Singapore Trip - Day 3 & Tips

On day 3, it was just a very relaxing morning, compared to day 1 and 2. We were supposed to get to the airport for check-in at 2pm. Thus, we just took our time in the morning to enjoy more food and do shopping at the supermarkets.

We went to a nearby cafe, called the coffee connoisseur, for breakfast. The environment at the cafe was excellent. It was something like a designer cafe with a unique and peaceful atmosphere, especially when we were the only pair of guests there. :)

The food quality was also far above expectation. The food served was what you would expect nomally at a five-star hotel. We loved that cafe. To me, it was a great morning, with a long forgotten feeling, that I could read my newspaper quietly in a nicely decorated cafe on a Sunday morning. I used to do that quite often when I was living in Prague...

In fact, apart from the existence of that excellent cafe, the environment around Robertson quay was really nice. I suppose it's regarded as a top-notch residential area. There's also a nice cake shop, as recommended in our travel guidebook. The blackforest cake was outstanding. I told candy that she should look at living near Robertson quay if she would have chance to work in Singapore one day :P

For the third time, we went to Maxwell food centre to ensure we left no regret at Singapore. We tried Tian tian chicken rice and bak kut teh again. They were the main reason we went there again. That time I also tried an iced drink made from soursop. Quite good wor!

That's roughly our 3-day trip!

Here are some tips I can think of:

1. It takes about 30 minutes to travel between the airport and the Sinapore city. For 1-2 travellers or night arrival (50% charge will be added to the taxi fare at late night), hotel shuttle should be a better choice. It costs S$9 per passenger and can be summoned at service desk at each terminal anytime. For more travellers, you can consider taking a taxi. It costed us only S$18 to get to the airport on a Sunday afternoon.

2. To take MRT, you can buy single trip ticket at each MRT station. Every time you need to pay S$1 extra as a deposit for the ticket. You can get a S$1 refund by returning the ticket at the ticketing machine.

3. It could be less costly to exchange Singaporean Dollars (SGD) in Hong Kong than in Singapore. We compared quite many local money chargers and banks (using USD) with the Fx rate we got for SGD exchange in HK and found that it was still cheaper to exchange in Hong Kong. Surprisingly, ICBC was offering the best rate, even cheaper than the 10 money changers we visited.

3. Singapore offers free wifi all over the city as long as you have a local mobile phone number. You can register your local mobile phone number for free wifi access. However, if you do not have one, like us, then just enjoy a 'wifi-free' vacation in Singapore!

Singapore Trip - Day 2

Thanks largely to the overwhelming schedule we had on day 1, we, our feet especially, were pretty worn out. However, we didn't let our energy to die down. On the contrary, we started our day quite early. We planned to replenish our body with great food at Chinatown....

Again, we walked to the Chinatown to make sure we wouldn't miss out any sights. Chinatown is less than 20-minute walking from our hotel and around 10 minutes walking from the Clarke quay mrt station. Quite close indeed, especially for a morning walk.

It's the breakfast time! We visited the main branch of Ya Kun Kaya Toast, now an international breakfast and coffee chain, for the best kaya toast in Singapore. Seriously I don't think Kaya toast is anything really special, but the experience of having kaya toast, together with soft boiled egg and 'kopi' (local coffee with condensed milk) is a must-have for a trip to Singapore. We ended up having Kaya toast at 3 different places during our 3-day trip.

In fact, the Chinatown of Singapore, called 牛車水 by locals for reasons I am yet to find out, is located right next to the central business district. I find it quite strange because a typical chinatown is usually old and a bit under-developed. It could restrict the organic expansion of the CBD.



According to Candy, the look and feel of the Chinatown of Singapore is similar to the one in Vancouver. To me, it is also similar to the Chinatown of Kuala Lumpur. It's like everywhere you could find all kinds of family-own trading companies with a chinese-style 'signboard'.

Also, there is an interesting feature that quite many buildings in Chinatown were either built or rebuilt in Victorian style with windows or facade in various bright colours. According to wikipedia, the style is called the 'painted ladies' style.



Anyways, as we approached the central part of the chinatown, we found the Chinatown feeling grew stronger and stronger. Pagoda street and Sago street are lined with small shops selling traditional Chinese and Indian style antiques and clothes. Smiths street is labelled as the Chinese food street where you can find chinese, Malay and Singaporean food stalls. There's a food centre complex at the end of Sago street with a whole floor of hawker stalls too. Essentially, it's impossible to leave Chinatown with an empty stomach.

What were our choices of breakfast food?



Our destination was the Maxwell road food centre. Everyone must remember to visit there for the best Hainan chicken rice in Singapore!!! No Hainan chicken rice I had before was even close to the quality Tian Tian was offering. Simply top quality. Their chicken were just different, even better than the one we had in chatterbox - for a pric of S$3.5... Amazing, right? I ended up visiting Tian Tian 3 times in total. The second time I went there at 6pm realizing their chicken rice is normally sold out every day before 5pm. We also tried bak kut teh, literally meat rib tea, a strong flavoured soup believed to be invented by Chinese in Malaysia (or Singapore as Singaporean claims). Again, great taste for just S$3. What more could you expect?



The morning session was over. We went back our hotel to prepare for our wedding photo shooting session.

It took candy more than an hour to put make up on and put on the wedding gown, which we purchased for photo taking while we travel.

Since none of us is professional or highly skilled photographer, the photo taking part, to me, was more of a fun and sweet experience than a productive and professional activity. Quite casually, we took photos along the quays and the Singapore river until we reached the Fullerton hotel. We should have entered the hotel to take some photos in such a nice hotel! We dared not to get in in wedding gown... Perhaps... Next time? ;)

We finished taking photo after 2 hours as the heat was killing us! The taxi ride back to Robertson quay costed only S$6. What a relief for the sweat soaked couple!!

That was our first pre-wedding photo taking. Next time I am sure we will be more professional with the learning we picked up in Singapore. We will get better each time... :)

After some rests, we took off to visit the sentosa island in the evening. The harbourfront station is located just 3 stations away from Clarke quay on the purple north east line. It was easy and quick to reach VivoCity, the largest mall in Singapore. We took the sentosa express to get to sentosa island. The fee of S$3 is quite reasonable as it also includes island entry fee and return transportation.

We got off the train at the harbourfront station together with most of the crowd. I thought they would lead us to the Sands, the newly opened resort and casino so widely reported. It was a fairly anti-climax when I realised I made a mistake by mixing up sentosa with marina bay. The Sands, or the Marina Bay Sands more precisely, is not on the Sentosa Island!!!!

Damage done was done. We continued to explore the resorts on sentosa anyways. It turned out it wasn't a bad decision to visit sentosa at all.



Hershey's Chocolate World was the first cheering us up. Although I like hershey's chocolate a lot, I had never heard of Hershey's chocolate world before. We had great fun there taking loads of pictures with those gigantic choco bars. Of course, we also bought ourselves some chocolate souvenirs. :P










We didn't plan to visit the universal studio originally, but thanks to the observant candy, we found out that the entry ticket of universal studio costs just S$5 after 7pm on Friday and Saturday. With such bargain, we jumped at the chance. At 8pm, only the sections of hollywood, new York and Madagascar were opened. It was a bit disappointing becuase we thought we could take picture with the dionsaurs in the lost world and take an exciting ride in the sci-fi world. Anyways, we still enjoyed ourselves very much. We were told that there were fireworks at 10pm, but we couldn't wait until then for the best use of time. So, we left.

We spent the remaining time walking around the shopping mall and appreciated the water fountain performance.

Another great day in Singapore. Tired, again...