Singapore - Day 2

Welcome to the last day of my blog series on Southeast Asia. I started blogging about this trip in January. The two week trip only took me 6 months to blog about. Haha. I hope you've enjoyed reading all about my crazy adventures in Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, and Singapore. Please learn from my mistakes! Do NOT travel here in the months of April or May unless you really, and I mean *really* like the heat and humidity. Other than that, the crowds were small and prices were low. And don't drink the water! Not that we drank the water on purpose, but somehow we came in contact with the dreaded travel bug. Fortunately, it only affected us the last two days of our trip (and the first three days we were home). 

Our second full day in Singapore was much less eventful than our first day though we still did some pretty fun things. Out of all the places we visited, Singapore (and arguably Kuala Lumpur) have seemingly less "historic" things to do. Bangkok and Cambodia are full of ancient temples and things, but Singapore is much more of a modern, cosmopolitan city.

We didn't kill ourselves to get up and out super early like I do on most trips. We took our time and left the hotel around 9AM. Our first destination for the day was the Singapore Botanical Gardens & National Orchid Garden. All and all, we moderately enjoyed it here but thought it was far too hot even in the morning. On the map, we saw this small indoor "cool" house, and made a b-line for that. Inside, it was heavenly. Overall, the indoor flower dome from the previous day impressed us more than the Botanical/Orchid gardens. It had more blooms and variety than the outdoor gardens.

Singapore Botanical Gardens

Singapore Botanical Gardens

Afterwards, we got lunch at a noodle house inside the City Hall Station Mall. I got beef with rice noodles. I do love me some Asian food! I will add the caveat, however, (I even wrote this in my journal) that I am spoiled by my Americanized meat. We always eat white meat chicken, and lean cuts of red meat. Everywhere we ate in Asia, we definitely got the fattiest cuts of beef, pork or dark meat chicken (with skin). Bleh!

In the afternoon, we visited a place called the Peranakan Museum. This is a museum dedicated to the history of Singapore's "native" hybrid people. Singapore today is mostly a conglomeration of transplants and immigrants, but they do recognize the Peranakan as being their national race/culture. I took the 2:00 English tour which I found very interesting.

Peranakan Museum - Singapore

After the tour, we wandered around some more, and I came across THESE! I'm not sure if you remember, and if you don't, you can re-read about it here. But a few blogs back, I commented on the massive breakfast we got at our hotel in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Look at this picture below. These stood in a museum display case, but they looked exactly like the carriers that contained our breakfast. Each level held a different food or beverage item. Now granted, these picture below were barrel sized, and the ones we got for breakfast were about the size of a keurig, but the design was identical.

Peranakan Museum - Singapore

After the Peranakan Museum, we planned to visit the Asian Civilization Museum, but it was closed for restoration. So...what did we do? Any guesses? Think about how we spent all of our free time throughout this whole trip.

That's right!

We went to...AN ESCAPE ROOM! Haha! :D

We took the metro to the Clark Quay station which was very colorful and lovely to visit. We went to a place called Lockdown, and asked if they had anything available. So fun!

For dinner, we found a quick meal in the basement food court, and called it a day. This wasn't the most terribly exciting or culturally enlightening day, but between the travel bug and travel fatigue, we made the most of our last day. We turned in early because we had a 6AM flight home the next day.

Up at 1:30AM (did we even sleep??) to catch a taxi by 3:30AM to the Singapore airport which, like nearly every major city in the world, is about an hour outside the city center.

We got to the airport with plenty of time to spare, so we checked out the United Executive Lounge again. (I have been WAY too spoiled by all of the travel perks we received on this trip!) The lounge had a full breakfast buffet. Oddly enough, the lounge was located past immigration but outside security.

Hmm...where is security? About 20 minutes before boarding, we left our comfy lounge and headed toward our gate. Wow! This place is huge!! Wait. What's this?

Each gate has its own security? So weird! And once you were through security, you were trapped at your gate. So, we waited until about 5 minutes before boarding to go through.

For our flights home, we decided to upgrade to business class. It was a combination of additional air mileage points and an extra $600. If memory serves me correctly, I justified the expense based on how much we saved by using hotel points. And the fact, that I knew after a long trip, we were in for 20+ hours of travel. Never in my life has an upgrade been more worth it.

I wrote in my journal, "this is a new level of amazing." Business class serves much better food, water all the time, big TV's, ice cream sundaes, and best of all....seats that recline to 180 degrees with real pillows and blankets. It made sleeping on these flights a breeze.

We had a 6 hour flight from Singapore to Narita/Tokyo, and then another 12 hours from Tokyo back to Washington Dulles. I've never enjoyed a flight more!

Ahh! Finally home! What a whirlwind trip. I hope you've enjoyed reading about it, as much as I enjoyed sharing my adventures with you!

For my next series, I'm going to come back stateside and tell you about the fun adventures that you can have in our own country. I'll tell you all about the wonders awaiting you in the good ole USofA including Georgia and Yellowstone.

Until then, get out there and explore some of this beautiful world!

Thanks for reading!

- Foxy the Traveler