting for us
Outside our window at night the Fountain of Wealth was lit up, lots of people coming by sticking their hands in it (maybe it makes them wealthy?)
A final view from our room in Singapore
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Love how detailed your posts are Liana..makes me feel like I am there!