Weekend Singapore Trip

Had a long weekend and took a trip to Singapore.  Singapore is close and quick to get to with just a 90 minute or so flight from Jakarta.  It was a very impressive city.  What people say about the orderliness and cleanliness holds up for the most part.

View from the taxi ride into the city (traffic free!)

I found the city to be a very English-speaking friendly place as many, many Singaporeans I came across spoke it very well.  Mandarin and other Asian languages were also very prevalent.

We took the subway a lot to get around the city.  It was very quick and convenient with trains coming often.  One thing I never liked about the DC subway was that it took forever to get anyway on it during the weekends as trains came so irregularly that it was usually just easier to drive into town.

One of the many subway stations.

Some of the crosswalks make fun laser sounds to alert the blind when it's safe to cross.

Malls were all over the place with many connected to each other that one could continually be walking in a mall not know they had already traversed through several of them.  One mall we had to visit was the Marina Bay mall.  It had a channel for people wanting to take rides and a skating rink.  It also had some great views of the Marina Bay Sands resort, the most expensive casino/resort property in the world.

The mall at Marina Bay

A view of the most expensive hotel in the world.

Entrance to the Art Museum.

The only skating rink I've seen where people wear ice skates but there is NO ice.

We also took a trip to the Singapore Chinatown.  First impression, this was the cleanest Chinatown I've ever been to.  It almost reminded me of how a museum might display a Chinatown.  Very clean, free from any vendors of knockoff Rolexs, pirated DVDs, or fake purses/perfumes.

We ate a late lunch here and had some excellent steamed chicken and visited the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple which supposedly holds a tooth from Buddha.

Pristine Chinatown streets.

Buddha Tooth Relic Temple

 In the evening, there is a light show put on by the Marina Bay Sands each night that was fun to watch.  To finish the night, we strolled the Clarke Quay area that had tons of nightlife with bars, live music, and clubs.
 

The next day, we went to the Sentosa area to go for a walk and see the sights.  The train to cross over had a huge line as there was some sort of event going on at the other side.  We decided instead to just walk around instead.

Yep, we rode this train.

 To finish off, we went to go try chili crab.  Crab cooked and topped with a spicy chili.  Yum!

Overall, it was a short, but great trip.  We saw a lot of Singapore but will definitely have to take another trip to see the rest.  There was still the aquarium, zoo, and Universal Studios to check out.  Plus, there are a number of nightlife places that would be fun to go to as well.  Next time.