Yeah, well.. My Singapore/Malaysia 2015 trip posts have stretched a bit longer than i originally plan, but this is the last one i swear *LOL*! I really want to start blogging about our Japan trip (but i will have to get the Jogja/Solo out of the way first!) >.<.
Anyway. As you might already know, i'm sort of an honorary local here in Singapore, having lived there for a bit when i was younger. So like most locals, i am not necessarily always interested in touristy places. I prefer to enjoy it like a local. Having said that, i am still a tourist and would always have touristy moments here and there. The mix of the two is the right balance for me, and i can stay in Singapore for months on end enjoying it this way.
So this is sort of an Instagram dump/dodgy guide on how to enjoy Singapore, MY WAY.
We ALWAYS take public transportation in Singapore, and this wefie was taken in one of the many times we took a bus somewhere. Wonder where, coz it's so quiet in the bus -___- that's not normal. We must be going somewhere not popular/getting lost. Btw, the entire post is made up with Ipad mini photos, meaning the quality is very low. What can i say, i snapped them before i have an Iphone and i do not have the patience to transfer the pics from my camera, just too inconvenient!
The key to explore Singapore and get to know it better without breaking your bank account, is by taking their oh-so-convenient public transportations. I was so used to taking buses and MRT when i lived here that i got a culture shock when i moved back to Indonesia, having to rely on drivers to take me anywhere. Weirdly it didn't prompt me to want to drive myself. I just have no confidence and interest in driving, weird as it may sound.
While waiting for MRT. These two always so lovey dovey
Girlies. Wonder where Au was, probably at the other side of the train. Btw, i remember only having green and red line back in the days. Now there are so many lines i got so confused sometimes
An advice that i always give people who wants to explore Singapore in not-so-coventional way (and save some bucks), is to go to the suburbs. I mean, away from the central la. Singapore is such a modern city that almost every single district has their own shopping malls/areas. This is also a good way to get a glimpse into the older, more traditional Singapore as there are still many old-style, China-feels shops in these suburbs. Shopping and eating are much cheaper in these areas as well.
Since we're East dwellers (our condo's somewhere in Siglap area), the malls that i frequented was Tampines Mall. There's a stretch of shopping area between the bus station and the MRT station :
Watching movies in Singapore is quite expensive, but we still go to watch movies anyway (the reason? Well, superior cinemas, quite different from what we have in Surabaya. Also just because we're movie buffs la. And personally because there often would be Chinese *or other Asian countries* horror movies playing which would have absolute no chance of showing in Indonesia).
I used to watch movies all the time in GV Tampines, feels super nostalgic every single time we come back there!
Singapore is of course, a shopping haven. Other than the normal, they actually supports the whole comic book/anime/kawaii lifestyle (Singaporean were super into Japan culture *i dunno about now, most probably changed into Korean by now* when i lived here, totally formed my own preference as well) so you can find all those comic book/action figure/merchandise store everywhere in Singapore. Note for the geeks!
My niece BB and i are into unicorns badly. Found this MLP jacket in a store (in Parkway? I think so...) and we're like... It's so bae *LOLOLOL, not that i use that word IRL. Maybe if i am a young person, quoting Laura from Buy Now Blog Later). Sadly it's crazy expensive so we passed on it
I mean, how much fun is this jacket!!!
Singapore is also a sweet haven, do you know that? I am not much of a sweet person, but there are so many kinds of sweets widely available in Singapore (have you not notice all those Candylicious and Candy Empires???), there's bound to be something for everyone (and make everyone diabetic >.<). I feast with my eyes first, so cutesy food? I must get it!
Like this uber kawaii Baby Duck Gummy!
