Singapore Part 1

We've spent the past year using our vacation time to explore Thailand, so we thought it was time to check out a new country in the region.  Lots of our friends have recommended Singapore as an easy and fun family destination, so this spring break we got out our passports and got on a plane to Singapore.  The girls did great on the plane.  Elena and her magazine reading especially cracked me up.

The flight was a little over two hours long, so the girls had no problem keeping themselves entertained.  Singapore has many draws including English being the official language and everything running smoothly.  This means that at the airport we easily got a clean taxi with an English speaking driver who drove us to our Airbnb apartment on wide, tree lined roads with no traffic.  

The major negative of Singapore is that it is very expensive, so we thought it would be more economical (and more comfortable) to use Airbnb rather than paying over $200 a night for a small hotel room.  We have learned that the trick on Airbnb is to look for "super hosts."  Those are hosts that consistently receive good reviews from the people who rent from them.  We got a great apartment, and our hosts were very accommodating.  

One of the best parts of the apartment was the view.  Most of the rooms had big windows with a seating ledge.  The girls spent a lot of time looking out the windows.

Singapore is such a green city! Our hosts also provided a bunch of things for Elena, like a pack and play to sleep in and toys to play with.  She felt right at home.

We had ambitious plans to go out and do things our first night, but the girls (especially Elena) were a little fussy, so we opted for exploring the complex instead.  The condo complex had a really cool design.

As we walked around the property, we found playgrounds, pools, and a little store where we bought food for dinner and breakfast the next morning.  The girls woke up the next day in a great mood.

Our first adventure of the day was the Singapore Zoo.  We discovered that the best way to get a ride from our apartment to the zoo was to use Uber.  A friend had also recommended the Klook website for discounted tickets to Singapore attractions, so I had already purchased zoo tickets ahead of time.  The zoo, like the rest of Singapore, had beautiful trees and flowers.

The first animals we found were otters swimming around.

The girls both loved the white tiger too.

It was really easy to see most of the animals.  Elena got especially excited about the baby rhinoceros.

She waved an enthusiastic hello to the zebras.

And we had a hard time getting her to look away from the giraffes long enough for a picture.

Even though Singapore is cooler than Bangkok, it's still hot, so we got some air conditioned relief in the polar animals exhibit.

We had brought bathing suits since the zoo has a water play area, but it was closed :-( Vivian took it well, especially since we softened the blow with a souvenir slushy and a merry go round ride.

When we got back to the apartment, Elena crashed for a nap, I did some school work, and Jeff took Vivian to the pools there to compensate for no water time at the zoo.  Vivian also found a friend and had a lot of fun at one of the condo's play areas.

After that, it was time for the second adventure of the day, cable car rides!  The condo had a shuttle to the Harbour Front MRT stop.  That's also one of the cable car stops.  There are two cable car lines.  The one that stops at Harbour Front and goes between Sentosa and Mount Faber, and then the one that runs along Sentosa itself.  Klook came in handy again, and we had passes for round trips on both lines that we picked up at the mall near the MRT stop.  We saw the cable cars as we were walking from the mall to the building with the station.

At the station, the cars didn't stop.  The door just opened, and you hopped on as it rolled by.

We decided to go to Sentosa first, and we saw Mount Faber out the back window was we glided off towards Sentosa.

The views from the cable car were fantastic.  We were up really high.  It's definitely not for the faint of heart.

After these pictures, Jeff switched to his big camera to take pictures of the Sentosa cable car ride and the ride up to Mount Faber.  Unfortunately, we made the tragic discovery the next day that there was no memory card in his camera :-(  Luckily, we still have our memories of the fabulous rides, and it just cemented our decision to come back to Singapore at least one more time before we leave Asia.  After all, we need to take pictures, right?

Imaginia and Zoom Staycation

I don't think I've taken a moment in recent posts to acknowledge the awesomeness of  Bangkok's naming conventions.  I spent the day at an indoor children's play area called Imaginia and then had dinner at a rooftop bar and restaurant called Zoom, too much fun :-)

This awesomely named staycation adventure was the result of several factors.  Vivian had two days off of school for conferences, Jeff had had a crazy week at work where we hadn't seen him much, and I'm leaving next Friday for 10 days.  I wanted to keep Vivian busy and happy and make sure that I got to spend some time with Jeff without excluding the girls who have also been missing him.  Solution: bring the girls downtown on Friday (with Young for support), and stay at the Anantara Sathorn with reasonably priced two bedroom suites and a rooftop restaurant that Jeff and I could enjoy while Young and the girls enjoyed room service and a movie a few floors below us.

Once I found the hotel, I searched through all the lists of best things to do with kids and found one we hadn't tried yet, Imaginia at the Emporium mall on Sukhumvit.  My plan was to pack up everything we needed Friday morning, drive to the hotel, drop off the car and the bags, and then Young, the girls, and I would take a taxi to Imaginia.  Elena insisted on helping with the zippers while I was packing.

