Weekending in Singapore

A little update on how we've spent our (Eoin's) leisure time so far, or a quick essay on "What We've Done with Our Weekends". I've been here two weekends so far, and we've done a good range of stuff - bit of activity, bit of lounging and a bit (lot) of eating :)

The first weekend, we had our first visitor - Clara from Germany - with us on Friday night, so we headed to see Mr Peabody and Sherman after a quick swim. On Saturday morning we were determined to get up and going early to get in some walking before the day got too hot. We left our keys with Clara and headed to Harbourfront MRT station (where I remembered I forgot my hat, glasses and suncreen, leading to us running about the station and eventually buying a shade umbrella). From there, we walked up over Mt Faber along the Southern Ridges and about 2 sweaty hours later found ourselves in the NUS campus.

Sun umbrella!

Sun umbrella!

The epic climb up Mt Faber

View over Singapore from Mt Faber

Cable car to Sentosa

Eoin showing of his bar skills

View from Canopy Walk

The whole route

At the end of the walk

After a swim at home, and well deserved Saturday afternoon snooze on the couch, we headed out to our first Little India feast. By the time we got there, we were so hungry we couldn't be too choosey, and were lucky to stumble across Gandhi Restaurant (which we'd earlier read about in Lonely Planet) and followed our noses and the good queue of Indian dudes in. Was a little confusing, as they had no menus, and the nice but mumbly waiter guy pretty much outlined our options as "chicken and lamb" so we ordered one of each. BEST DECISION EVER - got all kinds of daal and rice with a coconutty gravy and chapattis and chutney and papadum and a some delicious, if yet-unidentified, curries.

I want to eat this again now that I'm writing. 

Continuing the food journey on Sunday morning, Eoin and I decided to find somewhere to try the beloved Singaporean breakfast of kaya toast and coffee. Kaya is a kind of coconut/egg jam, flavoured with pandan. You have it on cold, dry toast with big slabs of butter. It's OK, but very sweet, and probably not worth waiting to eat for hours, as we did.

We didn't get kaya toast from here, but I know where we're going next time! Anyway, thats kaya toast floating above my head. 

As we'd come to a mall to try the toasties, we did some homeware shopping (saucepans, towels and such exciting fare) and found out most exciting purchases so far... our new bikes! Got some steaks, has a swim and a movies and steak night to wrap up our first weekend.

Our special new bikes - rougher on the nether regions than their innocent appearances suggest.

Weekend number 2 started on a highlight - both got to talk to home (Wollongong night and Ireland morning), and were very excited to see Piranha 3DD! Until we realised the pointlessness of trying to watch a movie about flesh eating piranhas invading a stripper-populated water theme park in a country that censors it's movies... We got our first delivery food - ordered some Indian and found out of door buzzer doesn't work properly.

On Saturday morning, we hit up the waterslide park nearby to us. It's $2 to enter on a weekend, and has 3 waterslides, a lazy river, a wavepool and a nice olympic pool for swimming.

Slideapalooza

Wavepool (with water cannons)

After we got ourselves slightly sunburnt, we recovered with some food from Yuhua Hawker Markets, Thai Lemon Chicken Rice, then a good rest at home. Saw Captain America (decent), and made ourselves some burritos for dinner.

Sunday was a wait at home to chat to Lovey and Mum, then headed out and into the city. We wanted to check out the Sungei Road Thieves Market, a funny little trash and treasure market (which turned out to mostly be trash) that pops up not far from Little India on a Sunday. We caught a train to Bugis, walked about 8 minutes, and were already covered with sweat by the time we got there. But it was an interesting, packed, market, crammed with old shoes, old electronics, records, watches, jewellery and other junk that was fun to see but nothing we wanted to bring home.

Sungei Road Thieves Market

After boiling ourselves we were starving, so headed to Haji Lane and Arab Street for some food. Ended up eating seriously subpar Egyptian in Haji Lane itself, but at least it was in a pretty place! Walked past Sultan Mosque on the way, its a very good-looking mosque.

Sultan Mosque

Hipster Haji Lane

Haji Lane and me

Haji Lane and Eoin

On the way home, checked out a new shopping centre (Bugis Junction) and had the... oddest apple strudel I've ever eaten. Headed home to watch a censored Sharknado - had no blood, no killing and virtually no sharks. So actually, it was pretty much just a Nado. Censorship hasn't exactly won me over.