A glam breakfast

There's a district in Singapore called Kampong Glam, and that's where we all had breakfast this morning, at a cafe called CAD in Haji Lane. A nice little place with Toby's Estate Coffee. Yes, it was a hole in the wall, but the street was super-cool and the coffee was good (though Leonie said hers was a bit hot).

We saw a cat, and Miriam went all google-eyed. She's missing the quadruped apparently...

Oh, and she (Miriam, not the quadruped) tried kopi today, a Singapore approach to coffee. It's thicker, richer, and with cream and sugar or condensed milk also sweeter, but she's sticking to the Western variety for now!

Chillin' with a morning coffee at CAD in Kampong Glam

Yep, pretty cool. Also just around the corner from
two jazz clubs, so cool quotient definitely up there...

Witticism in plant pot. I could not resist and even climbed
up for a better look...
"My fake plants died because I did not pretend to water them."
Hah!

A jazz fix - with Yotam Silberstein and band at Sultan Jazz Club

A trip to a jazz club tonight - it was inevitable I suppose. She put on her jazz skirt and her jazz sandals, booked a table (that must be a first for Little Miss 'I'll take my chances') and off the two of them popped to the Sultan Jazz Club. It was a really enjoyable night of music. Yotam Silberstein on his guitar, Barak Mori on bass and Amir Bresler on drums. A tight, really enjoyable trio with lots of great latin grooves and a palpable sense of joy in the music. Enjoyin' the joy in the music. A little bit of vodka, a little bit of toe-tapping, a cool breeze from the air con... and the band grinning. Local piano player Kerong Chock joined the trio for a few songs. Highlights included 'Body and Soul' (always a favourite for Miriam) and the Silberstein original 'Canção'

I should also add that Miriam nearly got them lost on the way there. But luckily Leonie got us there.

Messy-no-more - hotel bathroom art

Being in a hotel means that someone makes your bed, empties your bins, replaces your towels... and tidies up the bathroom.

I've never seen tidying up quite like it, and neither has Miriam ... she took a picture (just for the memories). Whoever is cleaning the room is a very tidy person!

L&M toiletries laid out neatly. It happens every day, like magic.

Hidden hardware - a coffee adventure

Being from Melbourne, she's caught the trend towards coffee wankiness enthusiasm. Her friend Leonie likes coffee too (I like Leonie; she doesn't put me in a sock. Ever). So as well as savouring local cuisine, they decided to look for some of the new coffee shops that are springing up all over Singapore. Trendy little places that think about single origin coffee beans, and pourover techniques.  M & L had asked their friend Mark from Eureka Coffee (he's at the Farmers Markets and stuff) and another friend (Hi Eugenia) to make coffee shop recommendations.  There were a few and today they dragged me to one of them. Not sure why they bothered as I'm not a coffee nut like them. I guess they just love me for my witty conversation.

That's me in the bottom left hand corner.
Definitely not tall enough to require a ticket!

After yesterday's long and winding walk, we opted for the train. Singapore's MRT is pretty easy to use, we found out. I didn't need a ticket - we checked and I wasn't quite tall enough to warrant buying one.

Everything in the train system is clean and shiny. In fact I've been noticing that whenever they take me out of Miriam's handbag. No rubbish, no dirty dusty stuff. Even the building sites we pass have very little grime coming out of them. Miriam finds it a bit freaky. It's a bit of a theme-for-the-day (you know how she gets those... she'll get a topic into her head and just keeps coming back to it all day long, ad nauseum)

The coffee shop we went to today was in a part of town much less shiny and clean (Hooray, said Miriam) It had that steamy Asian smell, that she's experienced in Hong Kong and Bangkok. There were buildings that had weathered, roads that were cracked, some untidiness and mess. Still not much rubbish though.

Chye Seng Huat Hardware. Inside here be trendy coffee nuts.

