Vacation Adventures – Part 2- Singapore

We landed at Changi, completed our immigration, hired a taxi and set of to our hotel. The taxi driver did not know our hotel. We had to call up the hotel to know the address. The hotel was not as much we expected. We booked it through the net. But what we saw and the hotel were two ends * sigh*. There were no bell boys. We had to carry our luggage by ourselves. The first room which we saw was a too small triple bed room.

The receptionist ( she was such a cute looking Chinese and spoke fluent English much to my surprise and is the kindest person I’ve ever seen. Her name is Ken ) offered us a family room which was supposed to be occupied by 5 people). And thus we stayed in a BIG family room for just three of us !

After the hotel issue settled on we were damn hungry!!. The flight landed at 1:20 with only the breakfast which I’ve mentioned in my previous post. Fortunately, we stayed in little India. Just opposite to our hotel there was a place called “ Gokul’s Curry”. We stepped in and ordered for chicken Biryanis!! But the so-called biryani was something that was not so like a biryani . It was jus some rice with large chunks of chicken curry and the guy there put so much of it like..we couldn’t eat. How much do you expect that thing to cost in India 500 bucks? But there we had to pay 50 $ which I roughly calculate into Rs.2000. The Mustafa center is the most famous shopping place in Singapore and it is HUGE!! I put it like 100 times Chennai City Center!. You name it and they have it. What’s not there? Food, Veggies, Gold, Computers, Plasma TV’s , Drugs, Restaurant and this list is never ending ! And to our surprise 99% of the people there were tamils !

We had to change some currency!. We were just having a look at everything over there but the thing was we had no idea what to buy. We went on the food’s section got ourselves some juice, biscuits and that was it. We came out and couldn’t trace our way back! ( Mustafa has too much of entrances).

Luckily my dad, out of experience had brought the name card of the hotel . We were able to inquire and get back and on our way we could see just LOT of roadside shopping places.! We returned back and relaxed. We wanted to get back to the shopping places but we couldn’t just figure out where it was! may be like this, may be we turned there, may be we should take a left and after all this we couldn’t find anything. We went back and we were not hungry at all , instead we had orange juice and some tarts and slept.

The next days were more interesting.

My dad had an appointment with the Asia Europe foundation( ASEF). We got up early, had breakfast at the hotel, and wanted to get a taxi. Taxis there amaze me! It’s like you stand on the road and wave..Viola there comes a taxi!. So we took a taxi to the National University of Singapore (NUS) to the ASEF. There my dad had some discussions with the people there about some collaborations. A chinese woman there took us around and After a cup of hot tea we took a cab to East Jurong street.At there it was the opening of the Singapore Chapter of my dad’s institute. Ffrom there we had lunch at a place called ‘ Cafe Cartel” which served delicious chinese food ( i had something with chicken i remember..lol) And we went around a mall….and then headed of to NLB at Victoria Street. And this library was just AMAZING!!! .

It was so so so so HUGE!! and there are no words to just to describe it. We went around the library which had 19 storeys. I wish we had a library closer home. Just then the lasy who was taking around told me that they we planning something of that sort in Chennai. But it is just impossible!!. Then my dad’s friend took us to Bugis- a very famous shopping place there and thn we went to Orchard Street – the shopping hub of Asia. After the whole lot of shopping we had to hurry back to our hotel as my dad had some appoinment there. A quick shower, and we went to a nearby Indian hotel with my dad’s friend for dinner. All tired and exhausted it was around 11 clock there and in India just 8:30!!.

The next day was all for sightseeing. We planned to take a package tour to Sentosa. But then for that we had to wait till afternoon!! Instead we took a cab ourselves and headed to Sentosa. The Underwater world was on the top of my list. So, we went there at first. The experience there was unique. Much more than expected, like all creatures surrounding you , with intricately designed patterns, jelly fishes that glowed and changed colours, the cute kite fishes, the tiny fised which were patterened like checker boards. It was just too good to see all of these creations!. There was a touch pool where you could touch fishes and starfishes. My dad just lifted a starfish and i justdidn’t dare to touch them. After this wonderful experience we took a red- line bus to The Dolphin Lagoon, with this so cute dolphins eating, swinging over loops, waving and telling you hi!.

And then we headed for Sinagpore’s national Symbol and the most important thing to see there- The Merlion. Merlion, unlike i expected to be was HUGE! Like..you could see it from any angle there. We took lot of pics and we couldn’t see the musical fountain as that would start only in the evening . After spending some time at the Insect park ( with all sort of creepy crawlies) we were too tired to do anything. We were all confused on getting o the entrance and it was so hot and sunny. We took a blue-line bus o the entrance finally and took a cab back to our hotel. We took rest, did some packing and ate lunch at a place called Sakunthala’s- An indian cuisine, did some shopping nearbyAnd when we finally finished packing we had time only for dinner. We ate at a chettinad restaurant nearby. And went to bed early as we had a morning flight the next day.

The next day morning, we woke up early, finished the final bits of packing, brought our baggage’s to the lobby and were all set when the key of our room was not to be seen anywhere. It was not a sort of key actually, it was like a card which you swipe in at the door. After 5 minutes of hard searching we got it!!. Such a relied it was !.

We took a cab to Changi Terminal 2.

And after all checking in and immigration had breakfast at starbucks, did some shoping in the duty free , and there was something called block art with so much people surrounding it and when I went closer to have a look it like wooden blocks- hge ones with some carving on it and what you have to do is take a crayon and scrap it so that you get a image! I took a Terminal 3 block and started scraping! And mine came out sooo nicely!!.Finally we were at our gates and i couldn’t spot our fligy anywhere. I asked my dad “where’s our flight”. He pointed to a small one there and told “that is it!”. I was struck in horror!!

“This flight is soo small!”

It is only a Boeing with only 150 people traveling on it “

I’ve never travelled in Boeings!! It was all air-bus travels. I had a preconcived notion lurking around that Boeings are prone to accidents!.( weird!! i know!)

But then this Malaysian Airline Boeing was just fine. Our Itenary said “Meals” but then it was only an hour to our destination. And all we were served was a cup of orange juice. There are no PES’s in boeings my dad told me! but time flew away so quickly. I was just gazing over the window when the announcement came for landing!.

And thus we landed in KLIA<>

I will write about Adventures in KL as part 3!

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As a totally unrelated note, May 12th Marks the First Birthday of my Blog! I badly wanted to post that day but laziness pulled me away. ( No. wonder I started blogging only because that I was bored last summer )

From my part, HAPPY BIRTHDAY SUGAR”N SIZZLES