Death By Satay - Singapore

Somewhere along the way in Thailand, we decided we no longer wanted to bus it south to Singapore, and we would fly there instead and then work our way up to Kuala Lumpur by bus. After several amazing days in Ko Lanta, we decided to make the journey by boat to Phuket so we could fly to Singapore.

We arrived in Singapore around 1 In the morning. Right away I could tell that the pace of the city was a little slower and it would be a lot easier to get around. A bus brought us to our hostel, that's right....in order to maintain somewhat of a budget here, we had to stick to hostels (in our case Beary Best, a teddy bear themed hostel. I know it's a little weird, but it was clean a somewhat affordable). The drive to the hostel was cool as my first look at Singapore was at night all lit up. Immediately you could see some pretty cool buildings and an amazing body of water and rivers running through the city. We reached the hostel and had the 4 bed room all to ourselves ( which we had the next day and night too. Score)

Day 1; our mission in Singapore was to go to the legendary Raffles hotel and have a Singapore sling at the long bar, the bar that invented this drink. This was the first thing we did and at 27 dollars a drink, it was well worth blowing our daily budget on two drinks. A quick note, a daily budget of 50-75 cad dollars may work in Thailland, but be prepared to multiply that by about 4-5 in Singapore. For those of you that know me, we can use the beer scale. A beer in Canada at a bar will cost 5-6 dollars, a beer in Thailand would cost about 2 dollars, and a beer in Singapore......$15....no drinking in this city.

To fill the afternoon we toured the city by foot, mainly around marina bay, the body of water I mentioned earlier. This brought us to the Merlion, an iconic mermaid lion mixed statue that spits water out of its lion mouth into the bay. Singapore is extremely hot, so we sat in the shade watching the Merlion for a bit. We then walked around the bay towards the Gardens By The Bay, our next intended destination. This lead us to one of he largest, most high end malls I have ever seen. We saw some jewelry in a display case with a price tag of over 30 000 000 and the exchange rate is comparable. That explains all the Bentleys, Rolls Royces, Ferraris, Aston Martins and so on I had been seeing.

The Gardens By The Bay is a massive 101 hectares garden which contains two all glass conservatory buildings (each around 2.5 acres). These structures are architectural masterpieces that won many architectural awards in 2012 (I think it was 2012). The buildings are divided as follows: one (called Flower Garden) containing vegetation from seven parts of the world and the other, called Cloud Forest which replicates the cool moist conditions found at both 1000 meters and 3000 meters above sea level. Our time touring these was very educational and I can appreciate the amount of engineering that went into dividing the buildings up to allow all these species of plants to grow together. When we left the conservatories, it was dark and it was cool to see the large 101 hectares of garden all lit up on our way back to the high end mall (the entrance to the gardens).

  That night we completed our second mission in Singapore, which was to break the Johnson Satay record at Lau Pa Sat, the most Satay stands I have ever seen on a street. Previous record was 48 and the new record is 60....Death by satay.

Day 2: On arrival, we noticed a brochure showing the Tiger brewery (Asia Pacific Brewery) and this became our plan for day 2. We took a subway and public bus to the brewery. At the brewer the tour was 45 minutes followed by 45 minutes of beer tasting. The tour was a lot of fun, they explained how the brewery started as Malayan Breweries in the 1930s and how it was a joint venture between Heineken and Fraser and Neave. We then walked through the brew building where I saw a 2-3 story grain mill (I think DeGroot and myself need this for our beer making). Finally we watched a quick video of the bottling facility and went to a room where they let each person pour their own beer from a keg and drink it (not me though cause I was able to get the trivia question correct, I was served... But I wished I was able to pour my own). This concluded part 1 of the tour....on to the beer tasting.

I've done a few brewery tours and beer tastings and general the tasting consists of a sample platter of all the beers the company brews. This beer tasting trumped the traditional beer tasting as we were taken to the corporate bar, and started out with a half pint of the local Tiger lager. Then they mentioned that rest of the tasting would be done in quarter pint glasses. I walked up, had a pint of a strong beer they brewed and asked how many more samples we had left as I wanted to space out the samples over the 45 minutes. The bartender looked at me, laughed and said "you have 45 minutes to have as many samples as you want of whatever beer you would like"....NOW THAT IS HOW YOU HOST A BEER TASTING. The Tiger brewery came through for us in very expensive Singapore. furthermore, because we chatted with the bartenders, they gave us about 15 more minutes until their manager came back.

Beer tasting bar (small portion of it)

Chelsea enjoying a Tiger Lager

That evening we decided to walk the city again to say our goodbyes. We went back to marina bay, the bay surrounded by the city and were fortunate to be there at the same time a pretty large light show and fire display was going on. It was a great way to say good bye. Singapore was one of the cleanest, friendliest cities I have ever been to and a great stop on our trip.

Malaysia here we come! (Check back as there will be more Singapore pics when we can post them)