We woke up at 7.30AM to have the suck-iest hotel food I have ever had. It was so bad I ended up eating koko crunch and toast bread for breakfast. What a way to start our day. Today’s activity was touring around the city, taking pictures and buying cheap stuffs. The first place to visit was none other than the Merlion. Opposite the statue is the Esplanade, the biggest durian in the whole world.

Then, we were dropped at “Pearl Point 珍珠坊” and “Bull Cart Water 牛车水”. I don’t remember the proper English name for the 2 places, hence the direct translation. As it was still very early, not even 10AM, most of the shops were closed and we had nothing to do. There were not many cars on the road too.

I don’t know what the aunties and uncles were doing, but me and my sister were looking out for shops and restaurants that were opened to have another round of breakfast. We found a restaurant that was selling chicken rice and noodles, and we had that for breakfast. Not very tasty, I would say. Then, we took a seat to rest right in front of this shop called “Pau Dian”. The shop was featured in one of the local newspapers / magazines and is famous for its “Char Siew Pau 叉烧包”. Itchy mouth-ed, I bought one for SGD0.90. Cheap but not when you convert it to Ringgit Malaysia, freaking RM2.10 for a “Char Siew Pau”. My conclusion, the magazine / newspaper was telling a lie.

While walking back to the meeting point, we spotted “Tian Jin Lou 天津楼” and again, we went inside. Immediately they served us two small plates of appetizers, salted peanuts and pickled lotus. I ordered a tray of “Shang Hai Xiao Long Bao 上海小龙包” It tasted not too bad actually. Decent amount of soup inside the pau but the meat fillings were a little salty though. I paid the bill as we had 5 minutes left to reach the meeting point. The bill came to SGD11.

After that, it was lunch time and we went to a restaurant that serves “Mongolian Barbecued Beef 蒙古烤肉” and lunch buffet. Just when I thought I was about to eat something delicious and different, I was disappointed when I had my first bite. This isn’t barbecued beef but stir fried beef. The chef will prepare bowls of beef / chicken and its accompanying ingredients (Onions, vegetables, carrots, pineapples, bean sprouts, cabbage and etc.), 4 different types of sauces (Sesame oil, garlic oil and don’t-know-what-sauce.), stir fried it over a giant hot plate and serves it in a big bowl. The taste? Sucks. Period. The buffet? Sucks.

We then visited I-don’t-know-the-name-of-the-place where according to the tour guide, the “Guan Yin Temple 观音庙” is very “efficient”. The people were literally flooding the temple. I prayed for a girl friend, let see how efficient she is. -blek- Further down the road, there is a “Laughing Buddha 笑佛” statue which get molested by almost everyone, young and old, who walk past him. I pity the statue, very. The place is very similar to Kuala Lumpur’s Petaling Street where you get to buy pirated stuffs, bags, CDs, dry goods, shark fins, flowers, mushrooms and anything under the sky for a cheap price. Since my sister and I had no money to shop, we sat down by the road side listening to those handicapped singing oldies / pop songs and eating ice cream.

After getting bored of sitting down, we roamed around to look for something to eat. We walked into this building called “Fortune Centre” and inside, we found a stall that sells desserts. Aparently, a few Singapore’s famous actors and actresses patronzied this stall before as seen on the pictures sticked on the glass. Their most famous dessert is actually the “Grass Jelly 凉粉”, which they claimed their grandmother started selling it more than 50 years ago and the secret recipe was passed down to the younger generation.

Their grass jelly was really good, smooth and spring-y. We ordered another bowl of chilled double boiled papaya with white fungus. Another thumb upped for this one. Not satisfied, we ordered another bowl of steaming hot black sesame paste. Two thumbs upped for this one. In fact, the most satisfying meal throughout my Singapore trip was these 3 bowls of desserts.

Our last stop was the “Haw Par Villa 虎豹别墅”, where they display a lot of Chinese culture’s statues. They even have a tunnel that features all 18 levels of hell.

We left Singapore for Malaysia around 5.30PM and by the time we reached home, it was nearly 9.30PM.

Overall, the trip to Singapore, or to be precise, Sentosa Island was just average and the sucky food was a big blow for me. Not to mention, the tour was consisted of uncles and aunties, which I didn’t know anyone of them. I would definitely prefer to visit the Singapore National Zoo or the Night Safari. Another disappointment was I couldn’t meet up with my one and only outside Malaysia reader, Earthtone at Singapore.

Well, since it was my mum who sponsored the trip, I got nothing to complain about although I just did. Thanks, ma!

I don’t think I need to tell you who Pak Lah is, right?

I was having dinner with Ice Queen, So Gua, Ah Kwong and Min Yin at a Nyonya restaurant some time ago when Cai Lan 蔡澜 walked into the shop with his family / relatives.

Cai Lan 蔡澜 (His biography and blog in Chinese.) is a Singapore born movie producer, writer, columnist and food enthusiast. He had a few shows on eating, previously aired on Astro. He is one of the few peoples who gets paid to travel and eat.

