Asia Holiday 2013, August 10 (One Day As A Lion)

I walked back over to Bugis Junction to find something for breakfast around 9am, only to find most of the shops were closed. I remember this stuff from Japan, lots of places only open at 11am, or 10am if you're lucky. I found one of those bakeries (like Bread Top back in Australia) where you choose your own stuff called "Four Leaves". I got a piece of Milk Toast (should be called sugar bread, but it sure was tasty) and some sort of powdered donut.

I took the metro down to the south side of the city and got off at Raffles Place. I figure this is the business district due to the number of tall buildings, and being dead empty on a Saturday morning was another clue. I walked down to nearby China Town where there was a bit more activity, first coming across the Sri Mariamman Temple. It has an interested exterior, but from peering inside it didn't look like there was much there. Also you had to take off your shoes and leave them outside on the street, and I wasn't too keen on doing that so kept on moving.

Sri Mariamman Temple.

I reached a place called China Town Food Centre (maybe) which looks like a small apartment building but instead contains shops, mostly food stuff - I think they often call them food centres or hawker centres. The bottom store was all fresh produce and lots of weird smelling stuff, the next was merchandise, and the top was food, heaps and heaps on tiny food stalls. It was too early to think about lunch, but I picked up another slice of pancake, this time coconut instead of red bean, which was a strange orange colour but tasted alright. Just outside this place was the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple, which was a much nicer looking place than the previous temple, and you could just walk on in! It was pretty nice inside too, and they seemed to be doing some morning prayer I suppose.

The China Town district.

Another Tintin shop!

Pancake shop.

Inside the Buddha Tooth Relic temple, not sure about the name...

The same temple, I came in through the back somehow, this is the front.

I headed back up towards the Singapore River - called Boat Quay - and across the Cavenagh Bridge. This is slightly famous for being the only suspension bridge in Singapore (maybe) but it didn't seem all that special. There was a heeap of road closures and intersections closed off which made getting around a little bit more difficult, I'm not sure if it was for the road run the following day or for some other reasons. Over to the bay was the Merlion Park with, surprisingly, the merlion statue. It's a big concrete merlion that spits water out into the bay, and it's quite popular...

Some really cool looking office building.

Cavenagh Bridge.

Marina Bay.

The merlion.

North of the river now I walked through the City Hall area (well that's what the metro station is called) when I could find a way around the construction. I headed up hill to get to Fort Canning Park, which is just a park but doesn't have too much special going for it, although there was some sort of mansion at the top. Coming back around to do a loop of the park my knee was just killing me, so I had to rest up for like half an hour and wait for the pain to settle down.

Fort Canning Park.

Fort Canning Park again.

One more Fort Canning Park.

At the bottom of the park was the entrance to Funan Digital Mall, a large mall with almost nothing but IT and video games stores, but strangely a few sports store which I was a bit more interested in. There wasn't too much choice for lunch so I went to the basement in the larger Raffles City mall. There was a lot of interesting stores, but rarely any good vegetarian choices from what I could determine by the names or photos, so I just settled for a Subway since I was too tired to look any further. With a bit more energy I found a place selling Taiyaki! so I could a custard filled fish, with no fishy after taste!

Funan Digital Mall.

TAIYAKI! With no fishy aftertaste.

Further along the boulevard was the Esplanades: Theatres By The Bay, just north of the river. You get a pretty good view from this spot - the merlion to the south west and the Marina Bay Sands mega structures to the south east. In the middle is the bay which some boats passing through, most of it seemed to be sectioned off, like something out of Cobra Triangle, but without all the happy, waving, drowning people.

Marina Bay Sands.

I could see the Singapore Flyer off in the distance, it didn't seem to be moving, much like The Melbourne Wheel!, but instead I crossed over the Helix Bridge to get to the Marina Bay area. They have a ridiculuous amount of shops inside, but they are so upmarket they call them shoppes. I passed through to get out of the heat for a moment, and came out the other side at the Gardens By The Bay, which has gardens and those weird metal flower things. There was some way you could walk between some of them but a) I didn't know where to go and b) didn't really see the point, so I just walked around the gardens for a bit longer and then came back.

KING HELIX.

Marina Bay Sands reverse.

Singapore Flyer and Gardens By The Bay.

These things.

I walked along the Marina Boulevard and came out back at Boat Quay again, then walked all the way up North Bridge Road and back to Bugis Junction. For dinner I got a cup of Green Apple froyo and another red bean taiyaki, and some drinks at the supermarket (Cold Storage). The prices at the supermarket seem to be quite high in general, I think it may be because a lot of stuff has to be imported. For example, I saw a one litre bottle of Cottee's Cordial on sale for $11.

Marina Boulevard.

Dinner!

There wasn't much on the TV channels but there was an Australia channel which had the AFL live, and lots of ads for years old MKR and Home & Away, as well as Rush which I think they stopped making a few years ago now.

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