It was time for my mom and me to make our way to Singapore. Knowing Singapore would be the most expensive location, we decided one night would be plenty if we landed at a decent time in the afternoon. Our hotel was not the Marina Bay Sands, but we stayed close enough to explore the Gardens By The Bay.
Funny backstory – on our flight from San Francisco to Seoul (via Singapore Airlines), one of the flight attendants was wearing a beautiful fragrance. My mom liked it so much that she asked her to write it down and where she got it in Singapore. Unfortunately that paper went missing, but my mom believes it was, “The Body Shop or something like that, I can’t remember” – Nancy.
We landed in Singapore and went straight to our hotel and then to dinner. We were given two recommendations to eat at Boon Tong Kee in the Balestier location, a chicken rice restaurant made world famous by a local man from Singapore. Our hotel was a 10 minute walk away and we were hungry. As I previously said, Singapore is expensive. Splitting one meal wasn’t even going bring down the price to what we were paying everywhere else during this trip. We ordered their most popular dish, Boiled Chicken and Chicken Rice. Our hopes were high and our stomachs were growling… bring on the protein!
We were less than impressed. Think of a cold Safeway chicken and steamed rice. Oh well, it was the dish of Singapore (as we were told), so we’re happy with the experience! 😉
Next was the Novena MRT Mall. My mom was going to finally get her hands on this one of a kind perfume only sold in Singapore. I kept saying to her, “Mama, if this is The Body Shop that we have back home, you’ll be in big trouble!” Well, as you can probably guess, it was that Body Shop. EXCELLENT! She couldn’t figure out which scent it was from the flight attendant and we decided to move on. lol.
The Gardens by the Bay are becoming more and more popular for tourists while visiting Singapore. The best part of this stop is that it’s free! We arrived around 7:30pm as the sky was getting dark and the lights on the Avatar-like trees were shining brighter. At 7:45pm the light and music show started and we found our seats laying on the ground with thousands of other people. Such a surreal experience seeing this futuristic theme park with a natural touch come to life and not just as the screensaver on my computer.
It was the perfect way to start and end our time in Singapore. Next stop… THE PHILIPPINES!
