Christmas in Singapore

Again, I wrote this last month!

27/12/2008

Christmas in Singapore

I was in Singapore with a friend, my x-colleague and one of my Jakarta’s partners. The plan was to have a return trip for a day, but it become 1박2일 adventure after hearing people stories about how grand the sales is in Singapore. By means sales, it’s not gonna be like KL. Singapore is famous with ‘super’ brand items, so that what we were aiming for. But before that, we need a place to sleep. Finding one is 2 hours walk for us, by foot, in the central city of Singapore. Well, we didn’t have any plan where to stay, let alone a reservation. The plan was to just go there and eventually we’ll find one, the cheapest hotel, or a hostel; basically we need a cheapest place to stay. Unfortunately we choose the wrong place.

Orchard road in Singapore is famous with line-up of shopping complexes through out the road. When you walk down the road from beginning (we started at Orchard Plaza) to the end at Tanglin Road, all you can see is label of brand items like Chanel, Gucci, YSL, Louis Vutton and many more that I don’t even know. Just imagine you walking at the KLCC and see Gucci, Fendi, Guess and Versace, except that you now seeing all that brand from outside the shopping complex, while you were walking, in every shopping complexes that you pass, through out the road. So, it makes sense that the hotels there are also ‘brand stuff’. We were not prepared with all the ‘wealthy’ stuff there. We were not innocence to think that there will be a budget hotel near by, actually there are. But we’re too stupid to think that we can just go there without a map, and a single clue or even a name of a hotel we were ‘researching’ before we get there. Anyway, after 2 hours of walk, and a crash to a 4/5 stars hotel asking for maps, we were settle at Lloyd’s Inn, next to SHA Villa, along Lloyd road, for S$100 per night (SHA Villa cost around S$150). Translation: around RM240++. There’s goes our budget!

After an hour rest, we head out to the famous Orchard road for some ‘window shopping’ before we decide tomorrow if we actually can afford it. Because it’s Christmas, part of the road was close for a special event, and the road itself was bright, sparkling and colorful with all the lights, trees and Christmas decorations they put along the road. That night, the street were pack with people, I means it has hundred and thousand of people from local to foreigner (mainly Westerner and rich Indonesian), shopping and celebrating Christmas there.

If a budget hotel is hard to find, halal food is even harder. You’ll be thinking like, “come on Singaporean also have Malays mah…so like Malaysia la…everything can eat punya”. You’re super dead WRONG! I already told my friend to eat at Larkin first before entering Singapore, but she said she was full. Nah, we were like fasting that day. Fast food joints like KFC and McD were also not that completely ‘safe’ (I don’t know if you were Singaporean and its still okay on your part) as what Johorian here told me. But when you walk for hours and very very hungry, that’s was our last resort. Again, unfortunately, because of the Christmas celebration and holiday, there were a lot of people that night, and all the McDs (Didn’t saw KFC though, don’t know why) we go were pack with people. Finally we found 3 possibly ‘Halal’ restaurants, a Malay (it close at 9pm, and it 9 already during that ‘searching’ time), an Indian Muslim and Indonesian. We settle at the Indonesian restaurant, and as usual I ordered ‘gado-gado’. That was the expensive ‘gado-gado’ I ever ate!

Tomorrow morning, we checked out at 10am and start our shopping spree after last night ‘observation’. My friend end-up with GUESS wallet costing S$53 and I’m with 2 Dorothy Perkins jeans (which is very suitable with my ass and size) at S$69. Now, if you think that’s cheap please let me know coz we not that ‘familiar’ with these kindda stuff. Besides we treated S$ like RM! Don’t know why, maybe because it’s so near…

After the ‘shopping’ activity end, we were looking for the famous lion, but end-up going to Marina Barrage. I think (coz we just there for a while) the Marina Barrage is an educational + operational place of water processing. The place though (and the view) was amazingly beautiful, so it’s not a waste to go there.

We finally found the lion after checking the map and asking a few people. As tourist usually do, takes some pictures and we plan to go home afterwards. However, we end up taking a short break to Bugis Junction and continue shopping some perfumes there. At first, the perfumes sound cheaper, but once I convert it at home, it almost the same with Malaysian price.

Here’s a tip about going in and out from Singapore. Never do it before and after office hour! We should go out at 8pm, coz boy, every line that you need to queue were looooong (bus, traffic and immigration). We queue up for the bus with the Malaysian worker there at 5pm and arrived at the Singapore immigration around 6pm, queue up again for the bus to Malaysian immigration around 7.15, and arrived at the immigration at 7.45pm, queue up again for bus to Larkin at 8pm, arrived at Larkin around 8.30pm. Usually the whole operation with will take less than an hour.

So next time if you going to Singapore, eat first, if can just sleep in JB and don’t enter (or out) during rush hour!

PICTURES HERE