Nothing like a quick trip to Singapore, which happens to be the second longest flight from SFO, clocking in at 8,440 miles.
In case you’re wondering, the Mumbai flight on Air India is 251 miles and about a half hour longer in flight time – both of them gate to gate at more than 17 hours.
The one plus to it being such a long flight is that you depart SFO in the morning and you arrive in SIN in the early evening (a day later, but who’s really counting) so if you can convince your brain that you were only doing a quick hop across one country, then it’s not too hard to acclimate really quickly – you have enough time for a bit of a wander, inside in our case since it was absolutely pouring rain when we arrived, then you get a good nights sleep and you can be off and running early the next morning.
The SMRT train is clean, fast, super cheap, and uses tap to pay on your phone if you have Apple or Google Wallet installed. You’ll need a SIM card if you have an unlocked phone, I think I used Red Tea Bubble or something like that – the price for more data than I could possibly have used was less than $3 USD and it was blisteringly fast. I used the hotel wi-fi to grab the e-sim and get connected, although I could likely have done it from the airport or even the US (not sure the price would have been as cheap though). And if you’re using a phone that’s not unlocked, you’ll have to pay the exorbitant rates that ATT or Verizon charge for international data these days.
We skipped around town, started with hawker stall for breakfast – Maxwell Food Centre, the original Bourdain favorite – had some absolutely amazing halal parata (mushroom and egg and cheese) with a sauce on the side that was to die for – spicy and welcoming is the way I would describe it.
Around lunch time we wandered into the People’s Market, in the real Chinatown. There are two versions, side by side. One side is for the locals, they don’t take credit cards, nothing is in English, and the food and shopping are absolutely f’ing amazing. Downstairs is the food stalls, OMG, great dumplings super cheap, upstairs was a giant bazaar – fabrics, furniture, hardware store, all kinds of stuff. After lunch we strolled through the tourist section of Chinatown, bought a few trinkets and then we walked all the way to Raffles so M could get a “real” Singapore sling. $41 USD for a drink, not for the faint of wallet.
Here’s the photo dump for all the tromping around that wasn’t at the Gardens by the Bay.
