Singapore round 2 with friends

Singapore round 2 (this trip at least)
May 3- May 5

What a killer smooth flight darwin to singapore, i thought there was going to be a little more bouncing considering they were expecting weather moving into singapore. The weather unfortunately hit cherries flight, she got delayed and hour out of manila, not for weather but mechanical difficulties, they had to turn her plane around on the tarmac and send it back to the terminal, the weather was experienced up in the air with a lot of turbulence, of course as cherrie told the story, she had her blanket, pillow, and whatever else she needed to be comfy and slept the entire way.

I met her in the airport at the arrivals area, and we hopped into a taxi to the hotel, the Village Landmard, hoity, toity if i don't say. sure as hell beat the $30 dives i stayed in in the "entertainment" area or geylang district. not that there was anything wrong with those rooms, there designed for an inexpensive place to sleep or...well, i'm sure you can figure it out.

After checking in, Cherrie pretty much became the party pooper falling asleep before we could figure out dinner, the days activities for tomorrow, sentosa or indonesia. No decision was made and off to sleep we went, not that i'm complaining, its been a couple rough days of travelling, early flights, all day adventures, enduring extreme tempetures, man i like the tropics, and coundless miles walked. An early night might do me some good.

Exloring the Arab quarter was interesting, this was the first time i'd stayed in the part of Singapore, usually opting for the cheap and well cheap. Cherrie and I got up and around and out of the room by 9, this i was suprised for, i expected cherrie to sleep at least until noon, but she got up and around and we headed out to hunt down some breakfast. We settled on a corner cafe for some indian breakfast (i think), eggs and cheese in some kind of thin tortilla type wrapper with a sauce similar to a tandoori to drench the concoction with, it had onions, peppers and was a tomato base. Finished off with some really good coffee, or Kopi, black expresso coffee mixed with condensed milk.

after breakfast, we were on a mission to find the Raffles Hotel, then make an attempt to get off to sentosa. The hunt to find the raffles proved to be much, much harder than expected, neither of us had a map, and cherrie was attempting to use the gps maps that were included on her phone, only to find that it kep prompting her to log into the data network, which she didn't want to do, and i haven't activated my gps on my phone so we were pretty much s.o.l. We knew the general direction we wanted to head, and being on beach road, which is the same road the raffles is on we started walking, un beknownst to us, we began walking the wrong way, then started turning corners, and more corners, before we knew it we were upon a MRT station...tossing in the towel we decided to take the mrt to Raffles Square, only three stops up on the MRT, and not near the actual raffles Hotel. So our walk began...again...this time we knew where we were going, two turns was all we had to make, a left, and then a right on beach road.

my initial plan was to have a couple singapore slings at the raffles hotel, this did not pan out, we wandered around the property, took some pictures, visited the gift shop where cherrie got some tea for her folks, then we were both sooo tired and hot and sweaty we didn't want to have drinks, what we wanted was someting cold and something to eat, and nice guy i am, i'm not paying the raffles prices for food, so we headed out to find another MRT station to get back over to where the hotel was to take an afternoon dip in the pool, cool off and head back out again. On the way to the MRT station we happened upon a mall, suprise, a mall in singapore, where they had the swankiest mc donalds i've ever seen, cutting through this mcdonalds we decided on chocalate milkshakes...best idea ever...before continuing on to MRT station. On our way to the MRT, we walked right into the taxi queue at the mall and make out way back to the hotel, yeah, the taxi was my idea, cherries feet hurt, i was getting stinky from sweating all day, buckets pouring out of my head, that i just wanted to go swimming.

after cooling off at the hotel, we decided on a snack by the pool before heading back out. We had taken too much time cooling off so we decided that china town would be the next stop for cheap goods, and i'll be damned if cherrie didn't have over a dozen people to shop for, off to the 10 for 10 stands we headed, looking for the best deals for cheaply constructed chinese knick knacks for her to take home. like any woman, deciding on the perfect piece of crap to give as a souvenier was not easy. I suggested she let me do the picking, a simple grab the first 12 items was what i would have done, and inevitably what she did, taking an hour to get to that point...

We wandered around Chinatown for a little before deciding on heading back to the hotel for the night, both still tired, our feet hurting and just wanting to relax before the day of travel coming up for both of us, we spent the rest of the night chilling and watching TV.

Tomorrow...Off to Burma