Making a Splash in Singapore
IT'S ASIA GRAD TRIP TIME!! You have no idea how excited I am to finally be writing about the epic, incredible month-long grad trip I took with my housemate Jenny. As alluded to in my 2018 update post, I spent the month of June 2018 visiting Singapore, Vietnam, Taiwan, Japan, and Hawaii with Jenny and a bunch of other friends along the way. Jenny and I spent MONTHS toiling over the itinerary (honestly one of my greatest personal achievements). For reasons unknown (probably a lack of real work), we spent every day researching, booking, and planning our itinerary until the sun rose at 4-5 am. Don't worry, I slept until noon back then, since I didn't have any classes until 2:30 pm. Ahh, those were the days.
After coming back from Greece on May 13, I had a fun few weeks in Toronto. Shubhi and a bunch of others from Queen's (Claire and Shweta, Paloma / Nicole / Imaan, etc.) went to a fun Youtube event at Cabana, where we saw a bunch of truly random artists for free — the Reklaws, Jessie Reyez, Jazz Cartier, Daniel Caesar, Roy Woods, Lilly Singh, and Johnny Orlando. I visited the Slack office + went for trendy syringe-assembled bubble tea + Popeyes (PTSD) with Hao Chen, DHao, and Dev. I played with the dogs. I went for MORE bubble tea with Steph and Alex. And I graduated from university! Such a fun time. Then the day after convocation, Jenny and I were off to Asia. We boarded a plane on May 30, and arrived in Singapore on June 1st (unfortunately missing Jenny's birthday on May 31st completely).
Four days in Singapore was the perfect length. We had places to see and friends to visit... and I didn't even repeat much from my prior trip in September 2017 with QCCU (and the repeats were by CHOICE).
Day 1: Early Exploring
A couple pro-tips at Changi airport: if you're traveling around Asia for a while, make sure to pick up a travel SIM and exchange currency here. We got StarHub SIM cards for $32 that also worked in Taiwan, Japan, and the US (i.e. we only needed to get additional SIM cards in Vietnam). We also seemed to find a currency exchange desk with ZERO FOREX fees??!?! Unheard of, but possible in such a transitory and cosmopolitan place, I suppose.
Upon landing, we arrived at our hotel in the Geylang area. What we didn't know at the time was that Geylang is the Red Light District (no wonder the rooms were like $25 per person per night). This being Singapore though, it was mostly innocuous. We saw one dressed-up woman standing furtively at a street corner one evening, but otherwise, families stayed at the same hotel as us. I still wouldn't recommend staying here though — the hotel had options for an hourly rate, which can really make you worry about the debauchery that goes down in the rooms. Hygiene comes first!
The first thing we did was EAT! We walked to the nearby Old Airport Road hawker centre and felt overwhelmed with all the amazing food options. We opted for some chicken rice, char siu, rose soy milk with pearls (not that great — rose is not my thing), and honeydew yakult. As you can see, this chicken rice was unexpected because it was more like a roast chicken instead of the familiar poached style.
Afterwards, we walked around Chinatown (familiar, pretty, and exactly as I remembered it) and explored Little India, which was new to me. Walking by the Sultan Mosque and colourful shops made it feel like we were in a completely different country.
Haji Lane is super bohemian and #aesthetic. Naturally, we snapped a few pics with the graffiti. Browsing the shops here, I found a beautiful saddle-stitched white notebook with hand-painted watercolour cacti on it. It was the exact dimensions that I typically liked to use for my daily one-line-a-day journals that I've kept since 2013 (aka PERFECT). But I chose not to purchase it since it was $11 and I assumed I could find something similar and cheaper in Japan. Huge regret — while Japan indeed had cute stationery, dimensions over there tend to be standardized at A5 or some other oblong lengths rather than my preferred pocket notebook size.
As the evening approached, we made our way to Gardens by the Bay in the evening for its light show. While I'd been to the cloud forest and indoor gardens back in 2017, I had never seen GBTB at night. Also, there seemed to be some new outdoor pop-up decor, like a giant Skippy peanut butter container and forest mushrooms. It was very "Honey, I shrunk the kids."
The trees were beautiful at dusk and under the night sky.
We weren't done with light shows yet though! The Marina Bay Sands also has a cool "Spectra Light Show" every night, as seen in the header image of this site. Compared to the Gardens by the Bay light show, this one was less fantastical. More lasers, please!! Finally, we wound down the day by going for some ~ satay by the bay ~ (because EVERYTHING is well-branded in Singapore for maximum commercial impact). It was DELICIOUS. I do find it puzzling that all the satay food stalls are right beside each other though. It makes it hard to pick one, and you'd think they'd want to go somewhere a little farther away for some differentiation (like hot dog stands in Toronto). Maybe it's a zoning and permit thing?
The bus ads were a lot scarier than Singapore ever felt at night, by the way. They'd say things like "Report terror ads here" and "If you get molested..." alongside the usual "No durian" signs (har har). Not sure if we were naive or lucky, but Singapore definitely felt like a place where I'd feel comfortable walking around alone at night.
Day with Sean
The next day, we went to Maxwell Food Centre in Chinatown. You NEED to go here for Tian Tian Chicken Rice (the stall with the blue sign). You will see a million people lining up for it, but it is worthwhile. We even went back for seconds!! What makes this chicken rice so special is that it comes with a light brown, slightly thickened sauce generously drizzled on top to keep it moist. SO GOOD. Jenny also went for some radish cake ("carrot cake"), and I sought out hearty Zhen Zhen porridge. I think it would be extremely difficult to find bad food anywhere in Singapore. It was pretty crowded here, so we struck up a conversation with some Taiwanese students with whom we shared a table.