Seriously shaped by rubber ducks LOLOLOL
I am also a HUGE fan of sour ribbons (i LOVE sour stuffs!) and sour strings. I think we look like a mother hen and its chick here *LOL*
Have i mentioned that Singaporean loves Japanese stuffs? There are loads and loads of Japanese stores in Singapore, the prices are crazy of course (i always thought that Japanese stuffs are crazy expensive, period. But after visiting Japan for myself, i realize that not everything is expensive. Of course, importing stuffs caused a lot so they have to increase the prices a lot in Singapore, still i envy their access to Japanese goods. Speaking of Japan, i am super saddened by the recent Kyushu tragedy, please keep them in your prayers :(...). This is a sakura bloom sake, it's CL's, i only borrow it for photo taking purposes. Personally i am not into sake/any alcohol
There are countless of Daiso (the full line including cosmetics arghhh so jealous) and their immitations. This is one of the yen store we found at... Lucky plaza?
How cute is this pic? ARGHHH i want my baby back (as a baby)!!!
Btw, i spotted a Stroberi (a very familiar Indonesian chain accessories store) in 313 Somerset, i was so surprised!
One more thing that is sooo Singapore? It's their night markets! Basically it's a night market that sells all kinds of things. Mostly food, but there are other stuffs too (even fashion thingy). The thing that distinguish Singapore's night markets than let's say, Taiwan's, is that they pop out in different places every time, with no permanent location.
Honestly i am not a night market kind of person since i hate crowd and heat, but we stopped by this one in Tampines to take a look. The only place market-like that i tolerate is Bugis Street because the fashion stores are awesomeeee!
Selfie with le BB. Because this is my blog and i need to show my face every so often :p
Singapore is always dinamic, vibrant-and its constantly changing. I like to discover new stores (like this Jelly Bunny store with the most awesome, a lot more affordable than Mel but much more comfortable to use than the cheap-no brand ones, in Plaza Singapura), but sometimes it's hard to keep up. I'd be looking for a specific store *even malls* only to find out they have closed down/change
Best makan place in Singapore? Kopitiam! LOL. This is a regular mall foodcourt actually, but the food on those hot, noisy kopitiams are so much better! And cheaper too hahaha. I think BB annoyingly snapped this unflattering candind pic of me stuffing my face with duck rice :p. Imma start talking about food now. Lots of it. Be prepared
Speaking of kopitiam, if there's any that we frequent, that would be Bedok. Imagine our horror when we realized they : 1. Built a mall in Bedok and 2. blocked the way (it was under construction) to the huge kopitiam. The new mall also totally disoriented me that i couldn't find my way to the kopitiam -___-.
Us in the bus, blissfully unaware that we would be scrambling around trying to find the way to our beloved kopitiam -___-
We did finally find it after going round and round in circle and getting semi-frustrated
Finally found a decent, yummey kway teow tho so it was tots worth it *LOL*. I have no idea why the kway teows in foodcourts are nowhere near as good as this. Wanna know our fave? It's the one in Changi airport's staffs' canteen's! Wonder if it's still around?
The nasi lemak was superb too here
One of my fave food in Spore that i don't get tired of eating over and over again : duck rice
Gigantic rojak (hunny's fave) that he had to queue for more than 20 mins for. Somewhere in the West, i can't remember the name of the place tho...
We love Indian food too! Nasi biryani is da BOMB. We had it a few times but forgot to snap a pic of. This is something else, roti canai i think with chickpea curry? Did not order this, probably KC's. The yoghurt's a nightmare tho, have you ever tasted onion flavored yoghurt? LOL
Yummy Korean rice bowl we had in Vivocity after a tiring day at Sentosa Island. Again, can't remember the restaurant's name. Food blogger material i am not
KC ordered this gigantic Filipino pork knuckle at Tampines Mall's food court
I personally find it a bit too bland and though tho
There was some little kids sitting beside us and they were staring at KC eating like a barbarian with their mouths hanging open
Little O is also a fan of duck and or chicken rice. Oh, RIP to my Blackberry that got lost in Japan. I'm still waiting for the reimbursement from the sucky insurance company WTF. They told us that the translating process (of the police statement from Japan) would take 3-4 months. WTF.
We moved to CW's place for half of the trip, her place's super convenient because there's a mall just across the street and this is our fave breakfast place. 328 Katong Laksa!
