Monday, September 18, 2017

SGD

So on Merdeka weekend, it just so happened to stretch to a 5 day public holiday bliss. Can't complain, I love long days off. Since school! And I was glad I didn't end up using the annual leave I applied for Monday since we got that off too (thank you athletes, so proud and we love you).

I went to Singapore in April for work and I was reminded how much I loved it that I immediately planned on going again later in the year with my sisters. And now that I'm working, I thought it'd be nice to treat them out on a short holiday. This was a rather big achievement for me because I didn't have to borrow money from my parents. Which makes this hopefully, the first out of many holidays of me self-sponsoring.

We were there for 2 nights and we left on Saturday. Took an early flight with Scoot which is a new budget Singaporean airline. And I really liked the whole experience because i) We didn't have to walk to the airplane and ii) We arrived 10 minutes earlier from expected. Talk about being kiasu, amirite?

Got ourselves to our accommodation called Arcadia Hotel and it's situated in Lavender, just a stop after Bugis which wasn't too bad. And it's a boutique hotel so I thought it'd be cuter (also, relatively affordable). My mistake with ALL my holidays is that I always, always book for a damn early flight and then being in the dilemma of "Hmm now what do we do?" while waiting for our room to be ready. I know some people dump their things at their accommodation and go about their day. But after a flight, especially one early in the day, I like to wash up a bit before going on with the rest of the first day. So we went to go to a small café nearby and hung there for a good minute before going back to the hotel. The room we got was SO tiny, it reminded me of like a small student's accommodation. Felt bad for my sisters because we were squeezed in a pretty tight space so I asked for a bigger room but could only get it the 2nd night. Which was fine. What's a night of small tight lovin', right?



This was the only shot I had of this store because was too busy going around and loving everything. Iman bought an oversized denim jacket and I bought a pair of jeans and a striped top.


Dress from Zara (which I got half priced!) and maroon slides from where else, Nelissa Hilman.


CALIFORNIA PIZZA KITCHENNNNNNN MY LOVEEEE



Walked around Orchard Road because we wanted to take it easy. Even planned to go to Bugis right after but underestimated the amount of time we spent on Orchard that we just pretty much spent all our time there on the first day.

Made our way to one of my FAVOURITE stores ever, The Editor's Market. I loved everything and I loved the concept of it too. Like how you buy 1, you get it for a certain price but if you buy 3 items, you get everything cheaper and if you buy 6 things, you get it even cheaper. It's a pretty brilliant strategy because you go in the store thinking "OK, I need to get 3 things now because why not" or at the very least, people will bring in their friends and family to buy more so that everyone gets a cheaper price. And the clothes are already quite affordable in my opinion, especially compared to other mainstream retailers.

During breakfast, we were joking how we would have to go all the way to Seoul to eat good pizza (a good pizza for us is California Pizza Kitchen's pepperoni pizza) and I asked "Maybe ada in Singapore??" and I Googled and true enough, "California Pizza Kitchen, Singapore" appeared on the homepage and Iman was very close to crying happy tears. We really should bring it back to Malaysia, any willing investors? Promise you'll get your returns in like... a year.

I don't know about anyone else but one of my favourite part about a holiday is the hotel room I stay in. For me, what makes or breaks a holiday is the accommodation. I'd rather spend a good amount on a place to stay because at the end of the day when you're tired from all the walking and sightseeing, you just want to come home to a nice, comfortable place to shower, relax and sleep.

So we did just that. Hahahaha. It was so hot and we were sweating in all places and we woke up very early that morning so we decided to take an early night. We slept at 9:30pm!! We had to wake up early anyway because.... we were going for Yayoi Kasuma's exhibit! Yes, the one with a lot of circles and yes, the one with the magical lights.

This was the very last day of the exhibit and it has been running since June. I booked tickets a week earlier so it was a matter of collecting the tickets. We were slotted for 11am so we got there before 10:30am and there was already a 2 hour queue for people who wanted to buy tickets then and there. Craaaaaazy. Good thing I didn't leave it last minute.

The queue to get in the 4 different 'rooms' were also very long. It could just probably be because it was the last day and everyone was rushing to see it before it closes but man, the line!!! Was!! Absurd!! Though I have to say the line moved pretty quickly so it wasn't too bad. But still. Would've saved an hour from lining up everywhere.