The menu... a simple range of breakfast fare and small meals

The coffee shop was in a converted hardware shop (still bears its name Chye Seng Huat Hardware) It had a hidden doorway, and once inside, you could have been in any Melbourne coffee shop, with the pourover station, the propped up list of single origin-coffees-of-the-day, the earnest young twenty somethings turning coffee making into something between art and science.

The coffee was great, according to her nibs. She had her regular long black with cold milk. She chose the solid Blue Batak blend.

Leonie's coffee was good too... (Nuts and Bolts blend) a kind of nuttiness and natural sweetness with light notes that made it a delicious breakfast beverage. (gawd, now I'm starting to sound like a wanker enthusiast too!)

The scrambled eggs breakfast that Miriam had was not so exciting... white bread more dried out than toasted, sad snow peas that had been drowned in dressing and baked beans that looked suspiciously like they had come out of a can. The scrambled eggs were soft and light, though. Leonie's muffin was delicious.

They were both going on and on about how nice it all was. I have to say I liked it too. It was strange though, to have this little specialist restaurant / coffee shop right in middle of a street that feels not coffee-shop-ish at all...

Me hanging off a cup of coffee - lovely aroma

 With coffee and breakfast in their tummies, Miriam put me back in her handbag and we headed out into the steamy Singapore air...

Sound, light and clouds in Singapore Gardens By The Bay

On their first day here, M&L went to the Gardens by the Bay. Everybody said things like 'you have to' and 'it's a must see' so they didn't really have a choice. By the time they got the day started on Friday it was pretty warm, and they walked all the way there... so they had run out of steam a little by the time they reached this highly recommended Singapore attraction. Leonie had heard there was a sound and light show each night at 7:45 and 8:45 and Miriam wanted to see the Flower Dome and the Cloud Forest, so they decided to come back and visit one night during the trip. Tonight (Saturday 31 August) was the night!

This time they took the MRT system - the incredibly efficient, clean and regular train system - to Marina Bay then a quick change to the Circle Line and Bayfront station then up the stairs to Gardens By The Bay. There were quite a few people there - lots of kids and couples. A warm night (are they ever not, here?) and we all headed up to the ticket window for the domes. The ticket lady informed us that there was not much lighting in the Flower Dome, and we might not enjoy it as much as during the day. The previous ticket lady had informed M&L of no such thing, so Miriam made a sarcastic remark to that effect. Why she does it, I cannot fathom. It's not useful, helpful or dignified. And besides, it often falls on deaf ears. Like on Saturday night. So once Miriam had that little bit of nonsense out of her system, our adventurous duo of M&L bought tickets to the Flower Dome and the Cloud Forest. Both these exhibits are in great glass domes, which are designed to be sustainable.  Miriam's planning to research more on this. Both exhibits are also new(ish) and so are the super trees. Everything needs to grow more... You can imagine in a lush, humid place such as this, the plants all seem to be jumping out of their bark ... there are new shoots, tendrils and growth all over the place, but in a couple of years all the man-made structures they are climbing on seem likely to be covered over with green.

But back to the Flower Dome... it's a dryer environment than the outside world and at night it's a bit hard to see anything (the ticket girl without the sarcasm radar wasn't wrong!). The little signs weren't lit up but M&L read bits and pieces where they could. So unfortunate thing number 1 was the lighting snafu. But there's more... of course there is because Miriam was there. The Flower Dome has a venue in the lower level and there was a celebration happening on Saturday night. A loud and enthusiastic host, tables and tables of people. It sounded like a mix between a dancing competition and a bingo call... The Flower Dome is (potentially) a wonderful meditative space full of plants from all over the world and instead the atmosphere was ruined by the goings on. So ticket lady warned us about the lights being dim and forgot to mention that our experience was going to be ruined by loud music and emceeing...  Look, M&L aren't going to make a fuss about it (M's little sarcasm burst aside) because they;re trying to have a good holiday, but even from inside the handbag I could tell there was a little bit of 'not happy, Jan' happening in the Flower Dome.