The last time I stepped my foot on a land / soil outside Malaysia was 1991 (Standard 1 / 7 years old). Fast forward to 2006, while my 2 sisters had already been to Indonesia (Not once, but twice) and also Thailand; I was only able to go outside Malaysia again after 15 years. Yes, I was in Singapore for the weekend, with my sister - Jamie only.

After passing the immigration, I called Earthtone, who’s voice sounded very much like Twinsmom, except Earthtone’s voice is younger. Ha!

“Earthtone, I just came out from the immigration. Then I will be in Sentosa Island.”
“OK.”
“Are you free to come to Sentosa Island to meet me?”
“I will see how first. Bao Bao is still sleeping and hubby went out already.”
“OK. Give me a call at 012-6842434 later.”
“OK. Enjoy your trip.”

Upon reaching Sentosa Island, we went to have our lunch at the S.E.A Village Restaurant inside the island. However, the food was bad but still edible.

Our first stop was the Dolphin Lagoon. The show was about 30 minutes long and nothing much to shout about though, since the stunts performed by the three dolphins were not really impressive, in my opinion; except the last stunt. With the power of 12X optical zoom and 1/600 shutter speed, snapping pictures of the dolphins performing the stunts were an easy task.

The next station was the Underwater World. Since I haven’t been to Langkawi’s Underwater World (Or did I?), I enjoyed the walk. The Japanese Spider Crab gave me the chill though, it was freaking huge and to think that, Kai Hong and I just agreed to have Alaska King Crab for dinner when I am in KL next week. By the way, was it the glass’s effect or the fishes were just that huge?

After that, it was The Luge. The luge is a much simplified version of Go-Kart. You sit on a plastic “board” and go down the hill by controlling the handle bar. Release the bar to go and pull the bar towards you to stop, it’s that simple. It’s not very fast but very fun to play with. When you reach bottom of the track, you will be carried up to the hill by the skyride, overlooking part of the Sentosa Island.

We then took the lift to go to the top of the Merlion (A lion with a fish body.) to have a hazy view of the Sentosa Island. Each of us were given a lucky coin, which entitled you to a souvenir when you exit the tower.

Next on the list was Images of Singapore, where you go through a series of buildings, reading and learning the history of Singapore with the aid of models, sculptures, pictures, audios and videos. It’s quite interesting provided if you don’t know about the history of Singapore or the culture of Chinese, Malay and Indian (like the foreigners), else it would be quite boring. It took us almost 30 minutes just to walk out from the building. We were relieved when we saw the “See You Soon” poster. Ha!

Then we had steamboat buffet for dinner, which was so bad that I didn’t enjoy at all.

After our dinner, we rushed ourselves for the musical water fountain show. It was very beautiful but not when the stupid monkey came out. In fact, it was annoying. I was hoping to see a show of splashing water with colours changing in the background, but this monkey was just… just… Forget it, I only like the front and last part of the show.

We then checked into our hotel, Metropolitan YMCA and called it a day.

About a week ago, I received an email from a SYT named Emily Ting from D’ Jungle People. For your information, D’ Jungle People is a consultancy firm, which they conduct motivational camps for companies. In fact, I think they are quite famous in conducting such activities. Not to mention, they were the one who organized Spirit of Kuala Lumpur, Spirit of Melaka and Spirit of Penang.

Hi Jason,

Hello! How are you? This is Emily Ting from D’Jungle People. We are the race consultants for The Star for the Spirit of KL, Melaka and Penang. I visited your blog and I love reading your blog entries. I’m a blogger myself and I frequently visit other blogs when I’m at home. Reading other blogs gives me inspiration for writing materials and also to keep in touch with other bloggers out there.

I’m particularly interested in your Spirit of Penang blog entries. D’Jungle People will be starting a corporate blog soon. One of our earliest entries is a write-up on the Spirit of Penang. I was wondering whether we can use some of the photos you took during the Spirit of Penang for our corporate blog. We will acknowledge you of course as that is only fair.

You can contact me through this e-mail address or call me (phone number below). Thank you for your time and looking forward to hear from you soon.

Many thanks and regards,

Emily Ting.

Now I know why there were quite a number of incoming links from emails sent out by djunglepeople.com domain 2 months ago. I burnt all 133Mb of pictures into the CD and mailed it to their office. Fast forward to Friday evening, I received a parcel from GDex.

Inside the parcel was a T-shirt, which Emily gave it to me as a token of appreciation.

However, there’s a big problem with the T-shirt. The T-shirt is only L-size.

-sweat-

“WHY?!?!?! WHY?!?!?!?!” -screams-

Although I can’t wear it, I still have to say thank you to Emily for “noticing” my blog and for the T-shirt. Thanks, Emily!

再美丽的花都得枯萎.
留下的只是收花者那两秒的幸福笑容.