I knew the trickiest part of the day was going to be getting from the highway to the hotel.  I had studied the map, and it looked fairly straightforward.  What I didn't realize though, was that Google, in its well-intentioned attempts to take me on the shortest possible route, had included streets that were meant for motorcycles, not cars, and certainly not Honda CRVs.  Unfortunately, by the time I realized what I had turned into, it was too late, and the only way I could go was forward.  We had a couple close (and I mean REALLY close) encounters with other vehicles, and I think the left mirror got a kiss from one of the walls I squeezed up next to in order to let another car by.  Poor Young was trying to help me by holding the phone up, so that I could see the map, but I really had to focus on the road.  I finally got to a road with several lanes, so that I could block one by pulling over and putting my hazards on (everyone else does it, so I figured I could too).  I looked at the map, figured out where we were relative to the hotel, told Google to stuff its stupid directions, and got us there on roads with at least two lanes in each direction.  Whew!

Honestly, at that point all I really wanted to do was put my feet up and have a drink, but the show must go on, so we dropped off car and bags and got in a taxi.  Once we got to Imaginia it quickly became clear that it had been worth the trouble.  It wasn't too expensive, and they had sliding scale pricing depending on height for children, with a parent rate of about $7.  Vivian was the most expensive at about $12, and that price was good for three hours of play and a locker for shoes and bags.  

Once the girls had their socks on they got right into exploring the interactive art exhibit.

There was also an astronaut cut out at the front which presented an irresistible photo op.

Moving back into the first floor of the space, there was an arts and crafts area on the right and a construction area on the left.  Right behind the globe, there was an area where you could decorate part of a "car".

Elena's favorite part of the first floor though, was the explorers playground, which was only for kids under 90cm.

There were some other fun things around the playground too.  Vivian's favorite was the shadow area, where you could have your shadow be a bird, a tree, or a gnome, depending on which screen you stood in front of.

There was also a "biking" area, and behind that, for some unexplained reason, an area with black lights and bell chimes.

One thing that really captured Vivian's interest though, was the bottom of a two story slide.  We left Young and Elena exploring the playground and went upstairs to find the top of the slide.  The first thing we found though was a play area full of nets and trampolines.  Vivian quickly found an entrance, and she was climbing around all over the place.  It was really hard to get a picture of her through the net, but, if you look carefully, you can see her smiling out of the pink and blue drop in the middle of the picture.

When we eventually brought Elena upstairs, she saw Vivian go up into the net and wanted to go too.  Of course once she got in, she decided she wanted out almost immediately.

Luckily, there was TONS of other stuff for her to enjoy, including the trampolines under the net.

The girls could both enjoy the DJ booths too.  Vivian found it first.

And of course, if Vivi do, Elena do.

Next to the DJ station was a cute little reading area with books in Thai, Japanese and English.

Vivian, ever the explorer, discovered that the wall with the window opened, and you could crawl in behind it.

Guess who insisted on getting in next . . .

While we were in the reading area, one of the staff members came to tell us that they were starting a special show in the town hall area, and it was in English.  We were curious, so we went to see what it was.  It turned out to be a giant screen with a "puppet" show about a boy who was born from inside a huge peach and defeated a monster with the help of animal friends which he made by sharing the best rice balls in the world.  The girls were mesmerized.

I thought the animation and story were both pretty weird, but the girls were happy, so no complaints.  Other interesting stuff we found on the second floor: a circle of stones that lit up in time with the music they were playing,

"Sound clouds" with dangling drops that you could pull on to make sounds (we didn't really get into that one), the bathroom,

and, finally, a giant inflated "mountain" and the entrance to the slide.

Vivian zoomed down the slide.

It popped out right near the toddler play area, and we discovered a regular path on one side of it and a "challenge" climbing path on the other side.  Vivian proceeded to climb the challenge side and slide down repeatedly, while Elena did some serious block stacking.

The girls played at each area at least twice, and, before we knew it, our three hours were up.  We found a taxi,  and Young and I got two worn out girls back to the hotel.

Jeff got there shortly after we did.  The room was great.  There was a large kitchen, dining, living area, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and two balconies.  We spent some time just relaxing and enjoying the view.

One of the buildings we could see from our balcony was the "robot building" which Vivian had learned about in her art class.  She was super excited to be able to see it in real life.  After a while, we ordered room service for Young and the girls, got changed, and headed up to the roof for the sunset.

Zoom's menu was pretty limited, so it was definitely not top tier rooftop dining, but there was a wonderful breeze, happy hour went until 8:00pm, and they gave us great seats to watch the sun set, so we enjoyed it.

The sun went down, and the city lights came on, including a building that put on a moving light show.

We enjoyed the lights, our dinner, and some more buy one get one free drinks.  Eventually though, we decided we should go back down to the room and make sure the girls were settled into bed.  We must have really worn Elena out, because she went into her pack and play with no complaints and went right to sleep.  Jeff and I stayed up and watched The Man from Uncle, which was really fun.

Unfortunately, the next morning, Elena made us pay for her no fight night by giving us a fighting morning starting at 3am.  I got her to go back to sleep, but she popped up again every hour, and, finally, at 6, I gave up and took her out to the living room.  Vivian and Young showed up shortly after that, and Young sent me back to bed until 7, when we all went down to breakfast together.  

The breakfast restaurant was only on the second floor, but something about the location made it a wind tunnel.  Elena kept saying "My hair blowing!"

Young tried to get a family picture for us, but Elena was too distressed about her hair to be able to smile properly.

Even though we couldn't get a great family picture, it was definitely a great family staycation.