Singapore fling

wow, what a fun week in singapore... too bad it went by too quickly. i got in on saturday night, july 3, and here's a day by day summary of what we did...

Sunday

I took a flight in with Karen... having a travel buddy was so much more enjoyable than enduring the trans-Pacific flight on your own. Ruth had arrived earlier on Saturday night, so the three of us went to church on Sunday to Grace Baptist with my parents. Can't mention church without the yummy food they have there:

Yedeh arrived in the afternoon and we promptly headed to Orchard Rd to do some shopping. We bummed around Takashimaya and the girls bought some stuff, but Yedeh and i ended up just wandering around most of the time. Here's a pic of Yedeh and Ruth trying on some sunglasses:

For dinner, we headed to Sushi Tei in Holland Village so Ruth could get her fixing of Japanese food.

By the time we finished dinner, we were definitely exhausted and just went to sleep...

Monday

Felix arrived Monday morning to complete the group of folks that would be coming. He originally was going to get in like at 5am and we didn't wake up until like 7am. Then we noticed that his flight got delayed, so we headed out to the airport to pick him up. The first order of the day was going to zoo... Unfortunately, it was raining a fair bit when we got there:

But once it started getting a little bit lighter, we started walking around and looking at the animals. We saw like almost every animal, but we missed out on the polar bear feeding. But we did eat some Zingers from KFC for lunch and caught the elephant show!

After that, we got tired and went home... we were looking forward to having chicken rice at Margaret Drive for dinner that night, but it was closed when we got there!! So, we had to settle for Newton Circus... some sting ray, hokkien mee, fishball soup, satay... good stuff. And then for dessert... ice kachang!

And that brought an end to Monday... we had tickets to the Night Safari, but everyone was too tired to go. In fact, we never got to go to the Night Safari because we were too tired every night. Haha.

Instead, my dad dropped us off at the Esplanade and walked around the waterfront area which was pretty nice.

Tuesday

The first thing we tried to do on Tuesday was visit SAS... it was under pretty heavy construction, so I called ahead to make sure that we could go... I talked to Rozi and she said that we could come, but to watch out for the construction. Unfortunately, when we got there, the security guards were being kind of anal and wouldn't let us in. We called the high school office and Bonnie said that she would try to ask the principal if we could still come and visit. So we lounged around outside in the hot sun waiting... at one point, Mr. Baker drove through in a taxi, but we didn't really realize it until he had gone through into school. We waited for like a half hour or so and were finally let in. The principal seemed like a nice guy, but it was kind of awkward since we didn't know him. The school was really nice... it was still messy with construction, but you could tell the new building was going to be pretty sweet! Unfortunately, I don't have pictures of any of it.

Having gone to school, we made our second attempt to get chicken rice at Margaret Drive... we took the MRT to Redhill and just missed the connecting bus so I had the bright idea of walking... then we saw the next bus go bye like a few minutes later. After a trek through the HDBs to find the other side of the road and realizing it was blocked by construction, we finally just broke down and took a cab. I guess we should have just waited for the bus in the first place, but we were scared that the chicken rice place would close! Luckily, the cab ride was short and cheap and the chicken rice was tasty and delicious! Here's a pic of us after the meal:

After the scrumptious meal, we headed to nearby Queensway to try and find some soccer jerseys and athletic gear, but we couldn't really find anything to our liking. So...  we of course headed back to Orchard Road again. This time it was first to head back to Pacific Plaza to see if Ruth could find some nice beachwear before heading over to Felix's old place. It was kind of a trek over to Felix's place, but he was really excited about it, so that made it worthwhile. I think he took a bunch of pics there, but I don't have them handy yet...

Finally, we tried to have dinner at the Chinese place in the American Club, but almost all of us were violating the dress code rules, so we had to be content with eating at Eagle's Nest.

Wednesday

On Wednesday we were planning to head to Sentosa with Wendy. First off, we had breakfast at the Botanic Gardens with my mom. The food there was kinda pricy, but it was pretty good and of course the ambience was nice. After breakfast, we walked around the gardens and then went to the Orchid Gardens. We managed to all get in at student price even though Yedeh didn't have his student ID. Instead, he used his charm to seduce the cashier. Here are some pics from the Orchid Gardens:

After sauntering through the Orchid Gardens, we hurried to meet Wendy at Orchard MRT (we were pretty late by now), but Ruth started getting sick, so we stopped at Lido to get some water. Instead of heading out to the hot beach, we instead decided to watch a movie, so we headed over to Plaza Singapura and got tix for Best Bet, a local movie, for later in the afternoon. It was pretty funny, but I couldn't understand a lot of it since it was in Hokkien, but at least there were subtitles.