Best one we had while we were in Singapore!
So good that hunny insisted on having it one more time before we go back to Indonesia
The generous plump, succulent cockles. My mouth is watering right now FML
Hunny loves it although he usually isn't a fan of spicy food
My family is quite a foodie (i am not. I mean, i love food but it's super rare that i would find a food that's so good that i would ride for hours just to have it. You know what i mean? I'm easy man, just give me McD), so even after we moved to the other side of the town, we would ride the bus for hours back to the Katong area for this special ba kut teh.
It's only appropriate that we down as much ba kut teh as possible while we're there!
Random rice bowl we had at in Orchard (OMG can't remember the exact place), so nice that hunny went back and order another bowl *LOL*
One of the weirder things that i love, tea eggs. Girls, find a husband that would peel your egg for you...
Singapore also has wide variety of international food, it's here that i began to fall in love with sushi! Their quality of sushi, although not as good as the original place, is still far more superior than what we have normally. These ones on the picture is not recommended tho, the portions are half as small as the usual and prices' very high! It's in Cineleisure btw. They're not bad, but i personally don't find it worth the price
Noms
There's a buffet Korean BBQ place nearby CW's place and my aunt took us there for a treat on our last day
Again, girls, find a man that would cook for you
So all you have to do is nom quietly *LOLOLOL*. I haven't showered in this pic >.<, because eating Korea BBQ means you'd basically smells like one, better bathe afterwards! Only this time my mum insisted on us going to a nearby mall for grocery shopping before letting me take my time to shower!
Moving on to dessert now :p. I loveeeee how pretty these pastel colored steamed cakes are! Btw, Singaporean eats their steamed cakes with orange colored sugar, i can't eat them on their own ever since -___-. My mum stocks on that sugar in our fridge in Surabaya >.<
Colorful ice kachang, BB's fave
Like i mentioned earlier, i am not really into sweets (i crave for chocolate or cakes like, once in a month, just before my period. Any other time i don't have a hard time saying no to them), but in Singapore i can't really resist cold desserts >.<. Mostly because we walk everywhere, sweating like pigs and the hot weather can only be tolerated with ice cold stuffs.
We discovered Ah Chew Desserts that we pass by everyday to and from the MRT station while we stayed in Novena area
Even though we were stuffed, there's always room for dessert after walking so far away
I ordered mango sago something something and it's really yum!
Oma Spoon is a Korean patbingsu place in 313 Somerset (prolly has lots of branches, this is the one that we know)
Not a fan of nuts (oh geez, i sound so picky) but the lightly sweet, fluffy bingsu is super good!
So good that i even ate the green tea one (FYI, i hate green tea with vengeance. So does #Undecided)!!!
I'm not big on ice cream but i crazy LOVE froyo! The line's always so long in Lao Lao i gotta try it!
Love the parfait but honestly not a fan of the froyo itself, i had so much better (Sour Sally and all) before. I do love the topping and sauces tho so i would eat it again hahaha
Another thing that i kept on wanting to try but am always too full when we pass by. In the end i buy it anyone because like Singaporean says "Die die must try one!" LOL
Milkcow. The original one, with honey comb. Honey comb was the "it" thing back then, and i developed a huge adoration for them (i always love honey, btw). I had an accident once with honey comb getting in my hair... It was disastrous!
I crazy love Milkcow! It's light, creamy, milky... Super good! It tastes more like milk than normal ice cream. It's also good that it's not that sweet
Hunny's crazy about Ben&Jerry's (not available locally... Maybe in Jakarta or Bali? We don't even have Cold Stone in Surabaya!)
I also fell crazy in love with Twelve cupcakes! SO GOOD! It's a good thing this kind of cupcake are not easily accessable in Surabaya coz i would crave them all the time!
Tai Parfait (if i'm not mistaken, they already have a branch in Jakarta now?)
It looks like a dragon fish >.<
Nommy!