Another small tip when travelling around Asia is to bring your own toilet paper. In Chinatown, they charged $0.10 to enter the washroom and $0.20 for toilet paper. I get that it's a tourist destination, but you'd think the entrance fee would cover both...? Oh well.
Next, we took a bus to Hort Park and walked across the Southern Ridges Treetop Walk over to the Henderson Waves. One of the best qualities of Singapore is the delightful collision of nature and urban environments. Henderson Waves is what the High Line wishes it could be. We walked from neat metal pathways to a nice wooden boardwalk.
Can you be-LEAF the size of the foliage? Heheh.
From there, we walked down the windy roads and took the MRT to meet up with... Sean from NUS! You might recall Sean from my trip to Portugal on exchange in 2017. He had been doing his own Euro grad trip at the time alongside his brother Kai. Sean guided us around Singapore for the rest of the day.
We started off by visiting Haw Par Villa, which was TRULY one of the creepiest places I've ever been. There was tunnel dubbed the "Ten Walks Through Hell," filled with miniature colourful statues in unusual poses. The whole time, I kept wondering WHO BUILT THIS? AND WHY?!?! I can only imagine how scary this place must be on Halloween night. Apparently, no one really goes here anymore though? It was Sean's first time visiting as well.
Nearby, we also found my favourite roadside snack... Wonder Bread ice cream sandwiches! Then we went back to VivoCity for even more treats. We got bubble tea from KOI (YUM. When will KOI Tea come to Canada? Their grass jelly was a bit excessive though), then ate some seaweed "shaker fries" from McDonald's (v reminiscent of Taiwanese seaweed shaker fries from an old favourite in Mississauga called KooKoo Chicken, may it rest in peace after closing due to health code violations). All over the mall, we saw giant bags of salted egg snacks. If I had known then how renowned Irvins Salted Egg snacks were, or that people (aka I) might one day spend $20 for a small bag of their chips at Chatime in Canada, I would've tried it back then. We also checked out a grocery store in the mall, which was surprisingly big and clean.
From VivoCity, we went to Sentosa. Despite being such a touristy place, It was my first time here! We took pictures outside Universal Studios, saw a giant Merlion, and waited an hour to take the luge only for a tree to fall on the course. What a disappointment. Thanks to our persistent sweet talking though, we were the only ones to successfully receive a refund — score!
For dinner, Sean took us to a place called Song Fa for bak kut teh, which was surprisingly delicious. It surprised me because I'd never thought that warm pork bone broth would be good in such a HOT, humid place like Singapore, but it somehow felt clean and refreshing! I also finally realized that "bak kut teh" is the same as what I had thought of as "mak kut teng" in my head (my family speaks Hokkien at home, but the Singaporean romanization usually takes me a few minutes to decipher).
Finally, to end the night, we went to Clarke Quay. We met up with some of Sean's friends at "Level Up" for arcade games and slushies, then went to Zouk. As one does.
Day with Natalie
Day three was spent meeting up with Natalie, who took us to the place I'd been DREAMING of for a year: Two Chefs!! Get the butter pork ribs; you won't regret it.
Afterwards, Natalie took us to NUS U-town, which I surprisingly didn't see during the case competition. The campus is beautiful — there is a rock climbing wall! A nice pool! And a cafeteria that serves good, cheap food! We went for some Milo drinks and learned all about how students get selected for camps and residences. Turns out the three biggest factors to get "picked" are connections, dancing ability, and looks. #priorities
Next, we went to check-in to the Marina Bay Sands for a night! Goodbye hourly hotel in Geylang!! While it was definitely conveniently located and super nice, I'd only recommend staying here for a night. It is expensive! If you really want to go upscale, I've heard the other big hotel chains might even be nicer. The view was great though, and we got a free upgrade because of Jenny's birthday!
While Natalie was around, we went to a pop-up street festival called Artbox. It reminded me of the Asian Harbourfront Night Market in Toronto, i.e., mostly centred on fun food combos and had a ton of people. I got Thai green tea and popcorn chicken with popcorn sprinkled on top.
Afterwards, it was time for the main event: chilling at the MBS infinity pool, aka the sole reason why we chose to stay here (thanks Crazy Rich Asians for the inspo). We luxuriated in this pool at night and all throughout the next morning, eating some fries and watching helicopters soar in formations above us. Jenny even woke up to swim laps at 5 am during sunrise! Personally, I slept in a bit longer.
...I guess Ugg had to diversify in Asia.
Day with Amanda and Brandon
That afternoon, we met up with Amanda Chua from NUS! I had met her at Champs in New Zealand. She took us to a mall where we got lunch — I had prawn noodles and meatball soup while Jenny got laksa. We also found some durian chocolate(?!) which I got as a souvenir for David. So fun to catch up and hear all the hot goss. Amanda told me that the NUS comp organizers called me the "cute Canadian girl," which was pretty much the biggest compliment I'd heard all year. ☺️
Coincidentally, Brandon from Wharton (who I had also met at Champs) was also in Singapore at the same time as us with his girlfriend Zoe, so all four of us met up for dinner! Since we were all staying at the Marina Bay Sands, we met up there and accidentally got lost going through a series of escalators as we passed through the adjoining mall. We stopped for froyo and then went to No Signboard for chili crab. Zoe had joked about being morally against shark's fin soup, but it came with our $95 set menu, whoops.
To cap off the evening, we walked to the Merlion for the Marina Bay Sands spectra light show, take two, with Brandon angling hard for a picture of himself drinking OUT of the Merlion's water fountain. It was definitely better from this vantage point (vs. from the faraway Starbucks where we saw it on the first night). We stopped for one last ice cream sandwich, and then it was time for Jenny and I to check out (boo hoo!).
Singapore is one of my favourite places in the world... so hopefully it was just a "see you later" and not a bye forever!"