We then moved to have 4 Fingers for lunch at Marina Square. Also, bloody hell, it was damn sunny. I know this shouldn't be news but damnnnnnn it was so sunny. Don't think sunscreen worked cause I'm still tanned! I scurried to any and every shaded walkway every chance I got but don't think that was too helpful. After having 18 pieces of chicken (!!! SO good!!! And I personally think it's so much flavourful in Singapore than the one here in KL), we made our way to Bugis to check out Haji Lane and everywhere nearby. By then we were SO tired, and just wanted to sit down somewhere and it was a Sunday so there were so many people everywhere! AND it was so hot. I think the reason why we didn't sit down at a cafe somewhere was because we much preferred going back to the hotel and lying down on our bed. So we did that... with a Grabcar. Couldn't be bothered to walk to an MRT station. 

All three of us didn't have internet on our phones and so we attempted to travel around with a map (that was, by the end of the trip, very well-loved, all torn and wrinkled). And we did pretty well, I think? Though I think CityMapper would've saved us a lot of time, surviving with a map made for great adventures and lots of "Wait, huh, what?". 

The walkway towards the National Gallery of Singapore was all polka dots! So cute.






















Just wanted to quickly note that I was ENDLESSLY impressed by how beautiful the National Gallery was. What a sophisticated and stunning place. Architecture, curation, interior, everything was so elegant. Reminded me of the National Museum in Amsterdam.

Yep, 18 pieces of chicken got nothin' on us.










One of the only photos we took together. And it's a selfie...



For dinner, we got a cab to Clarke Quay. Yeah, we couldn't do the whole walk/train/walk/train thing, got too tiring haha.

Loved Clarke Quay though food prices were crazy. Wanted to eat at the super famous seafood restaurant but there was an hour and 45 minute wait and we couldn't be too bothered. We managed to find a small Korean place and it was pretty good... and definitely a lot cheaper than the ones on the deck.

After we did some walking, we went back to the hotel to chill. I think we were at 11k steps the so we were pretty exhausted by the end of it hahaha.

Next day we took our time with leaving the hotel because we loved the room a little too much. So we walked our way to a nearby cafe and had breakfast. Got back and showered to get ready for our last day out! Flight was that evening so we had to pack up. Made our way to Gardens by The Bay where we went up on the OCBC Skywalk. The elevator up didn't feel too bad but it was actually quite high up. Tania didn't walk to the other side because she got the creeps. It's quite pretty, as you're surrounded by odd looking structures (like scrawny trees) and you have the Marina Bay Sands hotel behind you and you can see good ol' greenery all around you and see a good chunk of Singapore. It was quite windy too and Tania swore the bridge swerved but I didn't. It was narrow in the middle so can be quite daunting... just try not to look down too much.
















We then made our way to Chijmes, and it's like a big space for restaurants, cafe's and all that. It's a lot more lively in the evening than it is in the day but we went to take some photos and left to find ourselves a cab to make our way to have CPK again. Fulfilling Iman's pizza cravings from years back. And mine.

After that, we went back to our hotel to collect our luggage and left for the airport. But not after changing into a I Love Singapore t-shirt. The uncle at immigration read my tee and asked, 

"You love Singapore?"
"Yes, I do!"
"Well, at least that's one of us"

and another uncle joined

"You can only love it if you have money"

which I guess is very true. It's quite expensive to live in this place. Even if you do compare 1 to 1 on the transport costs, it's still quite expensive to travel around with the MRT. It's a pricey city but I really do like it because of how well the place is built. I still have loads to explore but I think I'm going to go travel other parts of Asia before coming back to our neighbour here.

OMG this post took freaking ages to complete and post! I'm so sorry that I'm behind my blog but work's been a bit busy these days and my days are so routinely boring that I have nothing much to talk about. I'm going to sit down properly and blog about what's been up with life and all that. I've started listing down the things I want to blog about but haven't come to actually writing it so one of these days, I'll definitely do that. We have a short week (we got Monday off because the team worked over the weekend at Riuh) and Friday's off due to Awal Muharram so yay!

Talk soon. Promise! 

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