Singapore (Day 1)

We only have 3 days in Singapore and many things to see and do, so we tried to get an earlier start today.  Today we plan on touring the Colonial District and wind up in Chinatown to visit a brewery and have dinner.  We left the apartment before 10 AM and ordered a Grab (Uber).  We arrived just 10 minutes later at the start of the self-guided Colonial District Walking Tour. Grabs are not as inexpensive here as they are were in Malaysia.  I think we will have to figure out the transit system and use that instead.

The first stop on the tour was the Civilian War Memorial erected to commemorate the roughly 50,000 civilians killed during the Japanese Occupation of Singapore in the Second World War. It sits atop a burial chamber that contains exhumed bodies from mass graves dotted around Singapore. 

This is the famous Raffels Hotel.  It has been a luxury hotel since 1887 and is named after Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, the founder of modern Singapore, but more about him later.

If you zoom into the photo you will see the infamous Sikh Doormen in his white turban.

We didn't go inside the hotel, but we did walk around the grounds.  The garden was beautiful as was the architecture around it.

OK...you are not impressed...well how about this fact...the hotel bar, called Long Bar is where the cocktail the Singapore Sling was invented sometime before 1915.  We might have gone up to the bar and had a Singapore Sling, but we were there before the bar was opened.

This is an historic Catholic Convent built in 1852.  It is now used for weddings and special events.  This is actually the church that was in the movie Crazy Rich Asians.  

Behind the church, besides this wonderful view of it from behind, was restaurants, bars, and shops and made a great pitstop.

This area of Singapore has a mixture of new buildings and Colonial buildings making it a really nice place to walk around.

This awesome building is the National Museum of Singapore and dates back to 1849.  All of these museums...I wish we had more time here in Singapore to visit them.

This is where I sat and pondered.  We can continue the Colonial District tour or veer off and do a self-guided walking tour of Fort Canning Park that is behind the museum.  Adding the park will add 3 kilometers to the day that is currently planned to be a 6 kilometers walk.

We decided that this is our one time in Singapore and we have to see as much as we can, so we headed into Fort Canning Park.  A plus is that there was an outside escalator that took us up the hill that this park is located on.  When we got off the escalator, we were greeted by a really nice garden.

The issue now is that the self-guided tour that I am trying to follow actually ends at the point we are.  The start of the tour is a 10 minute walk from here.  After more contemplation, we walked to the start of the tour because it is really difficult to follow self-guided tours backwards when they give you directions to walk.

OK...we made it to the start of the tour and it begins here...at the Fort Canning Tree Tunnel.  We approached it from the top when most people arrive at the bottom after walking though a tunnel under the main road.  We played around a bit and took a few photos.  I walked down the stairs and saw a large group of tourists waiting their turn to go up the stairs and take photos.  I guess our way of approaching from the top was the better way to go.

After checking out the Tree Tunnel, we headed back up the hill...this time we had to walk up stairs instead of that nice escalator from earlier.  However, after the climb we were rewarded with a nice view.

This park has many different areas and gardens. This part is called Pancur Larangan (Forbidden Spring) and is designed to resemble the style of 14th century Java.

Under that roof above was a 3-tier escalator that whisked us up to the highest point in the park.  Up there, being the top of a hill, there is a fort that was built by the British in 1860 and used up through WWII.  But before we get into those photos, here is a collage of photos I took of trees throughout the park.  Many of thees trees are aerial roots where branches of the trees grow roots that head down into the soil...pretty cool looking.

OK...back to the fort thing.  Here is a cool looking flight of stairs leading down to a door.  This is called a sally port, a secured entrance gate or tunnel into a fortified place.

There isn't very much left from the fort, but there is a gate left, pieces of the wall here and there, and a few cannons on display.

Here is another cool part of the park called Sang Nila Utama Garden, another Java-like garden.

While walking around we came across an older man looking into the woods.  He motioned us over and pointed out this boa constrictor.  He said not to worry, that it was a small one.  We also didn't have to worry because it had just caught a pigeon and was busy constricting and then shoving it in its mouth.

We reached the end of the park which was conveniently were we left off from the Colonial District tour, so we continued on with that.  The tour point out many very cool buildings including these:

Vanguard Building on Armenian Street (1908)

Old Hill Street Police Station (1934)

Two-thirds of the way through the tour we arrived at the Singapore Riverfront.  What a collection of building here!

Along with some pretty amazing bronze statues.  This was our favorite.

There in the background is the iconic Marina Bay Sands with its three towers with a 3 acre SkyPark on the top.

It was hot, so we ducked into the National Gallery SIngapore.  It just so happened that it was a free admissions day, so we were invited in.  I saw a sign that said "experimentation as method," that sounded interesting,  so we hopped on the elevator to Level 4...and it was interesting.

The artist, Liu Kuo-sung, has a whole series that was influenced from the first photo of Earth from space.

We then headed to the roof of the Gallery where we had an amazing view. Down there, where there are bleachers that say NDP23 is where they are setting up a huge sitting area for the National Day Parade coming up on 9 August.  

After 7 hours of touring, we were finally done.  It is now time to hit our first Singapore brewery that happens to be in Chinatown.  We took the bus there and walked to find a brewery called "On Tap."  On the way, we passed some very cool murals.

Our dot on Goggle Maps said that we were standing right in front of the brewery, but all we saw was a market.  We couldn't believe that a brewery would be inside a market filled with Hawkers selling food, but we entered the place and checked out the map and found the location of the brewery.  We headed upstairs and there it was.  We ordered 2 pints that cost a lot...beer here is so expensive.  These 2 pints cost us $31 Singapore Dollars => $23 USD!

After the beers we could have eaten at this hawker center, but I read about a different one just down the street called Maxwell Food Center, so we headed there.  Tim found his typical Chicken Rice.  I was looking for Fried Hokkien Prawn Mee that I read about, and the first stall I came to had it.  It was delicious with the noodles sitting in a somewhat think seafood broth with egg.  I kind of reminded me of lobster sauce you get in a Chinese restaurant in New York.  From someone's recommendation, I also got an oyster cake that was also delicious.  

As we were looking for our food, we came across another brewery in this hawker market....unbelievable.  After eating we headed there and enjoyed a couple of more pints at the same crazy price of $23 USD for 2 pints. 

The guy asked if we were still hungry and we said that we could always eat more.  He recommend we get the Carrot Cake.  I have read about Carrot Cake in Singapore and it was something I definitely wanted to try.  I knew that you can get it sweet or savory (he suggested sweet).  He actually went with me to show me which vender to get it from and he helped me order so I got it just right.  He ordered it slightly spicy with extra green onions on it.

And here it is...Sweet Carrot Cake.  Obviously it has nothing to do with carrots or cake.  It is a pasta made with rice flour and white radishes.  I guess people call white radishes here white carrots?  The pasta is steamed and then fried with eggs and sweet soy sauce (thus the sweet part of the name) and is topped with green onions.  It wasn't carrot cake, but it was delicious and the spiciness went very well with beer.

It was after 8 PM and it was definitely time to go home.  We took the bus back to the apartment...I have the whole bus thing down now.  All we have to do is tap with my watch and Tim taps with my phone and then we tap out when we leave the bus and it charges us based on how far we traveled.  Very easy.

We arrived at the apartment around 8:30 PM, watched some YouTube, blogged some, and then called it a night. Tomorrow we have a similar day planned with a couple of other self-guided walking tours and of course a brewery or two.  Until then...