Of course, gotta have honey comb too.. I had Tai Parfait twice back then, and the second time was when the accident with the honey comb happened...
Avoid "atas" style of cafes (that's Singaporean for high end cafes) in the malls if you have smaller budget. I almost had a heart attack when i saw the bill for the four of us in this cafe (It's TWG, btw)
So expensive (it's Japanese-expensive! LOL. Seriously, the drink cost us almost the same as drinks in L'Occitane Cafe in Shibuya!) have to take selfie
Even fast food are different in Singapore (they're kinda different in each country, so we make a point on trying McD/KFCs in every country we went to. Do you know there's no McD in Vietnam? At least back when we went there. It was 2012 i think).
Singapore was all about their 50th anniversary last year
Curry chicken rice? I think
I seriously cannot remember what they are exactly, but i do remember them being good!
And i love how they have yummy salad in McD!
I also didn't know that MUJI sells food before. The coffee is goooddd, and the peanuts chocolate... It's so addicting!
Yummy Vodka Mudshake
Of course, we did some serious shopping too in Singapore..
BB swatching happily. I am more of a drugstore makeup lover myself so i prefer Sasa/Watsons than Sephora (weird as it may sound), but i do like smaller Sephoras like this one in Tampines than the huge one, i get so overwhelmed at huge Sephoras...
Oops. I did admit of getting bat-shit crazy and shopped until our 60 kgs luggage allowance was 13 kilos short...
I love how they make charity fun in Singapore (here Little O is picking a stuffed key chain and finger puppet after making a donation)
And i love how they still try to instill love for the outdoor, even though most are artificial. Here Little O is dipping his foot into the shallow pool in Vivocity
Singapore sure is a kid friendly place
Casual shoes show down with Au
Staying in cramped condos also means that we bond more as a family :
LOL. Yes, that's how we slept. The air mattress make weird, loud noises whenever you move and i have to pee like 12450x a night so between that and hunny's snoring, we successfully tortured KC and CL who were unfortunate enough to share a room with us :p
Me, acting ladylike while putting on my socks
The dining counter suddenly turned into a beauty salon
Have i mentioned how much i love Changi Airport? It's the one airport where we spent 8 hours transit without getting bored *LOL* once.
There are always some fun installation too, like the giant satay
And giant chicken rice!
And that's how i enjoyed MY Singapore :D!
Speaking of Singapore, i was invited by Singapore Tourism Board last Saturday to their road show exhibition in Grand City!
I was allowed to bring a friend, so thank you Sabsab for accompanying me! I would be so lost without you!
We had lunch at XO Cuisine first (i was too embarrassed to take pictures hahaha), and then we went to check out the exhibition where they held so many games (mainly for kids haha) where you can get stamps and exchange it to various souvenirs
That's a Merlion, believe it or not. I made a short IG video (as usual) that i'm attaching below
There's also a rather famous Indonesian celebrity couple Christian Sugiono and Titi Kamal, who apparently is the face of Singapore's campaign in Indonesia
They shared their fun experiences in Singapore
With my date of the day ^^
There were a lot of booths from various travel agencies in the exhibition where you can purchase air tickets (they even have happy hour where you can get Jetstar tickets for as low as IDR 50.000++!), tour packages, attraction entrance tickets, etc. Do you know that Surabaya people is the second largest Indonesian city group that goes to Singapore (it's not hard to imagine that the biggest number of tourist to Singapore comes from Indonesia, right?)? And did you know that Singapore was picked as the friendliest non-Muslim country for Muslim travelers in Asia?
There are plenty of Singapore related posts in this blog (just type the word "Singapore" on the seach box on my side bar) in case you need reference on places to go, things to do in Singapore-be it touristy or not ^^.
Singapore sure is SHIOK! Btw, i'll pass the guide books to anyone who wants/needs it, just pay for shipping la okay haha. Please e-mail me if you're interested
So, have you ever been to Singapore? What do you think about it? And what's your fave thing to do in Singapore? #Pink
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