Flying Home

Monday was the longest “day” I’ve ever seen. I got up around 6am (Singapore time, 3pm Sunday in Calgary). I got the final things packed, said my goodbyes to Andrew and hopped a cab to the Changi Airport. The airport, rated best in the world, is large, open, and looks great.

They are even up on pop-culture; all of their Christmas displays were based on Angry Birds.

The airport offers free movies and free city tours for those with layovers. Also all of the check in staff are airport employees (not individual airline employees) so you get good quality service no matter which airline you are flying. Again I was back on the A380 on the upper deck, in the same seat as the way out.

You know that a lot of people fly through Singapore, when there were four Singapore Airlines’ A380s (including mine), and a Quantas one there. There are only 78 currently in service. The nice thing about having a window seat on the upper deck is that you get an  extra cubby hold up against the window.

The food on Singapore air is incredible. Not only do you get a choice of a Japanese meal or International fare, but the quality is excellent. This was the Japanese lunch.

And they even served ice cream for dessert. We got to Tokyo just before sunset at 5pm Tokyo time (4pm in Singapore, 1am Monday in Calgary).

I had an 90 minute layover there as they refueled and changed crews. I bolted through security and motored through the terminal to see what shops were there (I was way more awake than when stopping through on the way out).

I swung past McDonald’s, but had no idea what I would be buying and there was a very long lineup.

There was a great little shop that had some awesome origami displays there.

I bought a couple small things there. My change was in Yen, so I found a vending machine that was selling ice cream and tried to get the most obscure thing I could see. I bought something that was blue with black spots on it, later finding out it was mint chocolate-chip.

 

There it was back on the flight leaving just before 7pm and headed off to LA. The flight lasts about 10 hours, and we got in a bit early at 11am (still on Monday, thanks to the International Date Line).

It was raining pretty good in LA when we landed. It was a tight turn around to clear customs, get baggage, walk two terminals over, and get checked in at the Air Canada counter, but I made it work.

   

The little Embraer E90 felt so tiny compared to the A380 I was on. I finally landed in Calgary at just after 6pm, finishing up 24 hours of flights and layovers and a very long day.

Rain in Bintan

Where we were in Bintan is about 125km above the equator, so officially the furthest south I have ever been, also the furthest I have ever been away from home at 12,750km from Calgary (as the crow flies). We woke up Monday to a thunderstorm. We were originally trying to find a tour to go on to see a rubber plantation and pineapple plantation, but it wasn’t being offered, so we were going to go on a mangrove tour. However the rain scrubbed that too. It made it much easier to roll over and sleep in, knowing I wasn’t missing any sun or beach time.

Breakfast was included, so we headed down to the buffet. The pineapple (not pictured) was the best I’ve ever had; I guess it helps when they can pick it, and you’re eating it the next day.

Again we got up to more fooseball, but it was tough with the insane amounts of humidity.

Our tour was supposed to start around noon, but by 1:00 the rain had stopped. So we went back down and sat on the beach for a while.

We grabbed lunch before getting the coach back to the ferry terminal. I had won ton soup, and while the vegetables and won tons were not necessarily the best, the broth was fabulous.

     

The ferry ride was even less eventful on the way back to Singapore, it was dark and there was some chop (creating much more spray) so you really couldn’t see anything at all. After getting a cab back to Andrew’s and dropping our bags, we headed to Newton to the more famous Newton Food Centre (hawker stand). It is in an area that has a lot of expats and is fairly well known, so the vendors are a little more pushy there.

We split a beef noodles dry, and carrot cake.

 

As you can see, carrot cake isn’t quite what we think of it back home. It gets its name because it is made of a carrot-like vegetable. It was so tasty, I was asking Andrew to FedEx me some once I’m back home.

On the way back home I finally got to take a picture I had been wanting to for a while. It was on the hospital premises that I had to walk through to get to the MRT station, and there were signs all over the hospital saying that photography was not allowed. Singaporians are quite British influenced; they queue up when they’re forming lines. The funny thing I though, was the shortening of it to put on signs.

We got back to Andrew’s and spent the rest of the night chatting while I packed up. 

Going to Bintan

On Saturday, Andrew and I were up and grabbed a cab to the ferry terminal. I had a great breakfast of kaya toast and soft boiled eggs before we boarded our ferry to Bintan, Indonesia.

 

Bintan is a resort island with the primary purpose of Singaporian tourism. It is about 50km away, across the Singapore Straight.

Being one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, I was hoping to get some good/close pictures of some ships. However, the ferry was fully enclosed, and there was enough splash/spray of water on the windows to make that rather tough. We stayed at the Angsana Resort & Spa Bintan which was just a short coach ride from the ferry terminal. It was quite a gorgeous resort with a pool that looks great in pictures (probably better than what the pool actually was) and a private beach.

Our room was quite nice, up on the 4th (top) floor.

 

The resort didn’t seem all that busy and with the size of the beach, there was plenty of space. We got there in the early afternoon, and spent all the time while the sun was out along the beach (sometimes with beer).

