Singapore-Day 3

This morning I woke up quite content with myself and the previous nights chocolate indulgent activities, this is when I realised that I was singing (my parents would probably describe it as screaming) the words of a number of songs including Joseph's Technicolored Dream Coat (with new and interesting colors), Bohemian Rapsody, Thinking Out Loud and Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Anyway, after visiting the breakfast buffet, for a less full breakfast following last night, we went to the famous Orchard Road (really, famous? I hear you ask) (via the metro), which was made famous due to the high number of malls on the one road. These malls looked like this.

                                  

       

                                  

                                  

The visits to these malls were both interesting and successful from my perspective.  Interesting because of the size of the malls and successful because I got some great clothes and a new pair of shoes. Towards the end of the trip to the last mall we stopped in at another famous place (oh really?), except this time it was a food court and it served authentic food - it had handmade noodles, numerous drinks carts, and different meats being cooked,

       

I myself had a bowl of cold roast chicken lying in a bed of spring onion and broth accompanied by a miso soup and a portion of rice, this food was accompanied with some ribena. After returning to the hotel and just chillaxing we went out to (unaware at the time) the best dining experience I have had ever! We went to a restaurant called Nox which in latin translates to night.  From the small clue I just gave you, one of you may have gathered that when at Nox you dine in the dark. Just take that in a moment and imagine having dinner in the pitch black with only my sense of smell and (now impaired) sense of taste. It's funny I should mention impaired because the waiters/waitresses/guides are all blind or visually impaired. Hopefully now you've made the connection between seeing impaired and Nox meaning night (aaahhh). Anyway, what they do is they tell you the concept downstairs which is that you will have your food in the dark and at the end guess what you just ate, Each course comes with four dishes in individual sample bowls placed on our plate like a clock at 3,6, 9 and 12 o'clock and there are three courses: Appetiser, Main and Dessert. At the start of the pitch black experience my guide (Fabian) leads me up the stairs and to our table.  You can feel the back of the chair and the table.  Once I sat down Fabian gave me a large bottle of water and said "Pour yourself some water" which I cautiously proceeded to do. I took off the twist off cap, felt for my glass, lined it up and started to pour, apparently around the halfway mark was when I started to miss the glass and hit my inner thigh....... So for the rest of the night I had to be the human clothes-line (and still I had an almost perfect night, They must be doing something right.)  It was fun trying to guess what we were eating.  We always started cautiously, feeling it with our fingers, smelling before tasting it.  The desserts were easy - mango gelato, passionfruit sauce, strawberries and icecream, tiramisu and banoffee pie in chocolate sauce.  The appetisers and mains were more difficult.   Rocket and parma ham salad was easy.  Smoked fish and croutons was eel.  Roast pork and apple, roast duck and mashed potatoes was also familiar.  Interestingly at the end of the night what I believed to be pork turned out to be cow stomach, and what I thought was a poached egg turned out to be fraguar (or liver) with figs & honey. All in all it was a great day and I'm looking forward to tommorrow. Bye.

Joseph Hewson

Singapore-Day 2

Day 2

This morning again we had breakfast but this time we (not very) successfully figured out the Singaporean metro system to which we utilised to travel first to the little Arab quarter, which when we walked along and through found that there was a lot of silks, gold and diamond shops like this.

                                   

                                   

                                    

We also found that the Arab quarter wasn't as modern as the business district (for obvious reasons) and that the houses people lived in were made of wood and instead of curtains they had the cheaper option of wooden shutters.

                            

                        

                         

We then proceeded to walk round the Arab district to another cultural hotspot: Little India. Although there were more shops and stalls in Little India than the Arab district I felt that the Arab district was more welcoming, open and more tourism orientated. The air smelt a mix of of spices and incense. Here are only a few things we found that they sold.

                            

    

    

    

    

As you can see there is a variety of things to be found and/or bought. After visiting these places it was still only lunch time this lead to us looking for a place to have lunch, we were meant to have lunch at another traditional Singaporean reataurant but it was closed in respect for the death of the modern founding father of Singapore: Lee Kuan Yew so instead we went back to the same place we went to yesterday. After this we meandered around the mall, during this time we entered the Louis Vuitton shop which lead into it's own personal island on the Singaporean River, sorry but I had to crop a photo so it won't look as good as it should do.

