Saturday, January 12, 2013

Singapore 12/23/12 - 12/25/12

After small troubles at the airport ticket counter in NZ and a 10 hour budget flight that served zero food worth the price, we finally made it to our last continent of our trip.

Being in Singapore felt like being in a typical big city, EXCEPT that it was extremely clean:  the buildings, streets, markets, train stations, etc.  It was a good introduction into SE Asia as English is the most well known and widely used language since Singapore is a melting pot of so many cultures. 

Once again, we were in a big city that we gave ourselves a little over a day to explore (can you tell we like being outside the cities?).  We ventured around the city and made it to a couple of interesting places.   We went to Sim Lim Square, a place that is well known for electronics and technology;  six floors of anything and everything "techie"-  portable DVD players, cameras, phones, gear, gadgets, and gizmos.  The only thing that would've made this place better is a pocket full of money to spend ;-).


We also made our way to Chinatown for lunch.  On our flight to Singapore we sat next to a guy who was from NZ, but his parents moved to Singapore a few years ago, and he told us about a delicious Chinese food restaurant in Chinatown where the owner makes his own noodles and dumplings.  We even got to watch him make the noodles.  Both the noodles and steamed dumplings were pretty amazing!  Beats Panda Express hands down ;-).





Singapore is also known for the plethora of shopping.  We walked down the main shopping street (more malls than we could count) and there were plenty of Christmas decorations to enjoy and make us feel like we were back home for the holidays.




Later that evening we made it to see the famous, tall hotel that looks like a spaceship/boat (we'd say a combination of both), otherwise officially known as the Marina Bay Sands hotel and casino.  It is quite the architectural piece of work!  There was also a botanical garden across from the hotel/ bay that we walked around. Once the sun set, the garden was illuminated with colorful lights and there was a light show synced to music.  Fun to watch! 





The resort is quite impressive with a mall, museum, two theatres, seven restaurants, casino, ice skating rink and world's longest elevated pool just to name a few of the attractions.  This is the infity edge swimming pool, almost 500 ft long, that is on top of the hotel.  Of course our budget did not allow us to stay at the resort.  This picture is courtesy of wikipedia :-).


The next morning we were scheduled to bus to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia at 9am.  This was our Christmas Day and Christmas Eve back home (14 hour time difference) so we woke up nice and early, 5 am, to make sure we could both skype our families while they were together.  Matt's family does their big dinner and presents on Christmas Eve night, so he enjoyed seeing everyone via skype on their Christmas Eve.  Kristin also got to skype with her family, although their big celebration is on Christmas Day.  To get in the Christmas spirit Kristin wore her elf hat on the bus to KL.

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