While walking in the neighborhood for breakfast, we took the opportunity to explore the area we stayed.
The area we stayed was Geylang, a place in Singapore well known as red-light district. Myriad of prostitutes, local and visitors flock to the area every evening till midnight, like those we saw yesterday. The people of sex practices were easily identifiable, you will know when you see one.
Anyway, there are many shophouses in Geylang, one thing I must say is that there are a lot of original Chinese people from China in this area, most of them had business in hotel, food, logistics and night clubs. The signboard of the shop will tell you whether it is operated by a local or the Chinese from China. Don't believe me? See below.
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| Liu's Lamb |
In Malaysia or Singapore, local shops selling lamb will have their signboards named as, example let say "Singapore Lamb", "Barbeque Lamb", "Smoked Lamb", not 刘大妈羊肉串.
I will show you more pictures of Geylang in other posts.
We started 2nd day with a trip to Orchard Road, to view its famous Christmas lighting.
We should visit yesterday night, not morning because any beautiful lighting in morning will look just ordinary.
Coincidentally, 25 December was Magnum's 25 anniversary, so I got a free ice-cream! *No photo of the ice-cream because I was too busy eating it*
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| Free ice-cream on the distribution! |
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| Orchard Road |
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| Cute couple |
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| Us and the Christmas decorations |
After Orchard Road, we went for the exciting Bubble Jet Adventure!
Like the FunVee Open Top Bus, we boarded the Bubble Jet at Singapore Flyer.
We needed to wait for around 20 minutes for the Bubble Jet. While waiting, the boring gf took my DSLR around to capture the views.
Some places we already visited yesterday night, and now we got to see how they looked in the morning.
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| River bank near Marina Bay Sands |
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| The waiting pavilion |
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| Marina Bay Sands and Artscience Museum |
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| Happy face on board |
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| Merlion Park |
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| Esplanade Theaters on the Bay |
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| Marina Bay Financial Centre |
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| Marina Bay Sands again. I like it more in morning view |
Along the Singapore river, we discovered many more eye-catching buildings in close distance.
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| Bank of China |
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| The Fullerton Hotel at its best |
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| Standard Chartered Building |
I just liked Standard Chartered. The 2-month short internship with Standard Chartered Malaysia was simply unforgettable, not just people and knowledge but memories as well. For that, I still appreciate efforts of those who made it a success.
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| Asian Civilisations Museum |
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| Mica Building |
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| Extreme Swing Singapore |
I saw a similar Extreme Swing in Sunway Lagoon. One day I would brave myself to try it.
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| Clarke Quay |
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| Clarke Quay Central |
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| Riverside Point |
We also saw some other landmarks like Raffles Landing, Parliament House, Fort Canning and River Place Condominium.
We spent half day on the Bubble Jet and the torrid noonday sun made us felt dizzy and stuffy . It was quite breezy though when the Bubble Jet passed by some shady areas under bridge. I cannot remember how many bridges we passed.. 4 maybe? Elgin Bridge, Coleman Bridge, Alkaff Bridge and Robertson Bridge.
We got off at Clarke Quay MRT station to get to HarbourFront. We were going to visit Universal Studio and Resorts World Sentosa!
It was a holiday as it was Christmas Day. HarbourFront MRT station was crowded and packed. We can hardly move around. Tourists and locals were seen everywhere in the station, heading to the same destination as ours.
We decided to take RWS8 bus to Resorts World Sentosa instead of the monorail which we needed to wait for 45 minutes per ride. RWS8 was available for boarding at the bus station every 10 minutes. The only thing was, we cannot utilize STP+ and needed to pay $2 per person for the ride.
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| Photo-bombed by the person at the back |
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| Huge Christmas decoration in USS |
The heat continued to be unbearable and we had no mood to capture photos. We were famished and wanted to eat some food, but even MCD found no seat at all. Lastly we decided to settle our lunch inside Malaysian Street at USS.
But looked at the crowd as well. We spent around 30 minutes to look for a seat, thanks to a lovely Hong Kong lady who reserved two corner seats for us. She had a small family of 4, sitting right beside us. Then I had to sit in the seat and my gf had to do the buying job.
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| Malaysian food still famous choices among all |
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| This mee was not too good but was ok to fill my stomach |
Then we decided not to buy the USS ticket, and spent another 1 hour in USS and Sentosa before leaving to hotel in order to get ready for tonight's Christmas dinner.
We had been planning for the Christmas dinner since 2 weeks before the trip, surveying every possible hotels and restaurants in Singapore with recommended reviews.
Lastly, just a week before the trip, we decided that we will have our Christmas dinner in a restaurant called Cucina Restaurant. It was an Italian restaurant specializing in Italian cuisine, emerged Top 5 in Singapore Gourmet Hunt, and was featured in Channel U's 'Must Eat Signature Dish'.
We found this restaurant through Groupon Singapore and bought the deal for $69.90 for Christmas Meal for 2 people which worth $153.60. Sounded a good deal to you as well right?
The restaurant was located in Holland Village. We took MRT to arrive at it. Just 3 minutes walk from the MRT station and we found it after asking 1 kind pedestrian.
Here we were!
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| Outside view of the restaurant |
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| Painting on the inside wall |
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| Mirror design |
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| Seat |
Seemed like a perfect and romantic place to have dinner on a Christmas night. The restaurant gave me a Da Vinci feel, especially the painting.
This meal covered a soup of the day, main course and a bottle of red/ white wine.
I opted Lobster Pasta for my main course while gf chose Garoupa Fish. She also chose to have red wine instead of white. All we never tried before. Great experience and atmosphere.
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| We can see through the kitchen from our seats |
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| Soup of the day - Cauliflower Soup with a garlic bread |
The soup was nice and hot enough to comfort a hungry soul like me.
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| Red Wine aka Red Vina Maipo |
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| Contained 12% alcohol |
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| Lobster Pasta |
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| Garoupa Fish |
Merry Chistmas! We really did had a lovely dinner. Overall, I rated 8 out of 10 for the dinner. Would love to come back again for more.
After the dinner we had time to explore Holland Village. It was a place like the Golden Triangle in Kuala Lumpur where we mostly saw youngsters, couples, white people and live bands. Quite recommended for hanging out at night for its relaxed ambiance.
The 3rd day of the trip, we initially planned to go to the Southern Ridges, Farmart Centre and Singapore Cable Car. Also, we planned to watch The Hobbit - The Battle of the Five Armies.
Ended up we did none of the above.
Want to know what we did?
Stay tuned for Part 3! And thank you for reading all this while!