Since Wendy had opened up a Japanese curry restaurant with some other folks, we made a trip down there to grab some food... I'd have to say it was pretty good. I'm trying to find it on Google right now, but it's not showing up. I tried to convince her to take out an AdWords campaign for it, but she thought it was too expensive. Ridiculous! Nothing even comes up for "curry favor" "curry favor singapore" "japanese curry singapore", etc. Those would only cost 5 cents a click!!! As a result, I have no link nor pics to share. SIGN UP FOR ADWORDS! Hehe.. here's a happy pic after eating at Curry Favor:

Finally, for dinner we headed to East Coast and had some tasty seafood. Unfortunately, Ruth couldn't come because she was sick. But we had pepper crab and chili crab and a bunch of other stuff that wasn't quite as good. Karen, Yedeh, and I had picked up some free chili crab coupons at the airport for the Singapore Food Festival, so part of the meal was free!

Thursday

The first thing we did on Thursday was head to the airport to send Ruth off. How sad! My mom dropped us off at the airport and then Yedeh, Felix, and I started taking the MRT home. On the way back, we SMS'd (I got pretty decent at SMS by the time the trip was over.. hehe) Wendy to come out... we had wanted to try go to Sentosa again, but then it ended up to be a rainy day. So she met us at Orchard, we went all the way back to my place to pick up Karen and then had chicken rice near my house for lunch. It was pretty good, but not near as good as Margaret Drive.

Then, in typical bumming around in Singapore fashion, we couldn't really decide what to do, so we decided to head to Orchard and shoot some pool. On the way, we stopped by this kaya toast place and had some of that... as always, very tasty! Then Wendy took us over to the pool place that was under Hard Rock. The first thing that caught our attention was this video game where you're supposed to spot 5 differences between two side-by-side photos. I forget the name of it, but we played twice... it was pretty fun. Unfortunately, we got nowhere near the high score. Then we finally played pool for an hour or two... first played some two on two when Felix cause us to lose since he scratched so friggin much. I guess I'm also somewhat guilty since I missed a potential game winner. After that, we just played a bunch of 5 player cutthroat. Here's a pic from pool:

Finally, the Lees (Jen's parents) took us out to dinner at Crystal Jade at Takashimaya. It was really good food, the main feature of which was the roasted pig!!! It's a good thing Ruth wasn't around.. I think she would have been horrified. We were definitely stuffed with tons of food, but it was good. And the obligatory dinner pic (notice the roast pig):

Friday

On Friday, we met up with Kevin, a Singaporean from Stanford, who came by and brought us to a Bah Kut Teh place that Wendy recommended that was over on Rangoon Rd. We were sort inspired since that was like the main dish in the Best Bet movie. It was good stuff.

Then, WE FINALLY WENT TO SENTOSA! At first, just Yedeh, Karen, and I went over while Felix headed to meet some fellow from IBM. We took the bus over and started off by going to the Underwater World. It was more elaborate that I remembered it and it was pretty neat. They had a little touch pool, some shark embryos, cuttlefish, and then the little moving belt that you get on that takes you through the exhibit. Wendy then joined us for some rocking good volleyball action. We were definitely kinda rusty since we hadn't played in a while, so we ended up losing the first game to these really cheap players who kept setting the ball into the short corners. But we eventually picked up speed and won the next two games. It was really enjoyable since it was getting cooler and the sand was hard from the previous day's rain so it was really easy to jump. Despite the desire to play more, we had to head out to pick up Felix and have dinner.

Dinner was at the Raffles Marina... again, good food. It was nice walking around the marina, but then we had to bring Felix to the airport.

Saturday

Saturday morning Karen left for the airport, so it was just Yedeh and I. The Lees treated all of us to dim sum for lunch at Crystal Jade so we headed back to be gorged again.

Then I spent the afternoon hanging out with my parents while Yedeh went to hang out with his Singaporean CMU friends. I eventually had dinner with my folks at Great World City before heading over to Holland Village to find Yedeh. Wendy and Jeff came to meet us there at like almost midnight, when we decided that roti prata sounded good, so we went over to River Valley to get some. After snacking, we then went to a bar to meet up with a whole bunch of Indonesian folks. They really wanted us (read: Wendy) to go clubbing with them, but we decided just to hang out there and grab a couple drinks. It was really relaxing just hanging out with high school friends, catching up, etc. Definitely somehow just puts you at ease chatting with folks that you grew up with. At about 3, we headed over to Jeff's place at the Four Seasons to talk some more. It was a good night... too bad every other night we were too tired to stay up. At about 4, Yedeh and I had to head out, so we took a cab home, packed up, and headed to the airport for our flights out of town. Here's a pic after prata:

And thus concludes the too short trip to Singapore! I miss it already!