Day 13: Off to Singapore
We woke up at 630am to get ready to fly out of Phuket Airport.  We did enjoy one last rooftop poolside breakfast, and one last look at the beach.  Taxi was 1000bt (a rip off at $34) but we met a fellow Canadian (Montrealer) and we split the fare.

The flight to Singapore took about 90mins, and there is a 1 hour time difference as well.

Singapore is what you hear about - an independent city-state on its own island, that is warm, clean, beautiful and efficient.

I would describe it as a cleaner version of NY, though it is quite a bit smaller with "only" a population under 6 million, and all mixes of Asians.  Most are Chinese, but there are a lot of Malays and Indians (mainly south Indians - like Tamils).

We saw a lot of couples where the guy was Tamil and the girl was Chinese (that sort of thing) and at almost anytime you could overhear a Chinese person speaking Tamil or Malay (or some vice-versa conversation).  It was actuall very cool and you got the sense that everyone got along well.  At no time of day or night did we notice any hint of crime or homelessness.  And rarely saw any garbage of any sort on the trains, the stations, or anywhere else.  It is not surprising that Singapore is considered a model city to the world.

It has an extensive network (the MRT) of interconnected Skytrains and Subways, all of which you only need purchase one EZ-Card and top it up with funds. You even use it on the buses.  We took the fast and easy (and cheap) train (cost was about $3 each to downtown on the East-West line).  We felt really smart until we got off our station, which was still a 15 min walk to our hotel - assuming you don't take any wrong turns - which we did.  After 10 mins lugging our luggage (so that's where the name comes from) in the wrong direction, we went back to the station to "Q" for a cab.

FYI everything is super-organized here - you don't just hail a taxi off the street (we tried).

The taxi only took a few minutes to get to the Nostalgia Hotel - an urban boutique hotel with the tiniest rooms you can imagine.  And this is after we were upgraded to a "superior" suite.  The standard "deluxe" suite must have been a closet.

It was one of those rooms you have to walk sideways in, and you had to squeeze past your luggage.  The shower was superb though - a literal torrent of water.

The hotel itself can be best described as "quaint" - as it was an older hotel that was renovated.  The best part about it is its proximity to multiple MRT stations and to major sights in the city.

We were both getting a little travel weary at this stage, so we rested up a bit before starting our itinerary.  We didn't do a ton of research before arriving (we take our beach time seriously) so we relied on our handy TripAdvisor App on the Tablet which had a nice mapping/GPS function.

We first went to Chinatown, and we finally found Maxwell Hawkers market (kind of like the food court at MBK mall, but in an open and covered area, with dozens of food stalls selling their specialties.  We enjoyed some Rendang Mutton Curry (we will definitely learn how to make this at home) and some fresh sugar cane juice.  Singapore is famous for its Hawker markets, and it is the best place for fast, fresh, and cheap eats.

We saw two beautiful Temples here in Chinatown, one is the Relic Buddha Temple and museum, a huge Buddhist temple with an amazing red and gold "hall of 100 buddhas) and museums showing the history of Buddhism in Singapore on the upper floors.

We then went to a famous Hindu Temple, over 140 years old, and huge, with a large pyramid adorned with Hindu Gods and many murals on the ceilings.



After taking some time to pay our respects here, we wandered around Chinatown, which was a really nice and quite a large and authentic-feeling neighborhood that was in quite a contrast with the Chinatown in Bangkok.  Here Chinatown was no less busy, but without the fumes and noisy chaos that is an everyday part of life in any other Asian metropolis.

We now headed up a couple of statioms to Little India - which truly did remind us of Jaipur and Delhi (but cleaner), with heavy foot traffic and endless markets.

We ended up at Tekka Market, a famous Hawkers market with the entire top floor full of fabric vendors, and the middle level Hawker food stalls, and grocers/butchers at the lower level.

Here we wandered around for a while wondering what to eat (so many delicious options) - and we settled on Mutton Biryani and some layered pratas.  The food was perfect - tasty and cheap.  No dish was more than $5, and many were far less.  With huge portions.

At this point it was getting late, and we were very tired from the flight and the whole day and evening walking around.  We walked around some more and boarded our train again and, this time without issue, found our hotel and passed out.