WE WOKE UP. The construction noise has been worsening every day as the paper-thin walls hold on to whatever remaining structural integrity exists between the scant fibers remaining. We got up, dressed, put on sunscreen, and made our way to another hawker centre for lunch – Hong Lim Market & Food Centre.
We did our standard walk around to see what the options were and separated to grab the food and eat up at a table. David got the food first, selecting nasi padang with cabbage, okra, and stewed spicy chicken thigh and rice as well as a piece of fried chicken wing for himself.
He walked around both floors before finally finding a free table and claiming it. Caitlyn came back with what was described as a curry chicken and had two different kinds of noodles in it. We also got two tiger beers (and decided subsequently that two is too many as they got warm way too fast). The nasi padang was great and actually mildly spicy, but as mentioned previously, we really like spicy food and have been chasing it and have yet to have something as spicy as we like. Caitlyn did love the vegetables in this dish. The curry chicken noodle was amazing. It has delicious pieces of fish cakes inside and great tofu with an amazing flavor. We absolutely fell in love with it. It actually tasted similar to what laksa we have had in the past.
We talked about the plans for the rest of the day and Caitlyn told David that she had planned a David day! First, we were going to be going to an aquarium, and taking a cable car to get there! We (especially David) were very excited, and planned out how to get there. We walked to Chinatown Center Station and took the MRT (rail system) for the first time in Singapore.
The escalators going down into the subway and all escalators in the subway are at like 2x speed as compared to normal escalators, which made it a little scary to ride. Also, one of them started to suck Caitlyn’s dress into the side, so we were very careful in the future to keep all fabric bunched up closely.
We got off at the Waterfront stop and made a quick walk to the cablecar station. We took the car to Sentosa Island, a small island just south of the city that houses Universal Studios as well as a few other attractions and lots of resorts and hotels.
We had paid an extra ~$1 USD for a mystery Pokémon box, so when we got off the cablecar we went to the gift shop to redeem the free coupon. It turns out it is a little box that has legos for some Pokémon, but you don’t know which you are going to get. Caitlyn got a Grimer and David got a Slowpoke. We figured we would build them later and try to find a safe way to bring them around with us as a memory.
We walked by a Starbucks and saw signs for halloween drinks, so we got a pumpkin spice latte as well as a spooky chocolate mocha mixed drink and shared those. The PSL was very standard, but not bad. The mocha drink was actually more like a chocolate Oreo milkshake and was really nice on the hot day.
Our GPS displayed a very strange route to get to the aquarium, but seeing no signage we decided to give this route a go. We made it a little ways, went down some stairs, and at the bottom saw some construction blocking the stairway. We figured this was not an option, so we went back up and found another way around. It ended up taking us around 20 minutes to get to the main area that would be near the aquarium, walking first through a nature canopy walk, then along a roadside without a sidewalk.
We were the only pedestrians that we saw, however we may have been stalked by some wildlife as we heard some VERY strange rustling in the forest around us. We eventually found a large hotel-looking building. We entered and it was a mixture of a hotel and a luxury mall.
We went through the entry area to the other side and saw that we were now in “Resorts World Sentosa”. This has Universal Studios, other parks, a large outdoor food park, and the S.E.A. aquarium.
We entered the aquarium and the fun began! The first part was a tunnel area where you are surrounded by fish to your sides and on the ceiling above you. Once through here, it was more of a standard aquarium with a few giant tanks as well as some smaller ones. We loved seeing all of the fish and saw every room. Our favorite was probably either the giant tank with the all of the rays or the predator area which had a huge tank as well as another tunnel just full of sharks.
We finished up and went back outside and decided to take a look in the food park that we saw on the way in. We grabbed a beer and sat at a table next to a giant industrial fan. We sat here for a while and cooled off, eventually getting back up to explore more.
We did a quick stop at the Lego store, checking out the cool sets.
We went back into the hotel area and saw that it was connected to an enormous underground mall as well. We walked around and found every luxury brand under the sun.
We also found a giant casino underground, though we didn’t go in as we don’t really know any games other than blackjack.
We finished up here and went out front to the valet station and asked how to get back to the cablecar. He replied “go through the lobby and out the door straight ahead, and then there is an escalator”. We were confused as this seemed to be much closer than how long it took us, but we followed his instructions. At the top of the escalator, we round a corner and find ourselves at the bottom of the staircase that we had went down earlier to find the aquarium. It turns out if we had just kept going a tiny bit, it would have been less than a 5 minute walk to the aquarium as opposed to our 30 minute trek through the jungle earlier.
We got back on the cablecar and went past the station we needed to get off at so we could keep going higher and see better views.