                        

 On the way to the metro we saw some cool buildings including the hotel we're staying at.

                                 

                                                                   Our Hotel

         

                                 

                                 

After that we returned to the hotel had afternoon tea and went for a swim in the pool which then lead to twenty minutes of sun absorbing (more commonly known as sun bathing). Post pool venture     me and my mum just lazed about our room for a few hours (I think) before (all three of us) heading out to dinner except the original place we were going to was outside and therefore in the (still) overwhelming heat. This forced us to move indoors to the more comfortable restaurant of Osteria Mozza, this was a great Italian pasta based restaurant the meals of choice being (me)Spaghetti alla Carbonara  (mum) Fancy Pasta(?)Bolognese (dad)Vegeterian (although he is not)Lasagne with very fine Pasta, Eggplant, Riccota Cheese and Olives. They all had good reviews. Following dinner was a return to the hotel in the case of me and mum but dad took a 3.3 Km walk around the main Clarke Quay which surrounds a part of the Singapore River, instead of going back to our room we decided to visit the 55th floor home to the chocolate and cheese bar. I think photos will describe best what happened.

This is the chocolate part of the "chocolate and cheese" bar.

                           

                

            

       

       

           

    

The cheese part of the "chocolate and cheese" bar.

                              

                              

                          

actually this is coffee - the beans come out of an elephant (best not to think about this), then dried in the sun and ground for our pleasure (well, not ours actually - for the other guests who dared to drink it).

                      

                  

              

      

  

That's it so yeah time to head off to bed. Thanks for reading about my trip and if you want to tell your friends. Thanks.

Joseph Hewson

India via Singapore

I'm Back! Whether you like it or not I'm back, I'm back to salvage something that should never have gone away - only this time me and my family are travelling to Singapore then India then Hong Kong following which we will return to home turf. Let me inform you on what has happened thus far....

Singapore-Day 1

After saying goodbye to my grandparents we entered the airport and flew to Auckland where we had to get on this plane (on the upper deck) for an eleven hour flight to Singapore,  would've preferred a shorter flight but what are you gonna do?

                                   

                                  

Following this flight we were driven to our hotel (Marina Bay Sands) which is home to magnificent views of the city and one of the busiest ports in the world, here are just a few examples. 

As you can see I made a trip to the infinity pool the hotel houses on the 57th floor, this is probably the best place to go if you want to cool down in what feels like 45 degree heat or just swim out to look over the edge to the steep and inclined drop.

Singapore-Day 2(first real day)

In the morning when we woke up we headed to the "club lounge" for breakfast,this is when I first discovered how much Singaporean people love steamed pork buns and when I discovered the view of their port. , The breakfast buffet consisted of: Steam pork buns, cut up waffles, chicken sausages, small hash browns, a multitude if fried rice, fruits and berries swimming in their juices, baked beans etc. etc.

Post breakfast we traveled under ground to the shoppes (I'll just call it a mall) in search of such shops as Gucci, Zara, Banana Republic, GAP the list goes on and thankfully all were found. I hope this doesn't only shock me but to my surprise in the mall I found both a indoor boat canal and ice skating rink (of course, I have photos)

                                    

                                     

Following this we returned to our hotel room and we didn't take our eyes off the cricket score.  although we had to listen to the cricket via the radio because there wasn't any coverage on the Singaporean TV.  At lunchtime, we visited the mall again, this time to have lunch.  This involved eating an assortment of dumplings, and a number of pork buns and won tons at a traditional Dim Sum restaurant. When we arrived we noticed that in a room beside the entrance, there was a team of chefs preparing the days lunch orders. (again I have photos) 

                                 

                                 

                                 

Following our second excursion to the mall we returned to hear the remainder of the cricket and to our great sorrow it was some-what of a convincing defeat to our great nation and our team the Blackcaps. This resulted in a two hour mourning period. We then went out to dinner to a fancy Italian restaurant where we had lasange and pizza which was shared around. 

That is what has happened so far and I am looking forward to continuing the blog tomorrow etc.