We awoke this morning around 8:00am to the sound of construction all around us. We had seen a sign saying renovation starting since May, and will sometimes have loud noise from 9am-6pm. We went ahead and got ready for our day, planned out a few activities, and headed downstairs. It was absolutely pouring, but thankfully we have some good umbrellas and a lot of plans that work indoors.
We first headed out towards a Buddhist temple not far from our hotel, called the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple. We entered the temple and were instantly impressed by the beauty and the size of this temple.
We asked an employee if we could take pictures and he told us that there are 5 floors to the temple and we can visit them all and take pictures at all but on floor 4. We checked out the bottom floor first.
We next made our way to the rooftop area. There was a beautiful garden and in the center a building containing a massive, ornate cylindrical structure.
The structure was sitting on a wheel allowing it to be turned as people rotated it in a clockwise direction. We participated for a minute and then headed down to see the rest of the temple.
The fourth floor was an ornate shrine with gold plated floors. Photos of this floor was not allowed, but it detailed some of the Buddhists that has reached the highest level. On the next floor were relics related to Buddhism from different time periods and from all over the world.
The next floor contained a museum discussing the pathway of becoming enlightened.
The second to last floor overlooked the lowest level of the temple, and had very realistic looking mannequins of notable people from the temple. After exploring the entire temple, we decided it was time for lunch!
The rain had stopped for now, so we headed across the street to one of Singapore’s famous hawker centers for some food, the Maxwell Food Center.
This is basically a giant food court with dozens of stalls selling many different types of cuisine, from Chinese to Indian, Thai and Vietnamese, some western food and lots of coffee.
We walked around a little, until Caitlyn found the stall that she was looking for from No Reservation, so David sat down while she waited in line. It was a very long line, being known for having delicious hainese chicken (since Anthomy Bourdain came here, everything he has touched in any country gets unreal amounts of business).
David kept the table until realizing that people just leave a small item at the table to indicate it is taken and will comfortably go get their food. Many people even leave their backpacks with no worries whatsoever.
David got in line at the duck stall not far from our table, picking out what we would want. Caitlyn got her order of hainese chicken and got back to the table just a few minutes before David got his meal.
David chose the mixed duck noodle dish, coming with dark and white meat. We sat down together and dug in.
Caitlyn thought the hainese chicken was outstanding, with lots of subtle flavor. David didn’t think much of it, being boiled chicken with minimal seasoning, but he enjoyed the rice alright. It is plain steamed rice, however there are some added flavors in it. The duck noodle was delicious. It had a great rich black sauce went well with both noodles as well as duck. It was a massive portion of duck that would have been easily $20 USD only for $4 USD.
We left to walk towards Gardens by the Bay which is a MASSIVE indoor and outdoor garden and nature area with a few giant indoor greenhouses with specialized areas. Caitlyn had purchased tickets for us this morning giving us access to the Flower Dome, the Cloud Forest, and Floral Fantasy areas. We put the address into Google maps (so glad to be done with Naver) and got on our way. It is about 90 degrees with a feels-like closer to 100 and humidity well over 80%. We have thankfully gotten used to higher heat and humidity but this was a big change from Seoul.
We passed by another hawker centre named “Lau Pa Sat” that we decided to walk through to see if it is somewhere we would be interested in eating. We found a lot of good looking places and pinned it on our maps. We haven’t been getting coffee for the room or going out to cafes in the mornings as much lately, so we decided to grab a coffee here to share. It was really good, tasting better than most coffees we could get at home.
We kept walking and eventually got near the ocean. We walked for even longer and eventually got close to the Gardens by the Bay. We found what appeared to be an entrance and headed in. It turns out that we must have found some tiny back entrance because we walked forever once even inside the complex until we even saw other people.
We were very hot and sweaty by now, so eventually finding the entrance to the Flower Dome was a welcome sight. This is a massive indoor air-conditioned greenhouse.
It was absolutely beautiful, full of plants and flowers all put in separate themed areas. Some themes were regional like Australia or California, while others were more creative like a succulent garden with little sculptures from Alice in Wonderland, titled “Aloe in Wonderland”. There were the coolest giant wooden sculptures everywhere shaped mostly like animals. We walked here for probably around an hour and a half until we had seen everything.
We next went next door to the Cloud Forest, another massive indoor greenhouse. This one was extremely tall, as it represented the cool yet moist climates in high altitude mountainous regions.
At the center is a super tall mountain that you are able to make your way up, as well as the world’s tallest indoor waterfall (over 115 feet tall!). This area is often themed, with the staff changing up the theme frequently.
Currently it was Avatar themed, having little blue space aliens and space alien plants everywhere (sorry never seen Avatar so I’m not sure if that’s what they are).
We walked around and enjoyed this, climbing to the mid level and then the upper level to look down well over 100 feet. Caitlyn recently learned that she has a bit of a fear of heights and stood with her hand glued to the railways, only looking straight ahead, and ignoring David saying “woah we are so high up!”. She also doesn’t think it helped that the metal grates in the bridge that we were walking over would constantly shift and move.
The last section of the Cloud Dome included a “secret garden” which had a lot of historic plants and ferns (dating back to we think dinosaur era) along with micro orchids. We learned that the cloud dome represents 2.5% of the world’s rainforest.
We finished this up and decided to start heading towards Floral Fantasy, which unfortunately was a ways back towards where we entered the park. We walked for a while, along the water of a few long lakes inside this area (seemingly manmade) searching for the elusive frogs that we were hearing ribbit. We eventually found the coolest area with a bunch of animal statues. We initially thought they were life-sized but some seemed unrealistically large if that was the case. Regardless, it was really neat.
