Second Time in Singapore - Part One

We had so much fun our first time in Singapore, but still felt like there were many things we hadn't gotten to do.  The obvious solution was a second trip.  I knew there would be a long weekend at the beginning of December, and one of my friends had said Singapore really does Christmas up, so I figured that would be a great time for our second trip.  Jeff and I also had a couple evening things we wanted to do, so we invited Young to come along with us.  She got a fun first trip to Singapore, and we got help with girls.

On our first trip, we stayed in a great Airbnb apartment in the residential area to the west of the city.  This time around, I wanted to put us more in the center of things, so we stayed at an Airbnb in an area called Bugis.  The apartment wasn't as nice as the first one, but it was still two bedroom, two bath, and there was a Christmas tree in the lobby which made the girls happy.

The best part though, was that as soon as you walked out the door there were tons of shops and restaurants.  Right next to our building was a shopping center dedicated to tech stuff, so Jeff got to wander around  his version of shopping heaven.  Across the street was the start of a pedestrian market area full of shopping and food stalls.  Our first night we walked around there.  We wanted to try a hawker center, and there was one along the way, but the food booths were overwhelming, and some of them looked a bit scary to our western palettes.  Pig organ soup? Not up for that right now.

We kept walking and came to the main shopping arcade on Bugis Street.  It started with fruit stands, which we made a mental note of for later shopping.

After that, it turned into total tourist trap market stuff.  Still, it was fun to walk through.

On the other end, we came to a regular mall, with a supermarket called Cold Storage in the basement.  We did some shopping, having fun comparing what they sold there versus at our local Villa.  There were a lot more British brands.  We got what we needed for the girls to have their regular pasta with peas, but we still needed food for the grownups.  We hadn't been brave enough to try the hawker center, but we found a noddle place at the mall with menus in English, and got some takeaway noodles.  We sat on stools watching them make it, which was fun.

Young and I both got pork in a scallion broth, while Jeff got spicy beef broth, yum!

There were more Christmas decoration around, and it was getting dark as we walked back to the apartment.

We decided that Singapore, round two, was off to a good start.