We got off on the way back down and decided to head towards Chinatown. We tried to get back on the subway, but it said our cards didn’t have enough cash on them. They would have enough for our trip, but the system here seems to require you to have at least enough money to cover the most expensive ride to get you into the subway. We went to the top off machine and tried our card, having it declined. We tried every credit and debit card and the machine kept saying declined. Caitlyn was a little worried that our cards got turned off somehow, but David decided we should just go to the ticketing station and see if they can run our cards there. We went to the station and they informed us that the machines only work with local cards and that they can take cash to top off our cards at the ticket booth! We put $5 on each card and rode the MRT back to Chinatown. We have been wanting to go to a speakeasy so Caitlyn found a neat looking one and we went off to find it. We walked along and eventually found what looked like it must be the address, but peering inside it seemed more like an apartment building. Thankfully, a woman was passing by and asked us if we were going to Oriental Elixer. We laughed and said yes, and she said go up to the second floor and go to the right. We walked up the stairs, and thought we had found the door but were a little confused (as a good speakeasy should make you feel while trying to find it!). Suddenly the door opens and a young woman screams. We saw in that it was absolutely the correct door, and it turns out it was one of the bartenders stepping outside and got spooked by us being right outside the door. We head inside and she tells us to sit anywhere. She hands us a menu and we look it over for a while.
Instead of just listing the cocktails, it put it on a grid layout to help you decide what you’d like to order. The four quadrants were: stiff, easy, safe, and crazy.
David ordered an octopus + sampaguita white Negronis, and Caitlyn got the adobo + rosemary tiki sour. David really enjoyed his drink, finding it way less bitter than a normal Negroni, and really not having much octopus flavor (but he was okay with that). The octopus flavor was done by infusing octopus in liquor. Caitlyn felt hers was the perfect drink for her. It was tart and acidic, but well-balanced.
We figured that we should get one more with how good they were! David got a beef rendang old fashioned, and caitlyn got the blue cheese + curry leaves martini. David really liked his, with a strong savory flavor, but didn’t think it much resembled an old fashioned. Caitlyn felt that hers was fairly mild and muted for being advertised far on the “crazy” spectrum. She enjoyed it alright, but was not blown away by it.
We finished up and decided that we wanted to go get some dinner. We decided to get Chinese food again with how delicious it was, so we found a sit down restaurant in Chinatown.
We shared as always, but each picked a dish. Caitlyn picked the sautéed shredded pork in hot sauce, while David got the Xinjiang big plate chicken.
We also ordered a few items from the Chinese BBQ list on the menu, seeing other people with tasty looking skewers. We got a whole quail, a chicken wing, and a chicken heart. The pork dish that Caitlyn ordered remarkably had no spice for being “in hot sauce”. It reminded Caitlyn of American Chinese food. David felt kind of similar about the dish, but felt it had less flavor than American Chinese. The chicken really was a big plate. It came with little cubes of probably roasted chicken meat as well as some vegetables sitting in a thin sauce. This dish more than made up for the pork one. It had some spice, but really packed in the flavor. The only downside was that some of the pieces of chicken had little bits or splinters of bone, so you had to be careful. The BBQ was the unexpected winner, though. The chicken heart was amazing and had the same texture as the heart skewers we remembered from Japan, but with Chinese seasonings. The quail was really cool, and had a good flavor but was a little bit dry. The chicken wing skewer was amazing, coming with two beautifully roasted and seasoned chicken wings. They were so tender and so juicy, seeming the have the same seasoning as the other skewers. We finished our meal, leaving some of the pork but devouring the chicken and BBQ. We headed to the hotel but not before stopping by a convenience store for some tea and water. While looking around, we noticed that they sold sours! Caitlyn fell in love with sours while in japan, but has not been able to find them since. It was even a familiar brand to the sours we liked in Japan, this one being Suntory. We grabbed a sour to bring back to the room and share. We laid in bed for a little while and continued to watch a little bit of the movie “My Octopus Teacher”, which we are still not sure how we feel about, before going to sleep.
David’s thoughts of the day: None
Caitlyn’s thoughts of the day: David and I always felt that we had a good spice tolerance, but when we decided we would take this trip, we ramped up the training to really get a good spice tolerance. So far, we have felt that we have experienced minimal spiciness. Even when vendors ask us if we can handle spice and give us a smirk before serving us a spicy dish, we are disappointed with how little spice there actually is. Im sure this ToTD will come back to kick me in the butt later, but we are looking forward to trying more spicy foods in our travels!
Steps walked: 20,153
Miles walked: 9.78
Bluming Travelers 