The Merlion City

After a quick flight we landed in busy and clean Singapore on a Friday night. Per the usual upon arrival had an immediate Struggle Cityyy moment trying to find our hostel... Our cab driver did not know where we were going, drove around in circles for 15 minutes mumbling to himself until we busted out the map we snagged from the airport to give our cab driver directions. We stayed at BuncHostel in Little India and we all agreed it was one of the nicest hostels we have ever been in. Sadly, Alexis was still sick and spread the love by giving her illness to both Kerri and Laura. Kerri went to bed and Laura and Alexis walked around Little India to check it out. Lots of sights and smells and exciting to be in a new place!

The Merlion City!

Singapore!

Singapore Skyline

Saturday morning we got up and went and checked out some of the shopping in Singapore! We navigated the MRT - the ingenious and easy to use public transport system - and we were all pretty excited about shopping at Forever 21 and Cotton On. The weather was very rainy and we were all not feeling great so went back to our hostel to chill during the afternoon. 

Kerri's boyfriend, Malco, and his friend, Lucas, arrived in Singapore that evening. We met up, had a few drinks and went to Chinatown to scope out the Chinese New Year celebrations. We must have still been on Bali time as we showed up late and missed most of the event. It was still cool because the major road was shut down, there were tons of beautiful hanging lanterns, confetti everywhere and a large paper dragon lining the middle of the street. We enjoyed some local fare and a Tiger beer and called it a night. 

<photos at Chinatown>

Sunday we woke up to more nasty weather. Laura and Alexis went and had a really nice lunch with two Americans, Zayed and Imane (who split their time between Kuala Lumpur and NYC) that we met while in Gili T. Zayed and Imane gave us some awesome information about what to do while in Malaysia, specifically that since it is the rainy season most islands we were intending to visit do not even have transportation available during this part of the year. Lunch was lovely and it was refreshing to chat with well traveled Americans who gave us encouraging advice and useful information for our trip.

After lunch Laura and Alexis met up with Kerri, Malco and Lucas. We scoped out the Gardens By The Bay, which had some impressive views of the city, cool foliage and Super Trees - beautiful robot trees that clean the air as well as look realllly cool. We spent a lot of time indoors in the malls as well because of the inclement weather. That evening we changed hostels, took it easy and hoped the weather would be better tomorrow!

Malco, Laura, Alexis and Lucas

Gardens by the Bay

Malco and Kerri

Super Trees at Gardens by the Bay

Thankfully we did have a beautiful day Monday and checked out the amazing Singapore Zoo! Some highlights: elephant show, momma and baby Pygmy hippos, white tigers and Pandas! We really enjoyed the "open zoo concept" with no cages - so tons of free ranging monkeys and birds! We all enjoyed an afternoon ice cream, feeling like little kids!

That evening, Kerri and Malco's date night proved that anyone around us manages to increase the population of Struggle City. A nice evening at Taps Beer Restaurant, which seemed like an easy task to get to the place turned out to be a 3 hour journey to a place. After an hour of trying to hail down a cab in the rain, public transport appeared to be the only other option. After getting to Sentral Station and hunting for the KL Monorail entrance for half an hour, we tried another stab at a taxi. Finally, after 2.5 hours we were on our way to dinner. Struggle Cityyy date to the max ended with a plethora of crafted beers and some yummy gourmet pizzas.

We had yet ANOTHER Struggle Cityyy moment getting to our 6pm bus to Malaysia - as we left the zoo at 4:00 but had to wait to catch the bus to the public transit until 4:30... Once on the bus it took us about 30 minutes to get to the train station- boarding the MRT for 6 stops, changing trains (which required running across entire station - up and down two sets of elevators) then 2 more stops - a 10 minute walk to our hostel to get our stuff then a 15 minute walk with all our bags to the bus station.  Rushing around, running through the MRT station up and down escalators, we joked we felt like we were on the Amazing Race. We made it right at 5:55! But then waited until 6:30 for our bus to arrive... Typical.

Singapore is a cool city that is an interesting cultural mixing bowl and has some really impressive city planning with the large malls and mind blowing transit system. We all agree it would have been more fun if we were not sick/the weather had been better - but we had fun regardless and felt like we got a good feel for the techy and westernized city. 

Xoxo, 

The Sicklings