The
House
of Ding.

Singapore

• Posted December 31st, 2011
• by Chris
• No comments

Wow does time fly! It’s been almost three years since the wed­ding, which means that Nes and I are long over­due for a visit back to Indone­sia. Our itin­er­ary allows us a few days in Sin­ga­pore on the way out and four days in Hong Kong on the way back home.

Air­plane pain

Get­ting to South­east Asia from Min­neapo­lis is a chore. We spent 32 hours this time (the ORD-HKG leg was 15.5 hours!) get­ting from home to Sin­ga­pore. We arrived at around 2 am with­out hotel reser­va­tions (clearly I’m rub­bing off on Nes) so we popped into the Crowne Plaza attached to the air­port to scrub off the day-and-a-half of travel grime and to get some real sleep in an actual bed.

Day one

We slept in the next morn­ing and had some decent Sin­ga­porean break­fast before leav­ing the air­port. We grabbed two-day sub­way passes and headed out to check into Hotel 1929 near Chi­na­town. We spent the rest of the day wan­der­ing the Chi­na­town mar­kets and the Clarke Quay neigh­bor­hood dodg­ing short spells of rain in cafes and shop­ping malls.

We planned on a Hainanese din­ner at the pop­u­lar Wee Nam Kie near Orchard Street, but when we took a table on the patio, a gang of mouse-sized cock­roaches joined us and left me escort­ing a teary-eyed Nes to find din­ner else­where. We returned to Chi­na­town and had some good char kwe teow and mee goreng with the per­fect amount of that burn fla­vor you can only get from a blaz­ing hot street wok. Yum!

Day two

The next day we got an early start and joined hun­dreds of other tourists on our oblig­a­tory walk around the Marina Bay area and the huge and out­ra­geous Marina Bay Sands (an enor­mous hotel/casino/shopping mall complex).

We returned to Orchard Street to lunch at Din Tai Fong, a famous Tai­wanese restau­rant where the noo­dles and dumpling wraps are made fresh moments before they’re cooked. So deli­cious! Later we met Dar­win, Nes’ col­lege room­mate, and we explored the Bugis night mar­ket and the Dhoby Ghout area. We ended the night at a bub­ble tea stand where I acci­den­tally tossed my 50mm lens onto the con­crete. It now sounds like a baby rat­tle if you shake it—probably not a good sign!

…more pic­tures to come once I get access to a computer…