The next day we did a tour of Singapore with our guide, Melissa. Singapore is definitely an interesting country. Before venturing over here we had read that it was very strict about cleanliness even going so far as to ban the sale of chewing gum! Melissa confirmed that it is very strict, very few people are permitted to become citizens and there are strict quotas on apartment buildings ensuring that the demographic makeup of the tenants is the same as the general population. The government also owns about 70% of the available housing. Obtaining your license and buying a car is also incredibly expensive, this keeps the number of vehicles on the road down. Littering and taking fruit from trees is also banned. Melissa's husband had actually got caught taking a mango from a tree! Singapore is also very energy conscious, the government imposes high use taxes on building owners but these can be offset by creating "green spaces" within the building. The goal is to improve building efficiency by 80% and if this is achieved your building is no longer subject to the tax. Some building owners do this by adding green space within the building.
Melissa took us to several ethnic parts of the city including Chinatown, Kampong Glam (Arab Quarter) and Little India. We started in little India and we went to an open air market and a wet market. We got a sugar cane drink and a chocolate drink called MILO. None of us were huge fans of either drink! We then headed to Madras Coffee Shop to try traditional Indian sweets, Dad and Mom got a Laddu while the girls tried a Burfi. We struck out here too, we were not fans of these treats! We then walked over to the Hindu Temple Sri Veeramakaliamman which is dedicated as a shrine to the Hindu goddesses Kali and Parvati. We all had to borrow wraps to cover our knees and shoulders and we had to remove our shoes. The temple was very crowded with both tourists and worshipers. As we saw with Buddhist temples, the Hindu temple was very ornate with many various deities carved in the walls.
After visiting the Hindu temple we walked over to the Arab Quarter known as Kampong Glam. Here we walked around the Sultan Mosque, unfortunately we weren't able to go inside because it is currently undergoing renovations and is closed to the public. We then grabbed a ride over to the Raffles Hotel, so we could visit the famous Long Bar and have the famous Singapore Sling. This was a nice stop because it was incredibly hot outside so we welcomed the cool air and shade of the Long Bar. The Singapore Sling was also pretty good. After a rest here, Melissa took us to Hawker Chan, a hawker stall restaurant is the cheapest Michelin-starred meal. The food was amazing! After lunch we walked around Chinatown and even tried durian, this fruit smells terrible but is supposed to taste amazing. It does not taste amazing. After our tour of Singapore we went to dinner at Mott32, an upscale Asian cuisine restaurant. Here we had our first ever Peking duck. Allison loves duck but all of us were excited to try this dish out. They brought out the duck and carved it for us, then we made our own Peking duck wraps....amazing!
The following day was July 4th! What is more American than spending the day at the pool and eating hamburgers? Well, that's exactly what we did and it was fantastic. The hotel even had a professional photographer to take photographs of your family. After our day at the pool, the hotel had an American buffet for dinner! This was amazing because it had all variations of ethnic food to choose from. After dinner we walked over to Gardens by the Bay which is the national garden attraction of Singapore. Each evening after dark the gardens have a light and music performance in the gardens called Garden Rhapsody. During our trip the music was all 60s and 70s rock and it was an awesome, if humid, experience! We were all pretty soaked at the end of the event but it was such a cool experience.
Our last day in Singapore we had to check out around 11 but our flight wasn't until 9 pm so we had a lot of time to kill. We stopped at the Arts & Science Museum by our hotel. The main exhibition was dresses designed by Iris Van Herpen. There was also a part of the museum that had a "forest" obstacle course that Dad, Abigail, and Allison tried out. After the museum we FINALLY found soup dumplings. We ended up ordering 60 dumplings and ate every single one, not as good as Yao Fuzi but pretty darn good. We headed to the airport shortly after that so we could see the "Jewel". It was kind of neat but really busy so we didn't spend much time here. We ended up just checking in for our flight to head home....final stop the good 'ole USA.
Much Love,
Moises & Jennifer
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