Singapurrrr Nights and Days.

Three and a half Singapurrrrrrr Nights and Days.

We arrived in Singapore with still very weak stomachs and our ghosty faces somehow convinced the lady at the reception that we are really poor ones. So we negotiated ourselves to a room upgrade with TWO bathrooms. Felt very good and relaxed with this situation. Of course, in Singapore and that is what you all already know – everything is spotless and clinical clean. Being a bit shy in the beginning we also started to use tab water again after a while. So we settled in our new urban a bit Disney-World home with the view of Marina Bay Sand, recovered with a clear soup and wanted to see it all in the 3 days we had ahead. So first talked with the concierge lady where to start our tour. Well, the concierge lady needs to be mentioned. Like a Duracell Rabbit she was talking in a speed that both of us could NOT follow (which means something as we also talk quite fast and a lot as you know…). So Ms Duracell needed to repeat and repeat and then we finally found out that we could easily walk everywhere. And so we did! After the very hot and humid temperatures of Bali we found it very comfortable with a little bit of wind over here but still temperatures of 32 degrees. So we first walked along the beautiful Marina Bay where we were welcomed by Merlion the half Lion half Mermaid monument. Singapore to us is especially beautiful during the nights when you see all the lights sparkling at very special architecture. The omni-presence of the famous Marina Bay Sands Resort or Hotel – a total crazy building reminding us on the mother ship of Starwars – is spectacular. It opened up 2010 and is now one of the top monuments in Singapore. The whole complex is more like an own island than just a hotel with its over 2,500 (!) rooms. Having our first real breakfast the next morning we afterwards decided to take the hopp on and off bus city tour to easily access all the different areas of Singapore that we wanted to see. First stop was lively main street Orchard Road with one Mall after the other. City of Malls, really. A perverted density of flagship designer stores, we saw at least 5 LV stores within 1,5 km. Incredibly commercial. All the retail power of the world comes together in Singapore. Hello globalization. For us it had no shopping appeal at all because it was just to much and to seen. Next stop was much more interesting: Walking through Little India we were excited of the street arts which caught us. Little India is really little but cute somehow. So we strolled around and hopped in our ducktour bus again. Then we hopped off in Kampong Glam, the Muslime quarter which reminded me a little on Soho in NYC or Neve Tzedek in Tel Aviv. It is a colourful neighborhood with cool bars, various restaurants, lovely tiny stores with special things and no designer stuff but artsy paper stationary stuff (lots of it actually coming from Japan!). Kampong Glam is a vibrant little village and actually it feels so good that Singapore shows this face as well while the rest is so Disney business luxury clean. So we loved this little quarter and really recommend to see this. It is not mentioned in the top 5 but for us it belongs to that list as it is unique somehow. Afterwards we needed to feed ourselves again, so went to Chinatown where we tasted the famous food market and finally had Dumplings – soooo good! The food market in Chinatown is amongst the most famous ones and generally food markets are very Singaporean. It is also very clean and everything is looking really tasty, so in eating in Singapore means go to a food market. Per coincidence a very nice Singaporean gave us tickets to the Chingay parade – an annual street parade that is held together with the celebration of the Chinese New Year Celebration (46% habitants of SGP are Chinese). So suddenly we found ourselves with yellow pompoms sitting in the middle of Chinese and Singaporean fans looking at futuristic dance performances. Very special! And lovely to see how the inhabitants are celebrating their New Year – Year of the Dog by the way. So we screamed Happy Lunar Year with the crowd and inhaled Asian culture. They love all the things that are crazy, loud and very colorful. On our last night out we went to spectacular Gardens by the Bay. OMG. This is so beautiful!!! A huge extremely designed botanical garden with giant trees with thousands of plants. Amazing. The trees look fairytale-alike and are of course sparkling. Really, really beautiful and for free. The most impressive park or garden or whatever we have seen so far. The pictures do not reflect it that well as the trees are really big. After being flashed by this we had another highlight ahead. Dinner at Marina Bay Sands Tower – we chose the restaurant Spargo of famous Austrian Chef Wolfgang Puck and had a fantastic food overlooking the whole bay from the 57^th floor. Then we found it is time to dance as the Resort also has different bars and night clubs. We closed our evening at C`est la vie – a night club on top of Tower 3 – a very special experience. 5 stars in view and location and Minus 5 stars in music (😱). Holy shit hey. We tried to dance, really, we tried but this was just too bad. After 14 years old talking to us we found it is time to leave to keep Singapore with best memories. So to sum it up here is our list of reason whys to always chose Singapore as a stop-over destination when travelling Asia or Australia:

1. It is so Green.
2. It is so Clean.
3. It is almost traffic-jam free.
4. It is walkable.
5. It is totally safe.
6. It is very kind and friendly.
7. It is overwhelming tasty.
8. It is totally fair in pricing compared to other mega-cities.
9. It is very colorful if you look behind the main scenes.
10. It is a great cultural Asian mix!

PS: Before flying out tonight we went to Clarke Quay, the quirly nightlife quarter with many restaurants, bars and clubs around the river near Marina Bay. We had great food here again (Dumplins of course…)!