The flight around the world lands us in Singapore

Hello again! It’s been a while since I’ve travel blogged- so here is my first post-covid trip post, I’m back on the wagon! The back story- back in 2018, Kristyn, Monica and I were at a fundraiser for the Santa Monica Boys and Girls club. There was a live auction and we were feeling feisty so we decided to raise our collective paddle for a weeklong stay at a villa in Bali with a private chef. And we won! It’s been a long time coming, and fast forward through a pandemic, we finally are making the trip! And we are joined by a few vagabonds 😉 Carolyn and Liz. 



I was the first to leave, with my mom dropping me off at the ferry in Hingham, went into Logan, 8:45pm flight to JFK where I met Liz for our 1:30am flight to Taipei where we met Kristyn and Monica who were flying in from LA. That flight from New York was about 15 hours- but it wasn’t that bad… between sleep, cross stitch, chatting with Liz, and binge Netflix, really was as good as it could have been. Thank you EVA Airlines! 

The flight from Taipei to Singapore was much less full but Liz and I definitely should have slept on it instead of binge watching Love is Blind Season 1 (thanks Nicole 😘) because by the time we got here, after 28 hours of travel, we were completely destroyed. Also, hello from tomorrow, across the international date line! 


Crazy cool green wall at Changi airport in Singapore

Once we landed in Singapore, we took a Grab ride to our hotel, Hotel Boss. Man that humidity hits you like a ton of bricks. Apparently the president of Singapore was asked what was the biggest turning point in the development of the country and he said air conditioning- makes total sense. We are here during their wet season and they are pretty much on the equator, so that explains things. Singapore has the second highest population density in the world, is one of the cleanest places I have seen (I guess there are big punishments for spitting out gum), and strikes me as an opulent city with starchitecture and luxury everywhere. It seems super diverse with 4 National languages- English (it was a British colony for a while), Malay, Mandarin, and Tamil (from southern India) but lots of tourists as well. Our grab driver told us that tomorrow is a national election, big day, although he thinks he knows who is going to win so not a huge controversy here. There is a TON of overseas investment in real estate, sounds like it’s because of the tax breaks. 



Hotel Boss was buzzin when we got there and I was wrecked from the plane ride so we took a little field trip to our hotel Pool to get some vitamin D, took a way-too-short nap, and headed out to explore a little bit and fight our jet lag. Our first stop was the Lavender MRT station to get our metro passes. They were $29 Singapore dollars ($1 = $1.35 USD), but when we return the card we get $10 back. Like the actually trust you to return the card! The metro rivals Tokyo in its cleanliness and ability to navigate. And air conditioned-phew!

So our first stop was the Marina Bay Sands, the $6 Billion dollar resort that opened 12 years ago. It is totally evocative of Resorts world or City center in Vegas (I’m told rooms are $1000/night), except I am officially itching to play pai gow at the casino here 😬 because there’s got to be hundreds of tables. We ventured up to the SkyPark and caught a glimpse of the most amazing infinity edge pool area. I only got pics from the entry court on the 57th floor, but with sweeping views of the port, it was super impressive. Architect Moshe Safdie apparently designed the 3 towers with inspiration from a deck of cards. The roof deck was actually more of an afterthought. 





After being rejected from the restaurants at the SkyPark, we ventured into the shopping area (which convinced us that retail is in fact not dead) and found a Chinese hot pot restaurant. So it’s similar to Korean bbq where you cook at your table, but instead of a grill there are broths that you cook the meat and veggies in. It was pretty rad once we figured it out (shoutout to Liz for ordering for our ravenous and starved group). There was a robot waiter and a guy who went table to table making noodles to order. Of course I was asking if he ever hits anyone with the noodles and on cue he hit me in the face with it! We ordered one chicken broth and one spicy broth (average spice) and the girls who ate that (I didn’t go near it more than to dip my chopstick) said it was over-the-top lip numbing spice. Overall it was delicious and pretty adventurous, at least for me! For dessert we stopped at Hey Tea for some amaaaaazing mango coconut fusion with boba (ordering that was stressful- lots of options!)… here it’s called bobo 😃




Here is the $3000 skirt I wanted to buy





After dinner we headed out for the water and light shows… very similar in concept to watching the shows at the Bellagio, so I wasn’t surprised that the developer was from Vegas. From there we walked over to the Cloud Forest (Gardens by the Bay) which is this lush park right next to the Sands. There are these iconic man made trees that have solar cells on the top that power the whole park. Pretty amazing, and a cool place to wander through at night. 















At that point we had made it to 9:30pm and we’re thoroughly spent, so headed back to the Boss on the metro again. What a great first day!! I leave you with #bagdownbenny one of the fun metro characters, like #standupstacey





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

An Elephant, A Waterfall, and a Silver Queen

Image
Today we got up at a reasonable hour for our french braid party before we headed out on our animal adventure.  I had wanted to ride an elephant when we booked this trip and today was the day.  To be honest, it was a little less enjoyable for me because we were not in the wild with the elephants, but it was still cool to be around such majestic creatures.  The Bali zoo is super small but very cool in that most of the animals are not in cages at all.  There were gibbons and orangutans flying around, and we were greeted by a wallaby just chillin by the entrance.  I dont want to get into a full discussion about zoos, animals in captivity, and the philosophy of animal conservation, but let's just say that it was cool to see crocodiles, toucans, ostrich, and other animals up close.  They seemed very comfortable with humans, but the humans there also seemed very respectful of the animals.  Our elephant experience involved us walking around on a seat on the el...
Read more

The tourist side of Ubud

Image
So today we booked a tour on this Australian website called the Bali Bible, and we saw some cool stuff, but I would say it’s definitely the road more traveled that we were on. We did learn some interesting things about Bali- how it was separated from Java in the 9th century. They are currently building a bridge between the 2 islands, but the Balinese generally do not want the bridge because they think it will bring crime and congestion. Also, the major temples in Bali laid out on a map make up the symbol of Hinduism.  We started out going to a Balinese dance performance. The costumes were amazing and the music was so beautiful, like bamboo xylophones (sorry to all the musicians reading this who know what a bamboo xylophone is called). It seems like Indonesian folklore has a consistent theme of battling evil spirits, and you can tell who is good versus evil based on their facial expressions either in makeup or in masks. The hand movements are also super pronounced and graceful… and ...
Read more

The day that started at 1am - Summit of Mount Batur

Image
Yesterday was our first chill day - sleep in, pool time, shopping, spa, dinner, bed.  And a very quick sequence there because we set our alarms for 1:00am!  So, after 5 hours of sleep, we headed out to meet our driver for our sunrise hike to Mount Batur.  The mountain is in the center of the island, and it is super popular to hike up it to see the sunrise.  We drove the 90 minutes to the base camp they had set up and it was this bustling little village with guides and cooks and hikers.  They fed us banana crepes and offered us a bathroom with a gravity flush toilet (i.e. you dump buckets of water in the toilet to flush it), and then we headed up to the place where you start walking.   The first part was difficult, but it was on a paved road.  We were super out of breath but at least we had our footing.  The vertical rise was about 1700 feet but the summit was only at 5633 feet so altitude wasn't really an issue, it was the steepness.  Mo...
Read more