Recommendations - Singapore

I've been back home for a few days, but have been feeling a bit sick, hence the lack of posts.

I should do a post about how well I now know Singapore, with photos, but the photos will come later.

Some random things learnt this time:

*  Katong remains my now preferred area to stay in - a somewhat hipster, upper middle class (I would guess) area that is easy to use as a base to see the rest of the island because of the new-ish Thomson East-West MRT line which currently ends close to the airport but will, in a few years, join it.   (There are also plenty of buses that run through the main road of Katong.)  This trip, I used my Visa card to catch the MRT from the airport to Marine Parade station (following a route which involved two changes of lines and took maybe 50 minutes) and it cost all of $3.60 AUD.   The bus from the airport is a much more direct route, but I have to say, the previous trip I found it was quite a challenge (even using Google maps) finding the correct bus stop, at the correct terminal, for the ride to Katong.  (The public transport buses all run from basement type stops, and maybe it was my incompetence, but it was not easy.)   The MRT is, by comparison, very easy to find and provided you've downloaded the MRT network map to your phone, it's easy to work out where to change lines.  (There are several apps which feature the MRT map.)

*  I did, this time, however, buy myself a 3 day unlimited travel pass for $27SGD.  I would guess that if you are going to make 4 or more MRT or bus trips in a day, the pass is no more expensive than paying for individual trips, but the other reason it is now a more attractive thing to use is that you no longer have to go to one of the limited number of stations where the old tourist pass used to be sold, bring your passport  and pay a $10 refundable deposit (and then remember to claim the deposit, by again going to a ticket office at a limited number of stations to hand in the card.)  Instead, the card can just be used as a rechargeable fare card when it has expired - although whether there is any particular advantage to doing that instead of just tapping on and off with your credit card is not clear to me.   

But overall, this change is a significant improvement over the old system.   

* I have stayed at two very good hotels at Katong now - Santa Grand Hotel East Coast and Village Hotel Katong.   The Santa Grand is cheaper, with rooms sometimes available at under $200 a night, and it doesn't have a bar or room service (I don't think), but Katong is full of coffee shops, bakeries, bars and a range of cafes covering Indian, Chinese and I think even Peranakan food.   There is an old Hindu temple in a side street, which I think explains the Indian food options, even though it is not close to Little India.  In fact, I ate twice at an Indian cafe where the mains were under $20, and the total meal and drinks cost was around $25 and $30.   Hence, even without going to a Hawker Centre, eating in Singapore does not have to be expensive.

*  Speaking of eating, a place I went to because I saw it discussed on a couple of Youtube channels was the Fortune Centre which is pretty close to the busy shopping area of Bugis.   It has become almost entirely a multilevel food outlet, with lots of vegetarian (because it is close to an old temple) but also meat options. Apart from some Chinese options, it's got everything from Japanese to Korean to Vietnamese food, and it all seemed pretty moderately priced and is in air conditioned comfort.  I ate at a vegetarian place, actually, and it was very good.

*  Although eating at a hawker centre is seen as a quintessential tourist experience, I don't usually go to them for a couple of reasons:   I don't care for eating off plastic plates or bowls; they are rarely enclosed enough to be air conditioned; and the service can be a tad intimidating, especially if it is a busy stall.   I tell people that a busy stall can make you feel a bit like the experiencing the Soup Nazi episode of Seinfeld.   So, yeah, if you're visiting first time you might like to try eating at a couple, but it's not essential as a means to eat cheaply.  (I also think that the hawker staple - chicken rice - is a vastly overrated dish and I don't bother eating it after having tried it a couple of times.)

*  As for places to eat some hawker style dishes but in airconditioned comfort, you can always look in the basement of shopping centres.  They quite often will have an area of stalls that do all of the main things you can expect at a real hawker centre.  Even up market centres like The Jewel shopping centre at the airport, and Tang's department store in Orchard Road, do this semi-hawker centre style thing in their basements.   They will be, no doubt, a bit more expensive than at a real one, but the experience may be a bit more pleasant.

*  This trip, I finally made it to Sentosa Island, the very touristy development with beaches on which hardly anyone swims, but it was still interesting and good to see.  I was especially lucky to stumble upon a free guided tour of Fort Siloso (only run on weekends, I believe) - and the fort and its museum style rooms turned out to be bigger and more interesting that I expected.  (The rooms devoted to World War 2 and the Japanese occupation were particularly good, and taught me thing I didn't know.  It will get its own post.)

* I also finally made a trip to the observation deck on Mariner Bay Sands.   At over $30, it is a tad expensive, but once there, it's hard to stop taking photos, and you can buy drinks at a reasonable price, and watch other tourist take a lot of posing selfies.   It is good to get to the top of one of the most iconic buildings in the world, so I do recommend it.

That's all for now! 

Updates:

*  try the Toast Box franchise for kaya toast breakfast ($6.20 for two eggs, one biggish cup of coffee and the kaya toast) or a large of other modestly priced eating for lunch.   I thought it better than the Ya Kun Kaya Toast chain.

*  Katong has several multilevel shopping centres, but the largest is on the south side of Marina Parade MRT station and is called Parkway Parade.   And right beside the entry to it is an old area of "local" shops that your often find around HDB areas - a hawker centre, and thrift style shops, fruit and snack shops etc.   It thus features both styles of Singaporean shopping in a very compact area.