Man. I'm dropping the ball here... Sorry, guys. There are only a few more trip posts to write up, and there's definitely a part of me that just doesn't want to DO them, because then it'll be like real actual life has started back up!
We've had a good September. Been to Colorado to get my cousin married off, and then to Boston to be in my college friend Megan's wedding. Good times, good food, good friends... and family!
But for now, back to Singapore!
Singapore is pretty much what you'd have thought. It's very clean and modern.
Public transit seemed good and was quite efficient.
It's also the home of Ling, a blog-friend who finally became an IRL friend after years of bloggy corresponding!
We spent a day hanging out with Ling, who showed us around some of Singapore's tony neighborhoods and glittering seafront.
She was very surprised to hear that we hadn't heard of the Merlion, the symbol of Singapore. Our cultural education is clearly lacking, because the Merlion is amazing and EVERYONE should know about it. It's a mermaid lion! It seems like a merlion would have a lot of trouble swimming and, well, existing, but mobility problems aside I would still be pretty scared to encounter one on a beach.
Ling also took us to the world-famous Long Bar at the Raffles Hotel, which is an interesting mix of fancy and down-market - mostly fancy.
The fans are languid and tropical, the vibe is colonial, and the thing to drink is a Singapore Sling. Well, except we really don't like Singapore Slings, so we explored other parts of the drinks menu. Which is how Logan ended up with a giant drink served in a bowl of smoking red dry ice.
There are also peanuts if you're hungry, and just like a Texas Roadhouse, the shells go on the floor.
Definitely go to the Long Bar, is all I'm saying.
Under our own power, we went to the Singapore Art Museum (I know, huge surprise, Logan and Rachel in an art museum), housed in an old Catholic boys' school. Great building!
Much of the museum had been devoted to an exhibition of works by Lee Wen. I, er, didn't really get his aesthetic. He likes to paint himself yellow.
(Logan reminds me that the most amazing and wonderful thing about this room was that there was a remote-controlled rubber durian in it. We played with it for several minutes. Say hello - it's sitting in the middle of the floor.)
He also made this ping-pong table, which was easier for me to "get".
While we were there, the Singapore Art Museum also had an exhibition called Panorama - "recent art from contemporary Asia". Many of the pieces blended old and new, like these traditional Chinese ladies holding modern consumer objects - "East and West" by Justin Lee.
Or these fancied-up tuktuks by Nasrun.
Yay arting and city-seeing and Ling-meeting!
I know we haven't talked much about food, and I will rectify that in the next post - chili crab!
OMG how jet-lagged do I look!!! That was such a fun day. We gotta do it again somewhere, somehow!! :)
Posted by: Ling | Sunday, 30 September 2012 at 03:03
OMG - awesome - a merlion!! :o) I might be off for a visit to Singapore in Sept next year so looking forward to using your posts as a reference guide (no pressure!)
Posted by: Jeanne @ CookSister! | Monday, 05 November 2012 at 05:47
So glad to see some posts on Singapore! And don't worry, I didn't know what a merlion was for a long time either. After about 5 months here, someone finally let me know I was pronouncing it wrong. The life of an ang mo!
Posted by: Laura Dobberstein | Sunday, 06 January 2013 at 21:06