When It Sings, It S'pores (Part 1)

Pagoda Street, Chinatown, where Lola bought a cheesecloth umbrella.

Aug. 19, 2011: This is being typed on the netbook provided by the good folks of Beary Nice Hostel, located on Smith Street in Chinatown... in Singapore.

Probably should have mentioned that first.  Am here w/ Lola to attend the Singapore Toy Games and Comics Convention, and for me to meet up w/ some friends along the way.  Failed tonight on the latter, but more on that later.



The hostel is located on the 3rd floor and secured by cards you tap on the lock pads.  It also only caters to foreign guests (right now there's a lot of Malaysians) and offers free breakfast while providing complimentary breakfast, coffee, tea and Milo hot chocolate.

The commute from the airport to the hostel wasn't difficult, but it was long.  Cebu Pacific planes don't even get to land on Changi Airport, but at the cheaper budget airport.  Not really sure why they bothered, as most of us took the free shuttle service to Terminal 2 in order to ride the local MRT, anyway.  Boy this place is ridiculously clean.

At this point I should say I'm really glad I decided to use up the last of the color ink in the office Canon printer to print out a colored copy of Singapore's MRT-LRT route map.  It was the only guide that kept me and Lola  from getting lost in the maze of Green, Purple, Orange and Red lines.  That and the number guides telling me to either ride the train on the left or the right.  Once we stepped out into Pagoda Street we almost experienced something I'd like to call Ongpin Information Overload.  (After dinner Lola bought --w/o haggling, mind you-- a Jane Austenish doily umbrella made of cheesecloth, w/c would probably make up in aesthetics what it lacks in function.)

Failing to present the crab-meat fried rice properly.

Anyhoo, thanks to the long commutes we were too late to meet w/ Rad at Wee Nam Kee, so once we got off the stop at Novena (w/c lead directly to a mall) we had to look for the restaurant ourselves.  (Turns out it was a couple of blocks away on the other side of the street.)  I used what little Mandarin I knew to try and order their famous Haianese Chicken, but the waitress said it cost S$800(!), so we passed and got fried prawn, crab meat fried rice and kangkong (w/c was not Tagalog as I've always thought, but Chinese for spinach) stir-fried w/ garlic sauce.  Mebbe it was because I was tired, had a slight headache and hadn't had a bite to eat since lunch, but everything they served was dee-LISH, even the odd red date juice that was packaged like bubble-tea.  While walking off our heavy meal we couldn't decide on a proper dessert, so like a typical lazy tourist I topped off my evening w/ a cola-flavored Slurpee from the 7-Eleven.