新加坡 (Singapore)

JT had to travel to Singapore last week for work, so I took Friday off and joined him for the long weekend. It's a short flight from Hong Kong, only three and a half hours. We stayed in the city at the Fullerton Hotel Friday night and moved to a resort on Sentosa Island Saturday night. (Sentosa is a small island off the coast of Singapore.) Singapore lived up to everything we had heard about it - clean (the city is almost entirely litter free), well-planned, very friendly people and diverse. Singapore has four official languages: English, Malaysian, Mandarin and Tamil.

After I arrived on Friday, I took a walk around the area near the hotel while JT was finishing up work. I got a little bit hungry so decided to have a snack at the food court in a mall I had wandered into. I came upon a stand that had a picture of a small bowl of noodles for 4 Singapore dollars (3 US dollars), so I figured that it would be a nice light snack. When I walked up, the woman told me I could pick out seven items from the following:


There were vegetables, tofu, fish balls, crab meet, hot dogs, eggs and a couple other items I didn't quite recognize. After you pick your seven items, the woman behind the counter puts them into a pot of boiling water, throws some noodles in there and voila, your meal is ready. A pretty good deal for three bucks.

In the evening, we met up with my friend from college who is now a professor at the National University of Singapore. He grew up in Malaysia but is originally from India, so he took us out to an area called "Little India." We had some authentic Indian food at The Banana Leaf restaurant, which not coincidentally you eat your food off banana leaves. We checked out the night life in Singapore and eventually wandered back to our hotel, which looks amazing at night:


The next day (Saturday), we spent the day exploring the city. Across the Singapore River from our hotel, a large monstrosity of a recently built casino/hotel took up much of the skyline. Personally, I think it looks like a long cruise ship on top of three buildings:


After wandering around Singapore and getting some lunch in yet another food court located in yet another mall, we packed up and headed to our hotel on Sentosa Island. The hotel itself was very nice, but the beaches were a little bit disappointing, mainly because there were about twenty freighters spewing toxic fumes a stone's throw away. This is the hotel:


And this is the view from the beach:


As you have probably guessed, we didn't spend much time at the beach and instead lounged around by the pool for the rest of the afternoon. The resort is overrun by peacocks, and I was able to get close enough to one to take a photo:


In the evening, we left our hotel to expore the rest of Sentosa Island, which is like a spread out Disney World with a little bit more to do. There is, among other things, a Universal Studios, a marine life park and a Hard Rock hotel. We found a nice restaurant to remind us of home called the "Big Easy." We were tempted by the offerings of jambalaya and gumbo, which turned out not only to be the same dish, but essentially chicken fried rice with some cajun spices. At least there was a live jazz band. After dinner we headed to the casino. Interestingly enough, Singapore charges its own citizens a fee to enter the casinos because they want to discourage them from gambling. However, if you're not a Singapore citizen, you get in for free and should try to lose as much money as possible. Therefore, before entering the casino, you have to show ID that you're not a Singapore citizen. After the casino, we were a little bit hungry, so we stopped by a bakery to get a snack and also breakfast for the next day. JT picked out a "potato bun", which is a bun shaped like a potato. I thought it was pretty interesting, so I took a picture. Because of the lighting, however, it looked like it was glowing, so we coined it the "jack-o-potato":


When we woke up the next day (Sunday), it was raining, so we couldn't really do much. We lazed around, had a snack at the hotel and headed to the airport. All in all, Singapore wasn't the most interesting place I've been too, but I'm glad I went as the country and its people have a lot to offer.

Anniversary Trip to Macau / Taipa

As many of you know (since you were there for it), we got married on a very hot day in New York City on August 15th last year. We decided to celebrate our first-year anniversary with a weekend getaway to Macau / Taipa. Macau is an island 65 km west of Hong Kong, which started off as a Portuguese trading hub in the 1500s. Macau was handed over to China on December 20, 1999 and became a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China (similar to Hong Kong). Macau is now most famous for its gambling and casinos. The easiest way to get there from Hong Kong is by ferry.

Because I had class until 4 pm on Saturday, we took the 5:30 pm to Taipa. Taipa is the smaller and lesser developed (for now) island of the Macau SAR. The ferry terminal is only a 10-minute walk from our apartment, and the views of Kowloon outside the terminal are pretty nice:


We took the "Cotai Jet," which is a fancy blue catamaran that leaves every half hour from Hong Kong to the Taipa Ferry Terminal:


JT splurged and spent an additional HK $100 (approximately US $13) for first-class tickets for our 60-minute ferry ride over. Thirteen dollars gets you a MSG-laden instant cup of noodles and a beer (the value of which is actually $3 from the local 7-Eleven):


Our ferry ride was fairly uneventful, and we made it there, as promised, in 60 minutes. Once we got off the ferry, it was about a ten-minute walk to immigration. Because Macau is a separate SAR of China, which is essentially a different country, you have to fill out an immigration form and hand up your passport to get stamped. After we passed through immigration, we boarded a shuttle bus to our hotel. We stayed at the Grand Hyatt Macau, which is part of a bigger development called the "City of Dreams." The hotel upgraded us to a corner suite (which was bigger than our current apartment and our apartment back home), and it had great views of the "Cotai Strip" which is where all the new casinos are being built (the Venetian is on the left-hand side of the photo):


We had an 8 pm dinner reservation for Antonio, which was recommended to us as the best place in Macau for Portuguese food. Although it didn't appear that they actually had a reservation under our name, we were seated promptly by the very friendly but sometimes disorganized staff in the very cozy dining room. We had the traditional Portuguese cabbage soup and goat cheese served with olive oil and honey on toast, lettuce and balsamic vinegar to start. Both starters were delicious, but we could have had two more servings of the goat cheese, which was just amazing. We shared two entrees, the Shredded Dried Codfish Baked in the Oven with Creamy Sauce and Cheese and the Tenderloin Steak "Portuguese” Style, Fried with Garlic and White Wine Served with Portuguese Smoked Ham, Fried Egg, Potatoes and Pickles. Again, both dishes were very good, but so much for healthy eating! The great thing about Antonio is that Antonio himself was in the restaurant chatting with all the diners and helping to serve the dishes. So with Antonio buzzing about and the traditional Portuguese decor, we felt like if we were in some local restaurant in the back alleys of Portugal and not in China. After dinner, we walked about Taipa Village, which is where the restaurant is located. The village is a mix of quaint European-style cobblestone streets and colonial architecture with modern-day bars and Chinese restaurants.

We returned to the "City of Dreams," played some roulette and slots and called it a night. The next day (Sunday), we took a shuttle bus to Macau island and had lunch there. Macau is where all the casinos (like MGM, Wynn and Sands) were originally built before the developers decided to descend upon Taipa. The streets of Macau reminded me much of Hong Kong and lacked the charm of Taipa (at least the village). The only noticeable difference between Hong Kong and Macau is that all the store names and street signs are both in Chinese and Portuguese. It's unclear to me how many Portuguese people still live on the island because as far as I could tell everyone was Chinese. After lunch, we returned back to Taipa to catch our 3 pm ferry back to Hong Kong. We played some last-minute roulette before heading home. All in all, it was an excellent trip to celebrate our one-year anniversary.