Singapore 2018

Day 5--Singapore

Today is our last breakfast at this hotel. I had laksa with shrimp and puffed tofu and then lots of South Indian things for breakfast (uttapam, sambal, semolina spiced dishes, vada, idli, with mango pickles and assorted chutnies).

We went to the Botanic Gardens, which is a World Heritage site and is just amazing. They have a whole special children's garden which is really quite large, with tree houses, rope bridges, natural play areas, caves and waterfalls, plus spice gardens, beverage gardens (coffee, tea, cocoa plants), and lots of interactive scavenger-hunt-type activities for kids. What great fun! We spent about 3 hours there.

Then we went to the Adam Road hawker centre (food court with street food stalls) for lunch and had a wide assortment of things to eat.

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Nasi lemek with fish and with chicken, chicken satay, Indian "combo" (fries with cheese sauce and maybe mayo? Unclear. Plus some kind of meat (mutton, I think) in sauce and maybe an omelet on a hero topped with more cheese sauce and white sauce) which was....surprising, sugar cane juice, limeade, kopi (sweetened condensed milk frothy coffee), and "carrot cake" (savory chewy radish noodles in a brown sauce--Marcus ate almost half of that, and also got really into those little fried bony fish).

Then we went back to the hotel and checked out and went to Sentosa island, where we went to a kids' golf festival on the course where the Singapore open will be held in less then a week.

It was really fun--big goodie bags with water and fans and stuffed animals (the mascot of the Singapore airport) and golf balls, then free Popsicles, popcorn, cotton candy, and golf bowling, foot golf, target golf, and golf bocce (only they called it something else and looked at me funny when I told the kids yes, they knew how to play this, it was bocce).

At the end there was a tour of the golf course and facilities being prepared for the Open (they were actually fanning out the grass because it had drizzled, and they wanted it dry for the event). There were peacocks everywhere, right on the course and on the roads around it.

They gave the kids THE most adorable balloons--helium balloons that looked like puppies with cute paper legs, and filled up only enough that they "walked" on the ground behind you.

Then we went back to our new hotel around 6:30, and this is the view from our window. This hotel is way less fancy than the other one, but we have two adjoining rooms and just leave the connecting door open--a queen sized bed here and two twins in the other--so it's actually quite comfy and spacious.

 

Day 6--Siloso Beach Resort, Sentosa

Nice morning here. Breakfast at this hotel is all right, perfectly nice, but not the amazing spread of the other hotel. They made croissant waffles, though, and there was chicken congee to flavor to taste with fried shallots and soy sauce and chili sauce and scallions, and lots of great pineapple, and some Indian pakora-style fried shredded sweet potatoes which were great (plus eggs, beans, rice, bao, chicken sausages, pancakes, coconut yogurt). Marcus and Robert went out early for a walk along the beach to gather coconuts, Marcus's all-consuming passion in every vaguely tropical place we've been to since Panama, and of course they didn't come back empty-handed.

The hotel is right on the beach (you just cross a small street that's only used by pedestrians, shuttle buses, and Segways) and also has a really nice pool area--there's a waterfall that falls into a wading pool which then has two water slides that lead down into the main pool. It's all naturally treated spring water in the pools and for the toilets in the hotel, and they're pretty pleased with their eco-friendly qualities. You could have taken an eco tour to look at their water treatment facilities, but we opted out, despite the promise of freebies if we went.

After breakfast we walked up to a fort that was built in the 1800s to protect the Singapore shipping routes from pirates and then was heavily used in WWII. It's very cool and you could wander all over it from gun turrets to tunnels that POWs were kept in during the second half of the war etc etc.

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Created: 1/22/18. Last Modified: 1/22/18.