[China Town Heritage]
Ara just woke up by 9 a.m. so we went to the China Town heritage area by 10 a.m. and stopped by Tak Po at 42 Smith Street and had breakfast there. I had fragrant rice with chicken (as known as nasi tim in Indonesia) while Ara had rice with pork and vegetables which are nice.
[Tak Po Restaurant]
[rice with pork and vegetable]
[fragrant rice with chicken]
As in other dim sum restaurants, they charge us for appetizer (peanuts with salt) and wet tissue we didn't even touch. This was really upsetting but well we ate the nuts so we had to pay. Be careful with this, friends. Next time they serve those things you better give them back and say you don't need them so you wouldn't be charged for it all.
[Smith Street in the morning]
After stuffed we walked along the streets and stopped at the kiosks and bought a set of cushion covers and a table runner for Mum and pashminas for myself. Satisfied with the purchase (I got them for cheaper price cuz I bargained there) we went back to the flat, checked out from there and continued our journey by MRT to Kallang.
[me with the luggage]
There we walked for about 10 minutes to Lorong 8 Geylang and checked in to Hotel 81 for it had better price and quality we want. Tho the room was small, it was provided with hot water, all basic hotel equipment and also TV with HBO channel, but no cupboard/refrigerator. But it was okay since we didn't really need them. The most important is, the room was clean.
[room 617 we got--much better than the flat, wasn't it?]
[at least the bathroom was clean and comfortable]
[view from our room--so fresh!]
Geylang is a pretty famous area in Singapore, but because it's a red light district area. Actually it's not really dangerous staying there if you're around the street before 12 a.m. and the chinese food are really nice there. The hotels are cheap, too, probably the cheapest hotels in all Singapore, but be careful when you pick hotels. Hotel 81 and Fragrance are clean and assured budget hotels with quality, but I don't know with others.
[the restaurant of the corner of Lor 9 and Geylang Road]
[best kway teow at Lor 9]
[IKEA Alexandra]
After freshen up a bit we started walking again, this time to Queenstown. We took a 195 bus and stopped right in front of IKEA Alexandra and had such mad shopping for stuff there--mostly for my Mum but I went crazy when seeing nice furniture/home accessories like that, in such affordable price. We spent about 2 hours there and still had to pack the stuff by ourselves for I bought many things made of glasses.
[Ara eating the $1 hotdog]
Tired of shopping, we bought hotdogs and a glass of cola. They're really nice because we spent and needed a lot of energy that day. So after recharged the energy, we walked to Queensway Shopping Center to find shoes for Ara.
[see the shopping bag Ara was carrying? 10 kgs of glasses and cloth.
Imagine how tortured the journey we had that afternoon!]
[Queensway Shopping Centre, mostly selling sport goodies for guys]
[one of the shoe shop in Queensway]
Too bad the shoes aren't the quality he was looking for, so we went back to hotel by bus 197 (afraid that MRT would take longer so we took bus. But the bus stopped more often and longer so we spent almost 1 hour on street. But thankfully they have bus stop near the hotel so we didn't have to walk too far this time.)
[walking back to the hotel]
We dropped our shopping bag in the room and walked to the MRT station to go to Orchard right away. W was waiting for us at Swensen's and we went to Far East together in search of shoes and shirts Ara wanted. We also had dinner there and after that we went back to the MRT station and get separated.
[Orchard at night from Ngee Ann City to ION]
[stores at Far East Plaza ]
W was going home but we still continued browsing the mall. We went around the underground of Wisma Atria and got mad of branded stuff on sale but finished at around 10 p.m. for they were closing. We bought bread for breakfast at Bread Talk and walked all the way back to the hotel with our almost broken legs. Once we met the bed, we couldn't help but giving foot massage for each other before sleep. Tired, but we felt great!
