A Food-filled Trip

I went on a trip to Singapore last Saturday to celebrate my aunt's birthday. Got up at 5.30am and started the journey at 6.30am, if you think that's early, I used to get up and leave by 4am just to reach Singapore in time for some things.

DAY 1
We arrived in Singapore just about lunchtime, so we headed to Telok Blangah's hawker centre. Had a bowl of piping-hot chicken porridge while my family, consisting of my parents, brother, as well as my aunt, uncle and cousin, had different types of hawker food. We had a big portion of chicken rice, prawn mee and Teochew fish porridge. Then, we went to the Queensbay warehouse where they sold all sorts of Western and Japanese ingredients and frozen stuff. You could find cheeses you don't normally find in other supermarkets, ham, sausages, scallops and all sorts of canned foods. However, it was a weekend and the place was packed, and the place was quite small, so I had to jostle through the crowd. Went back home, had a nap. Dinner was at Alexandra Road's hawker centre. After all the food arrived, it was obvious that the table was too small to hold all our food.. haha.. Slept at 12am.The F1 track is around this landmark.

The Singapore Flyer, changes colour at night.

DAY 2

Had waffles from KFC in the morning. Then, we headed to the Botanic Gardens. Unfortunately, the carpark was full, and there were loads of people in formal clothes. Then, my aunt spotted the sign saying [“I Do” – Garden Weddings]. Yeah, a wedding on Hari Raya, in the garden. With a feeling of dejection, we went to the Tiong Bahru Market to get some wet groceries. Guess what I saw, the ‘wet market’ was a modernized building with escalators! Don’t think I’ll see that in Malaysia for the next 10 years.

After marketing, we drove to Sushi Tei, a wonderful sushi parlour. There were all sorts of sushi and Japanese dishes. Like in Sushi King, some of the sushi were placed on conveyor belts for customers to enjoy on the spot. We ordered dishes such as sashimi salad, golden rolls, salmon on rice, tempura, fried tuna rolls and fried soft shell crab. Later in the day, we visited Borders at Wheelock Place. My, was the place big! Looked high and low for a Latin dictionary. You must be wondering why I need a Latin dictionary for. Well, my father said the same thing Pn. Linda Leong said, “ Most English words are from Latin”, he insisted on buying the dictionary. There was a big display on the Twilight series, considering the fact that my friends are so interested in the series, I decided to take a look. It was alright to me, but I'm sure there are people saying that it's great or wonderful or whatever. Dinner was at Sterling Road, the best dishes were the cereal prawns and spicy claypot chicken.

DAY 3

Bought the newspapers today, in one of the columns of the front page stood five big words, "Saying I do 168 times". Guess what, there were 168 couples that got married at the Botanic Gardens, why did that have to happen on my first attempt to the Botanic Gardens? Oh well, went to the Botanic Gardens straight after that, the wedding fever didn't seem to have cleared up yet as couples were still taking wedding photographs, big wedding canopies here and there and flower petals all over the water lily lake. Took some photos with just a 1.3 megapixel camera phone, walked till I almost dropped and had the nice Milo Dinosaur there. Hope to get a better camera some day, not being able to zoom can sometimes be really painful..

A couple of swans at Swan Lake.

The Ginger flower

A blue dragonfly on top of the water lily. Almost fell into the pond to get it!

Tiny durians perhaps?

Perfection in full bloom.

Ended the day with Thai dinner at Amara Hotel. Not really to my taste but it was ok. I played with my cousin's Samsung Omnia, a nice but boring touchscreen phone that had an interesting feature to me - shaking the phone to roll dice, to mark the end to this wonderful trip to Singapore.