Fine Dining and Further Explorations

Thursday March 7
We checked in to the hotel at 2 am.  After a few solid hours of sleep and much appreciated horizontal time, we awoke just before sunrise which is 7:15.  We then fortified ourselves at the ginormous breakfast buffet at the hotel and headed out to explore Chinatown.  First stop was the grocery store where we could not read most of the packaging, but we did find genuine Bird Nests for drinking, and not just dried seaweed but grilled dried seaweed for eating.  Since we were still full we passed on these delicacies, but I will include pictures below.

Next on our list was to find the Hawker Chan Soya Sauce Chicken Rice and Noodle stall.  Hawker stalls are about 10 feet wide, and look sort of like the food court at your local mall but more crowded.  Collectively they sell a wide variety of meals, but each stall specializes in one type dish. Hawker Chan, as you might guess, serves his recipe of soya sauce chicken with rice or noodles.  What makes his so special is that he was awarded a Michelin Star for his restaurant meal a few years back.  (If you don’t know about Michelin stars, go rent or download or stream ‘The Hundred Foot Journey’ immediately.  Fun movie with a backstory about chefs vying for Michelin recognition.)  But back to Mr. Chan. He sells his meal for $6.00 SD, which is about $4.20 US.  So now I can say I have eaten at a Michelin starred restaurant.  And yes, it was very tasty chicken, although eating with just chopsticks and a spoon was a big challenge.  The chicken was easier to handle than the noodles.  There is no way to eat the noodles except by slurping them up.

After lunch we wandered through and past a bazillion more shops selling a lot of things but which were completely unidentifiable to us.  We would stand in front of some and try to guess. Is this an herbal pharmacy? A spice shop?  “What do you think this bin is full of?  Looks like freeze dried rocks.”  We could have played Animal Vegetable Mineral all day long and been wrong every time.

By this time it was getting hot and sunny, and still very humid, and I was dripping wet and in need of another shower.  Tom wandered around a few more shopping malls and ethnic grocery stores before returning for his third shower of the day.

My body still thought it was on New Mexico time, which was around 1 am and it wanted a nap.  We awoke around an hour before sunset (7:15) and went downstairs and across the road to Clarke Quay which is quite the hopping place after dark.  Clarke Quay sits alongside the Singapore River, which is historically where the merchant vessels pulled up to the banks to trade their wares from around the world.  And where international goods are exchanged, so is the money.  This area, once full of shophouses, warehouses, dock workers, and nearly wall-to-wall bumboats plying up and down the river is now a restaurant and nightclub hotspot, but it has kept the facades of the old shophouses in respect of their history.  Behind the shophouses/restaurants rise the modern and lofty skyscrapers of the world financial banks located here in Singapore.  We took a sunset cruise on the river taxis up and down the river past these areas and into the Marina Bay.

Marina Bay was not here 22 years ago when we last visited.  In that time Singapore has created reclaimed land from the oceanfront, and built an entire new district called Marina Bay, home to the instantly recognized Marina Bay Sands hotel and the Gardens By the Bay.  Along with several thousands more luxury apartments.  The apartments are running about $2500 per square FOOT, which is only about $1800 US.  Of course that is also for a 99 year leasehold, so you don’t actually hold title to your 750 sq ft 2 bedroom 2 bath property that you ‘bought’ for 1.8 million dollars (1.3 US).  Crazy Rich Asians here, but they have killer views and bank vault grade security.

One quirky little thing I noticed walking back from dinner tonight...You know how cities all are starting to have those rental bikes and rental scooters everywhere?  Singapore has those already, but one thing I had not seen before is they have rental Umbrella kiosks!  First 24 hours free, all done via your smartphone.

I will attempt to upload some pictures now...not sure how many will get inserted, or where, and they certainly won’t load in the order I put them and you might have to guess what some of them are supposed to be about...but they should all have something to do with today’s blog post, lol.