Southeast Asia Vacation, Part 1: Singapore

 I must admit (and brag a bit): I am a very lucky lady.  My husband is amazing in so many ways and my life with him is so totally different than I ever expected.  Some days this is not a good thing, but the majority of days, it is.  His job and employer have allowed us to see and experience parts of the world I never expected to see.  I love that we are adventurous enough to choose to live in Japan.   And I also love that since we're in Japan, we are closer to awesome places like Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Bali. We recently took two weeks to see these beautiful cities and island and I would love to share the highlights with you.

First up, Singapore!

Why Singapore?   Well, one simple reason:  We can fly there for free with the huge military perk of Space Available (Space A) travel.  Basically, the US military has a lot of planes that perform a lot of missions every day.  Some of these missions are completely safe, transporting cargo or people from one base to another, or well, I'm not really sure what.  But I do know that they often have extra seats open on the planes, and to boost morale, active duty military, their dependents, and retirees can use these extra seats to travel for free.   There is a lot of paperwork involved and it's not the most dependent form of travel, as the flights are often earlier than planned, delayed, or even cancelled, but if you're patient (and do lots of research!) the free flight is worth the hassle. The Air Force base close to us, Yokota, has regular missions to Singapore.  Therefore it is easy for us to plan a trip.   We were worried about getting a seat on the plane, but we didn't have any issues getting there or getting back. 

Our Hotel, Kam Leng.  We stayed just outside of the downtown area, close to the Little India area.  It was a small hotel, but very cool inside. 

 

This was pretty much it!

And the bathroom, very open.

Inside the 24 hour food court across the street from our hotel.  Lots of options.

We started the trip off with great ambition and went for a run around the Marina Bay area.  Sadly, it was the only time we got some exercise.   But I did make some stops on my run to take some fun shots.   Here's the Double Helix Bridge with the Marina Bay Sands Hotel off to the left.

It was such a beautiful day!

More of downtown

Lau Pa Sat Fesival Market is famous for their satay and the Merlion is the national symbol of Singapore.

Looked impressive enough!

The Merlion and the Marina Bay Sands.

We found a lovely roof top bar to get some delicious drinks.

I know, enough of the fancy hotel pictures already!  But Bryan and I like to take pictures of us with our feet in front of cool places.   Strange, but we like them. 

Nice views from the Singapore Flyer (Ferris wheel):  the bay and the Gardens.  We didn't go to the Gardens because we heard that a lot of them were closed for some reason the day we wanted to go.   But if I ever go back to Singapore, I would definitely visit.

Game of soccer, anyone?

In the Flyer

In the Little India area

Masjid Sultan mosque, just off Arab Street

Haji Lane, which has some unique shops.  We got our elephant souvenir here.

Condom cars!

Singapore is currently proud of their status as a "Garden City".  However, they have bigger dreams.  They want to be known as "The City in the Garden".   This is Orchard Road, which has some beautiful parks, but is famous for it's many huge shopping malls.

Visiting Lau Pa Sat was on the top of our Things To Do In Singapore list.  The heavenly smells of the satay was worth the trip alone!

They close down the street at exactly 7:00 every evening and in about 30 seconds they have lots of tables set up.  I though it was just for one business, but several vendors hand out their menus and compete for your business.

Love prawns!  And these ones were seasoned and grilled to perfection.  Salty on the outside, sweet on the inside.

Which do I eat first??  Chicken or mutton??  Can't choose, so both!

What big city doesn't have a Chinatown??

Nothing special, but I like this picture that Bryan took.

Time to leave Singapore.  The Changi Airport is so fancy!  In fact, it was rated the best in the world.   I'm not at all surprised.  So clean, open and bright.  They have customer feedback stations (ipads mounted to the wall, asking you to rate the services) everywhere, including in the bathroom.   They also had free game areas, computer usage, wi-fi, phone charging stations, and yes, foot and calf massages. 

All in all, Singapore was beautiful!  We also stayed one night on our way back to Japan.  It was a rainy day, but we were exhausted from our other destinations, so it was nice to just relax.    Since it's so easy and free for us to get to, I'm guessing we'll go back.  There are sill plenty of things for us to see and do, including eating more satay :-)