Singapore
We love Singapore. Leah and I are sitting in the common area of the BetelBox Backpackers hostel with only a few hours left in this city-state. Check out was at 11am, but our bus to Malacca, Malaysia doesn't leave for a few more hours, so we're just going to hang out, do laundry, update our spending logs, and write this review of our time in Singapore.
We can't write about Singapore without writing about the traveling to get here. Flight 1 was Toronto to Atlanta at 6am. We're stupid and didn't want to pay for a room the night before because we'd need to be at the airport at 4am, so we thought we'd stay the night in the airport terminal. We arrived to the airport at 11pm the night before to find that security didn't open until 4am so we had to hang out in the lobby of the airport rather than the terminals. That lobby didn't have any carpet, accessible power outlets, or food. Not a great start. The flight was just over 2 hours and we had no problem getting through customs. The 3 hour layover in Atlanta also wasn't bad. We got some food and mentally prepared for a 14-hour flight to Tokyo.
Surprisingly, that flight wasn't too bad. I think I watched every movie ever made, and was treated like a king with all the warm towels and food. Oh, the food. That's a funny story. Leah and I had previously gone to a grocery store and bought enough sandwich makings to feed us for days. We did this because of an overseas flight we took last year that supplied ZERO food OR water. That was my only experience on a long flight, so I thought it was normal. Well this Delta flight treated us right and fed us 3 meals that filled our bellies each time. We landed in Tokyo for a short layover before making the last leg to Singapore.
Lesson learned: Always be mentally prepared for the length of time in travel. For some reason I was only worried about the 14-hour flight of our trip because it was longest. I had the idea in my head that our last flight from Tokyo to Singapore was only 4 hours our so. Well, it was just under 7. And we also had to sit on the plane for an hour before the flight due to a backup of take-offs. Our last three hours in flight were an assault on my brain. I was so tired, wanted to stretch, move, drink so much water without having to worry about needing to pee every hour and making my seatmates wake up and move for me. I was thrilled when we landed in Singapore. It was just after midnight on a Saturday. Where did the time go? We had arrived at the Toronto airport at 11pm on a Wednesday and landed in Singapore on Saturday. Time traveling sucks!
We found a SIM card stand in the airport and spent $15 Singapore for the cheapest option. I think it provided us with 7 days of use, 100 gig of data, 30 international minutes, and some other stuff we didn't need. I think that is a great deal. The alternative is to continue paying my Verizon bill and also an extra $5 per day that we use data in another country. We decided to cancel our Verizon contract all together and just go with SIM cards from here on out.
OK, OK, OK. SINGAPORE.
The BetelBox Backpacker hostel is awesome. It's clean, the staff is friendly, and they upgraded us from a 6-person dorm to a private room. JACKPOT! I think they oversold the dorm since we didn't arrive until 1:30am. It was really nice being able to sleep together in our own room that first night. Our first full day in town started with hiking. We scoured a few other blogs on Singapore activities and decided to take a bus to the Southern Ridges, a system of connected parks in the southern part of town. We walked and did a little jogging along the Marang Trail though Mount Faber Park, Henderson Waves (a really cool, wooden, warped-looking bridge), Hort Park, and Alexandra Arch. Along the trail we kept finding stations with workout equipment and we took advantage of them. Push ups, sit ups, pull ups, biking, log presses, tricep dips, etc. We're buff as can be now. The parks were beautiful. The flora here takes over everything. I guess with a rainy, humid climate like this, you're bound to get plentiful plants. We also saw signs warning us not to engage with monkeys, but we never saw any.
After our hike, we took a bus to Chinatown for food. There was no shortage of options. We wandered through street after street of vendors and finally chose a place. The noodle dish was delicious, but oh so salty. So salty that our mouths hurt by the end. We turned in early after dinner and slept like rocks in our still-private room. I did, however, wake up at 5:30am to text Suze to follow along with the Iowa VS. Iowa State football game. Go Hawks!
After a lazy Sunday morning, we wandered our hostel's neighborhood and found a market to explore. We paid $20 for a universal adapter, which we later found for $1. Awesome. We’ll compare the quality of the two later on. We then bought tickets to the Gardens By The Bay so we could watch a nighttime light show from there and also see the Marina Bay Sands. We have poor judgement when it comes to our walking pace, so we had to set a land-speed record getting to the Gardens with 3 minutes to spare for the last entry. We paid to do the Cloud Forest and Flower Dome, but only had time to enter one. We chose the Cloud Forest because it sounds cooler. It was nothing more than a tourist trap. The Cloud Forest and the Flower Dome are the two buildings or exhibits you must pay for while in the complex. It is free to walk about the giant metal trees and watch the light show, which would be my recommendation to anyone visiting.
Well, the laundry should be done now. Time to go fold and make our way to the bus. Up next: Malacca, and then Kuala Lumpur for Mother Hash 80th Anniversary!
Marina Bay Sands