The only issue with being on the resort, was there was no other place to go. There isn’t even a town or anything nearby, just a couple of tourist trap shops at the ferry terminal selling fake Polo goods. That being said, we had lunch in their main restaurant, and I had some Mie Goreng.

After spending the rest of the afternoon at the beach/pool, they were having and Indonesian buffet in the main restaurant for dinner. They had many kinds of skewers, and they all went well with peanut sauce.

     

After dinner, with it dark out, the pool looked quite impressive.

They had a games room with a couple of foosball tables in it, so we managed to keep ourselves occupied before heading off to bed.

Arab Street

On Friday I got up when Andrew was getting home from work. He brought a chili crab puff for breakfast. Some of the bakeries and takeaway food options here are just really good.

Andrew has the NFL Sunday Ticket package here, so I watched the Thursday nighter while catching up on my blog and sending some emails. I left his place around 2:00 and headed to a small place at the end of the street to try some Bah Kut Teh; a pork rib soup.

The soup was a little bit spicy and tasted quite good. From there I grabbed a cab over to Arab Street. Arab Street is right at the Sultan Mosque and is a hotbed for shisha bars, fabric stores, carpet stores, and fishing tackle shops.

As soon as I got out of the cab, it just started pouring rain. I hid out under the awnings and walked from shop to shop checking out what was there. The fabric stores were quite amazing to see.

Talking with some of the shop owners, there were carpets and fabrics from Iran, Turkey, India, Egypt, China, and Pakistan. After some shopping, I walked down to the MRT and took it during rush hour back up to Andrew’s. In the mall by the MRT station nearest to Andrew’s place, they have set up a little ice rink for the holidays. It doesn’t matter where you are, little kids all try to learn to skate the same way, by walking on their skates. That being said, all the kids on the rink were trying to skate that way.

After getting home and taking a nap, we both got up and wandered over to the restaurant at the Quality Inn Hotel, for dinner. They have the best Laksa in the neighbourhood and I was out to give it a try.

Laska is a perankan dish that is a coconut curry soup that has noodles and seafood in it. It was alright, not quite my favourite. The biggest issue was the size of the dish, I only got through about half.

After that we headed back to Andrew’s and had a quiet night in watching some TV and chatting with people back home.

National Museum, Battle Box, and Chinatown

Thursday I again started about noon. I took the train down to City Hall to go and check out the Raffles Hotel.

It had a very colonial feel to it and seemed quite posh. After checking that out, I grabbed some lunch. I stopped into a McDonald’s, to try something that isn’t on the menu back home. While they were advertizing Double Chicken McGrill, Double Chicken McSpicy, and Double Filet-o-Fish, I opted for the 4 McWings combo. Unlike Chicken McNuggets, I know which part of the chicken these are from.

They are coated in the spicy chicken batter and were pretty good. One of the other obscure things here in Singapore is some of their sales, they are actually really good deals. From 1pm-3pm was McHappy Hour and the McWings combo was S$5, where the wings by themselves are S$5.75. At another time, buying a bottle of water was S$2.50, or you could get two for S$2.25.

From there I went to St. Andrew’s Cathedral, an Anglican church. It was pretty big, and had a huge plot of land, quite the contrast for the rest of downtown.

There was also a pretty good vantage point of the top half of the Marina Bay Sands.

 

Just two blocks away was the Armenian Church of Saint Gregory the Illuminator, the oldest church in Singapore. It was very small and very simple, but there was something that drew me to it. They had a little cemetery near the back, which offered a good view of the church.

As I was walking it was starting to rain, so I raced to the National History Museum and made it there just in time before the skies opened up.

They had completed an extensive renovation a couple of years ago, and did a very good job of it. The Singapore History Gallery is one of the best museum spaces I’ve ever seen. It goes through the history of the country and you can take a few different paths with different stories and audio narrations. One of the things I really liked was the old bell from the St. Andrew’s Cathedral.

In their feature gallery in the basement, they had an exhibit called Dreams Reality from the Musée D’Orsay Paris. They had a bunch of French paintings, including some Monets, and Van Gogh’s Starry Night. And they allowed photography.

Next I crossed the street and headed to Fort Canning Park to the Battle Box, the bunker and Singapore HQ for the British during WWII. Using wax figures they recreated the final conference between Lt. Gen. Arthur Percival and his senior commanders where they reluctantly decided to surrender. As Winston Churchill put it, this was the “largest capitulation” in British history.

From the Battle Box, I hopped on the MRT and headed down to Chinatown.

I stopped into a little deli-looking store and had some kind of sliced pork square thing. It was like jerky but softer and way more flavourful.

Also in Chinatown is the Budda’s Tooth Temple, which even though it was getting dark, still looked fantastic.

After doing  a bunch of shopping I walked down Maxwell Rd and took the MRT back to Orchard. At 313 Orchard (a mall) I did some more shopping and had some Indian food in the food court. I had Roti John, which is some sort of fried meat put on a sub bun with some sauce on top.

 

From there I walked down to Orchard Towers just to see what it was about, before taking the MRT and heading back home.