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Sunday, February 2, 2014

New Year's Singapore trip! 2013-14

I visited Singapore in order to see my mum's hometown and visit my godmother who lives there.

Before leaving Japan, I snapped a shot of a new year's decoration. According to Wiki,
"A kadomatsu (門松?, literally "gate pine") is a traditional Japanese decoration of the New Year placed in pairs in front of homes to welcome ancestral spirits or kami of the harvest. They are placed after Christmas until January 7 (or January 15 during the Edo period) and are considered temporary housing (shintai) for kami. Designs for kadomatsu vary depending on region but are typically made of pine, bamboo, and sometimes ume tree sprigs which represent longevity, prosperity and steadfastness, respectively." Also, here's what each piece means: "The central portion of the kadomatsu is formed from three large bamboo shoots, though plastic kadomatsu are available. Similar to several traditions of ikebana (Japanese flower arrangement), the shoots are set at different heights and represent heaven, humanity, and earth with heaven being the highest and earth being the lowest."

here was my flight meal. The bread was green, which I later found out was pandan bread, which is popular in Singapore.



and of course some Chinese beer.

My godmother is great at making balloon bouquets! She made this one for me!

My first amazingly delicious meal! Satay with rice wrapped in the bamboo.

This was the dipping sauce for the satay, it was so good, probably the best thing I've ever eaten! It was peanutty, sweet, and flavorful.

This was one of the hawker's markets. The food was so cheap! One plateful costs only about 2-3 bucks, and it was the most delicious food ever!

You can see the rice inside here, it's hard!

This was  Chwee kueh (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chwee_kueh). The sauce was sweet, but the white rice cake didn't have much flavor, which was good since the sauce had so much flavor to it!

I had soursopp juice, which was so amazing. Definitely my new favorite! It was sweet and a little sour.

They had Chinese New Year decorations up, it's the year of the horse.





Getting on the subway.




We took the bus to Santosa Island. I think that castle is in Universal Studios, which we didn't go to.

I believe these are Plumeria, someone please correct me if I'm wrong. They grew everywhere, and they smelled amazing!


Are these jasmine?

here's the Santosa Beach. Not much for looking at, there were just a bunch of ships crowding the background.





The Merlion!





The strangest dessert. This was my godmother's. It is made of coconut, and the weird eyeball/fish egg looking things are actually the seeds, I was told.

Mine was even more colorful! I got mango. It was shaved ice with tropical flavors!

Surprise, redbean and jello in the middle! Guess how much this costed? this thing was huge and was only around 2 bucks!

There were so many unusual birds there. No idea what these were.

Anyone know what these flowers are? We visited a (free!) botanical garden that evening.



The trees sprawled out like something from a Tim Burton movie. They were awesome.










Baby bananas! My godmother had some at her place so I tried one. They were so sweet!



This is coconut rice with egg, chilli fish, chilli and  peanut. It was a wonderful combination!


Laksa (below) was a new favorite for me! Full of spices and flavors I would never have imagined.

The view from my godmother's window.

Curry croissant! Not at all like the Japanese curry pan (bread),  my godmother steamed it and it was so crusty, like a fresh pie.


When my godmother said "fried carrot cake" I definitely wasn't expecting this. I preferred the white one, but she liked the black carrot cake better. Personally, the black one was too sweet to be mixed with the noodles.  I was so full after eating this, and it only cost 2.50!


Entrance to Jurong Bird Park, my heaven!

Cute little penguins welcomed us when we first entered.



We fed the lorikeets! Unfortunately, this one bit my godmother.





An adorable Blue-breasted Kingfisher was hiding out under the lorie habitat.






The name says it all

and the not-so charming female counterpart.

BIRDS OF PARADISE!! I couldn't believe I saw these things in real-life. It's been a dream of mine to see these birds in person. Although many were only viewed from the distance.



Dunno what this is, can someone tell me?




There were many hornbills, I had no idea there were so many different kinds!



Toucie!












They definitely did an amazing job at constructing this park. You could get right up to the birds! 




A bird conservatory.



Can you see the light pink hue?














This little guy kept coming around while we were taking a rest at the cafe.







These guys kept saying "hello!" and talking! It was so cute.

love that tree, felt like I was in a safari.

Unfortunately, it started to rain during the birds of prey show.



We decided to head to the inside area when it started raining, but it was so dark. Here is Harry's owl when he's not making movies (Just kidding of course, I'm sure Hedwig has his own aviary).


Although fuzzy, I thought it was cute, him walking all over the sign.




My godmother was thrilled to be near a real peacock! She tried to shelter him with her umbrella. For privacy's sake, I didn't put any pics of her on here, but if you know me and want to see them, just shoot me an email!






Look how close we got!


More yummy food. Fish ball soup. The soup was light yet full of flavor and the noodles were good dry or mixed with the soup. It was so spicy! I made the mistake of adding more spice and found myself crying! It was embarrassing...

These are dry noodles with meat, also soo good. I think everything I ate in Singapore was the best food I've ever had!


I love shumi! I've only ever had it frozen though. It's a shrimp dumpling!

We also ate Indian curry! It was so tasty. Below is the naan bread.



I tried sugar cane juice with plum, however it was way too sweet for me, if you can imagine that. It was literally just sugar water.


My godmother got a nasty-looking drink, black glass jelly. I actually liked it a little better than my sugar cane drink, but not by much.


For dessert we ate these delicious snacks, the one above is not pound cake, despite its appearance. It is actually made from coconut and tasted very buttery.
The one below was much like Japanese mochi, and was very sweet and tasty.


This was soft and had veggies inside, it was my favorite of the 3, although it wasn't dessert.


Another one of my dreams come true. I got to go to Garden by the Bay!







Definitely a whimsical place. And behind it, you can see the famous boat hotel/casino.


We went inside of the 2 conservatories. This one was called Cloud Forest because they made it all misty.









I never thought these things actually existed, I thought Disney made them up!






These are the walkways above.











































Then, we went to the second conservatory called the Flower Dome. However, it was getting dark and it became difficult to see.































Outside, the giant tree-like things were all aglow! They also changed colors.









magical, right?







We observed fireworks from the top apartment floor!



The next day was my last... we enjoyed pandan bread with ice cream for dessert.


I think Singapore's got everyone beat on coffee. Definitely the best I ever tasted everywhere I went!


Kaya toast! So sweet, buttery and peanutty! I can't even describe the flavor. It's like honey and peanut butter and Nutella minus the chocolate. They also eat this weird egg mixture with it. I'm not sure what that's about. Apparently you aren't supposed to mix the toast with the egg.. oops.

yum! With butter is even better!



For dinner, we ate fish soup with flat noodles and stir-fried noodles, or mee goreng, both of which were extremely flavorful.



On New year's day, we went to the River Safari and Night Safari, they were both really amazing! You could get so close to the animals, best view and experience ever! 















I thought this pheasant was cute!













 
look at all the baby manatees!










She made kaya toast!



We ate this really thinly sliced BBQ  pork that was sweet like honey, soft, and delicious.
 


Our last meal. I had some kind of really sweet roll with kaya and butter. My godmother had Mee Siam, which was delicious!







Goodbye Singapore! Until next time!