A whole raft of carnivorous plants in the Cloud Dome

However, the Cloud Dome made up for it. A cool, misty world with walkways that took us from ground level up seven stories (the height of the indoor waterfall, incidentally) I would love to see this place in a few years too... it is full of ferns, orchids and other plants of all kinds. There has been quite a bit of effort to turn the place into an educational experience, but the information is very light on - even with my limited knowledge of flora I felt there could have been alto more effort put into some more scientific info for grown ups. Disappointing too, to see the display of crystals that had large stalagmites on display plinths at one of the levels. They'd cut these things out of real caves to use as a display here? Oh, and Miriam wants to know if there were real frogs in the Cloud Dome, or if they were just recordings. And were those mushies plastic or real? She asks the darnedest questions.

The gorgeous supertrees all lit up. 

That segues into another observation that her smarty pants-ness keeps making about Singapore... this sense of it being a theme park. Lots of dumbing down and being nice. She always wants more harsh reality, more truth, more science... you know what she's like. People here seem to get along fine.

After the wonderful experience of the Cloud Dome, M&L took me out to the 8:45 pm light show in the Supertrees grove. Wow. We were all rapt. Music, lights... it was magical. Yes, theme parky, but we all liked it, and we made our way back through Bayfront to Marina Bay then City Hall stations smiling and humming. Well M&L did. I'm ceramic and the vocal chords have problems with even the littlest hum.

Singapore in a sock

If you used to read my witty little posts about MZ you know the whole saga. I don't particularly like travelling in a sock... she always puts me in a sock to travel... [yawn]. Nothing's changed, except that this time it was two socks. She tells me that's because she's sick of losing pairs so it was better to have them together. Double the humiliation. Half the logic. I give up.

Packing. I tried to get away...

We're here in Singapore... at the Fairmont, on level 25. The pool is on level 8. I haven't been there but she's there now... so I'm blogging in her absence.

Across the road is Raffles. That famous hotel with the Singapore Sling, which her Lonely Planet guide says is made better by other places, even though it originated at Raffles. She read the ingredients somewhere and realised it's a pretty sweet drink so she's kind of lost interest. Not that she's an expert on cocktails or anything (and they say sarcasm and gnomes don't mix) but looks like that's one type of drink I won't be hanging off on this trip.

So... plane trip was great. I was under the seat in the bag... marginally better than the overhead locker. 7 hour flight from Melbs. She's travelling with her friend Leonie, who is an expert at such things, being in the business of travel...

We got in during the wee smalls... a little nightcap then off to sleepy land. Friday (today) was our first full day and I was brought along for the ride. Fab. She took me out of the sock but the inside of her handbag is all linty, with small pieces of paper, wrappers, pen tops and the perpetual risk of an actual pen job... the surprise markup from a leaking biro is never as fun as it sounds.


My impression [and I acknowledge that this is extremely subjective] is that this is a city of guard rails. Somebody in city planning got a great offer on a job lot of railings and they've plonked them all around the place, painted in a range of (fun!) colours.  I managed to perch on a few of them as we travelled around today:

With Leonie - Marina Bay Sands in the background.
It has a pool in that section at the top of the three pillars.

The view from our room (green railing)

Caught blogging. I must be getting careless in my old age.

Leonie... leading the way...

The Merlion (in the distance) - silver rail this time.

Dragonfly bridge view - pink railing (see what I mean about the railings?)

Supertree grove at the Gardens by the Bay...

Leonie blazing a trail...

Topiary Urangatan

Ferny stuff

Pretty flowers, archway, path, elbow...

Checking out the seemingly suspended sculpture of a baby.
This bloke from The Guardian doesn't think much of it. 

Fishies big and small. That's my out-of-focus cap.
Pictures by amateurs. Great.

Delicious lunch at the end of a very long walk and lots of sights. Great hummus!