We eventually make it to Floral Fantasy. This was a much smaller display, not in a greenhouse but a smaller building with some live and some dried or fake plants made into beautiful displays.
We walked this very quickly, in less than 30 minutes or so. Our next plan was a light display at 7:45 at the Supertree Grove, but it was only around 6:20 so we needed to kill some time. Lucky enough, we passed by a cocktail bar (Hopscotch) on the grounds that advertised cheap cocktails for happy hour daily from 5-8! We stopped in and sit down to check out the menu. All of the drinks looked amazing and very creative. David chose the Last Man Standing, a bourbon cocktail, and Caitlyn got the Garden City Sling, a floral gin and vodka cocktail.
We had noticed a QR code stuck to the top of each table mentioning a “free shot if you vote for us!” in a best cocktail bar in Singapore competition. Obviously we both filled out the survey and mentioned this as we ordered our drinks. The cocktsil menu had these elaborate looking drawings next to the cocktails, but we never expected to have them show up EXACTLY as drawn in the menu. As our server brought each cocktail, she explained a little story behind the flavors and the drink. They were both delicious and so much fun to drink. The server also brought two shot glasses with some plum liquor, which was delicious to sip on.
We still had time to kill, and the drinks were incredible, so we ordered two more. We decided we would share The drinks of labour, which was scotch based and a warm beverage, and The Brotherhood, which was a tart tangy drink that was supposed to change as you drank it.
They came out and with the explanation of the drinks, we learned that the one that wluld change flavors was actually when you eat a miracle berry. Realizing we wouldn’t be able to share one berry and both have the taste change, Caitlyn offered it to David. We both took a few sips of the warm scotch drink first, realizing that it was actually hot and tasted more like a broth than a drink. It was delicious, but you couldn’t really taste the alcohol. The taste changing cocktail was a little bit bitter, but had a nice sweetness. David ate the berry, waited a minute, and tried it again. Sadly, he didn’t really notice a change in flavor and unfortunately we think that the berry was a dud.
We finished and tabbed out, walking to the Supertree Grove a little early to find a good spot. So, the Supertree Grove is an area with something like 12 gigantic metal structures made to look like trees, the largest ones towering at over 160 feet tall. There were a good number of people here already, many sitting or laying on the ground facing the trees. We find a good seat and waited for 7:45.
Suddenly, the trees begin to light up and 70’s disco music starts playing. The light show was incredible, with strobing, pulsing, and dancing lights all moving along to a power-hour style playlist with popular disco songs from the 70s playing and changing every minute or so. This lasted for around 15 minutes, captivating us the whole time.
When the show ended, there was a mass exodus all in one direction. We followed the crowd up some stairs, across an outdoor walkway, and into the beautiful Marina Bay Sands hotel. Looking up the price of a room per night, this one will run you around $900.
We proceeded through the hotel and into a massive high end mall. Singapore is known for having a ton of malls, and many being extremely elaborate and having the most luxurious stores around. This mall was insane. We look down from the 3rd (I think?) floor and see a literal river running through the mall, with gondolas being steered along. There were multiple genuine Rolex stores and every nice brand you can think of. We didn’t really explore the mall, but looked around as we tried to find a good exit to get to dinner.
We decided to go back to the Lau Pa Sat hawker centre for dinner. Along the way, we found a cool food truck selling local craft beers and shared an IPA. It was very tasty and a nice accompaniment to enjoying the city stroll.
We get to the center and started our walk to survey our options. We both decide Indian seems good, so David went to one restaurant that looked good to order one dish and Caitlyn another.
David chose the butter chicken with rice and got a piece of garlic naan. Unfortunately, it wasn’t very good. The rice was fine, as was the roti (it also was like the size of a human torso), but the butter chicken wasn’t very flavorful and was like room temperature. Caitlyn got the bone-in chicken Tikka with stewed lentils, cabbage, rice, naan, and two unknown side dishes. Caitlyn’s food was overly salty while lacking flavor, and felt that she has had better Indian food in Winchester, VA.
David’s hands got super messy from making little sandwiches with roti, rice, and chicken, so he went to ask for napkins from the stall. They gave him 2 tissues and he sat back down trying to figure out how to manage this. A woman selling packs of wet naps had clearly stalked David and his disgusting hands, and followed him back to his seat. She sold him a pack of tissue and wet naps for 2 singapore dollars, leaving both David and the woman happy. We decided to find a convenience store to get some waters and drinks for tonight and the morning, and found a 7-11 we had spotted earlier. We went back to the hotel and hopped on what is the most comfortable bed we have had in weeks.
David’s thoughts of the day: There is a lot of fork usage here. In Japan and Korea, it is exclusively chopsticks even for things that made no sense to eat witu chopsticks. Here it is a mixture of both, but I would argue more often than not, food is eaten with forks. Also, Coke light is great. It is the equivalent of diet coke, but tastier. Also also, diet sodas in Asia seem to use different formulas and different artificial sweeteners than home and are way tastier. Also also also, the trees here are so tropical. It feels like you’re just outside of a jungle, even in the city (I mean we kind of are). Also also also also, the animals are pretty different too, most noticeably the birds as they’re the easiest to find.
Caitlyn’s thoughts of the day: there are little to no napkins here. Both hawker centers had no napkins. How do people stay clean when so much food is messy?
Steps walked: 26,388
Miles walked: 12.65
Bluming Travelers 