{"id":1399,"date":"2013-02-04T05:24:06","date_gmt":"2013-02-04T13:24:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/?p=1399"},"modified":"2013-02-04T05:25:41","modified_gmt":"2013-02-04T13:25:41","slug":"singapore-check","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/2013\/02\/04\/singapore-check\/","title":{"rendered":"Singapore: check."},"content":{"rendered":"

We have been slow on the blogs… We left Singapore two days ago.<\/p>\n

We only spent two full days in Singapore. We planned it as a mid-trip break: we figured it would be a nice easy place to stay for a few days. The consensus was that Singapore was a place to be for a couple of days, eat and move on. That’s exactly what we did.<\/p>\n

Singapore is a super-easy to be as a English speaker: with Mandarin, English is the working language of the country. You can drink the tap water. Basically, it’s like Asia-lite. Asia for beginners. Asia on Disney.<\/p>\n

There’s also food everywhere. You can’t walk a block without running into a collection of hawker stalls<\/a> or a Kopitam<\/a>. In each of those, each stall is independently owned, and each one makes a half dozen or so things. You can walk around to which ever one strikes your fancy and gather up a meal.<\/p>\n

Do Singaporeans ever eat at home? Given the number of food stalls and restaurants, I can only imagine the economics working if nobody ever cooks.<\/p>\n

But the nice part about Singapore, the easiness, was also the part I didn’t like. I’m firmly convinced that Richmond is a more confusing place to spend a day than Singapore. It’s odd spending double-digit hours on a plane and coming to somewhere so… normal. Also, a little anti-climactic.<\/p>\n

My advice on the city would be to use it exactly like we did: as a break from weirdness in the rest of Asia.<\/p>\n

We also had Singapore Slings at both the Post Bar<\/a> at the Fullerton Hotel (a fancy hotel and bar), and at the Long Bar<\/a> at Raffles Hotel (where they were created). Much to my surprise, the one at Raffles actually was tastier. On the other hand, the Post Bar<\/a> had an atmosphere that made you think paying $20 for a drink made sense; the Long Bar<\/a> was a little more rustic and tourist-focused (but not cheaper).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We have been slow on the blogs… We left Singapore two days ago. We only spent two full days in Singapore. We planned it as a mid-trip break: we figured it would be a nice easy place to stay for a few days. The consensus was that Singapore was a place to be for a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1399"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1402,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1399\/revisions\/1402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}