The Marina Bay Sands Hotel deserves its own post. It’s an impressive building and currently the most expensive in the world. You get near it and your jaw drops at how expansive it is. There are three (tall!) towers and what looks like a ship on the top. On our last day, Ben, Abby, and I ventured all the way up. When I say venture, it means we paid a nice fee to have an elevator quickly take us to their Sky Park.

Once you get to the top, you have to pause to catch your breath, especially if you’re afraid of heights. You’re just in awe of the gorgeous view and how extremely high up you are. Then you get close to the glass ledge, and you get a little freaked out when you look down. If your imagination starts going wild, like mine was, you slowly inch your way back to the center. Ben couldn’t even get himself to the ledge, and I needed to coax him for the pictures. We planned our trip to the top right around sunset, so we could we enjoy our last evening in Singapore by having a bird’s eye view of this special country. The view was absolutely breathtaking and it was the best way to spend our last evening there. We didn’t ride the Singapore Flyer in favor of spending our money to go to the top of the MBS, and I’m glad we made that decision.

One thing we really wanted to do was to go to the infinity pool of the hotel, but you have to be a guest at the hotel to go. We looked up what one night might be, and yeah… not in the budget. We didn’t want to go that badly.

The hotel also puts on an impressive light show in the evenings. While we were on the Sky Park deck, people were just waiting on the around for it. I’m sure the view from the top would have been beautiful, but we wanted to spend our last few hours in the city eating, so we skipped out watching the light show. Plus, we already saw it a few days prior from the Esplanade Plaza. I’m sure the view from the top was better, but we were still awed by the spectacular light show from where we were.

If you want to read more of our adventures is Singapore, check out the hawker food culture, all the food we ate, around town, their plant nurseries, more around town, and their wet markets.

This is more of us roaming around Singapore, and you get a one picture of us with our bowls of food (we ate so much there!). There will probably be two more posts just of all the different food we tried; we wanted to try as many new dishes as we could! Ben and I seriously walked everywhere, as well as the MRT (their subway system), and my friend, Abby (pictured above), was the best tour guide. Not only did she take us all over the place, she knew so much about Singaporean history and we loved hearing all her stories. All her stories made this country come alive for us even more, and it deepened our appreciation for this city/country.

Pictured above is Haji Lane, Chinatown, Botanic Gardens, Fountain of Wealth, and more bits of Singapore.

In these photos you see some of the touristy things we did in Singapore…

Gardens by the Bay: Such an expansive garden and there was no way we would be able to cover it all, but we walked around until the heat and our legs told us we had enough. Ben really enjoyed the fruit tree section of it and was reading up all he could, and he would look up additional info on his phone to find out more! There were so many plants I wanted to bring home, and The Supertree Grove is so cool. I wanted to walk across the suspension bridge, but after Cloud Forest, Ben was not up to being so far up from the ground.

Cloud Forest Dome: This was this amazing (air conditioned) indoor conservatory with lots of beautiful greenery and a man-made waterfall. You go all the way to the top and walk down, but Ben was freaking out because you can see through the walkway that leads you down (and you’re pretty high up), so he was walking as fast as he can. You can totally see his nervous face in the picture; he was freaking out so much that I started freaking out.

Singapore Flyer: This is Singapore’s version of the London Eye. We went to go see it (and think about riding it), but once we got close, that was good enough for Ben. The thought of being trapped in that thing for 30 minutes was making him uncomfortable. HA! We made a deal though, we would skip out on the flyer, but we would go to the Skypark at Marina Bay Sands (the towers that look like it has a ship on the top) to see the view. He agreed, so I was happy with that deal.

We also took a tour on the river (thank you to one of you for the suggestion!), and I’m so glad we did that because we learned a lot about the history of this beautiful country. I enjoyed hearing about the how this was once a bustling seaport, how the British came to conquer, and the influence they had in developing this country. I loved imagining what it might have been like here long ago.

I still have so much to share about this wonderful sunny island; Singapore is so rich in beauty, diversity, and deliciousness, that’s it’s just not possible to contain in one post.

We ate so much in Singapore! There are hawker centers all over the city, which are outdoor food courts of sorts, and they are filled with a wide array of food. Singapore’s cuisine is very diverse, a good mirror of the people and culture in Singapore. There’s a lot of Malay, Chinese, Indian influences (and plenty more cultural influences) in the cuisine and out of all the food we tried, there was just one dish we couldn’t go past one bite.

Each day in Singapore was basically a food tour of the various hawker centers. For one of our lunches there, we even hit up two different hawker centers! Of course, we did other tourist things (see here and here), but the highlight of it all was the food (and the people we became friends with). We went to hawker center after hawker center, and even within one hawker center, we would try a few dishes from one aisle, then move over and try more from the next aisle. I’m thankful that the ladies at Bloesem gave us good tips, and my friend Abby took us to all the best places to experience all the delicious dishes Singapore has to offer.

We learned about “chopping” that would happen at the food centers. “Chopping” is when people would leave a tissue (or a pack of tissue), and I’ve even seen someone leave their work badge, on the table to signify that the seat was taken, and people would respect that. It looked like this… you would enter the food center, find an open table or spot, place your tissue, then walk away to go order your food, and once you have your food, you come back to your tissue and sit down. Everyone knew that seat was spoken for and it was respected. By day 2 of our time at the food centers, we were participating in the seat “chopping” too.

Another thing we learned are meals are more of a community thing among friends. We’re used to each ordering our own dish, and eating our own dish, and maybe sharing a bite or two with each other if we ask. In Singapore, if you’re there with a group of friends, it’s more common to put the food in the middle and just share everything, no asking necessary. It’s not a “this is mine that is yours” kind of deal, but we all share the dishes together. Again, by day 2, we were totally participating in community meals with our friend Abby.

I have so much more to share about the food there, so there will be an entire post (and it will be really long!) dedicated to all the foods we ate there. Seriously, ever since Singapore, I’ve had a deeper appreciation and love for Asian food.

One of our favorite dishes in Singapore was Hainanese Chicken Rice. My friend Abby, who also was our tour guide when we were there, has been learning from her grandmother how to make this delectable and aromatic dish, so she came over to teach us.

She also taught us how to make chicken rice balls, and the girls loved getting in on the action. It looks like the simplest dish, but it is really so flavorful. It’s not really a colorful meal, but what it lacks in color, it makes up for it with the magic that happens in every bite. You eat the chicken with the rice, seriously the best rice ever, a little bit of chili sauce, ginger sauce, and dark soy sauce. It’s an amazing dish! Even as I type out this post, I’m craving it. Maybe I should change this week’s meal plan to include chicken rice.

Abby created a film about her grandmother and how to make chicken rice. The film is actually more than that; it also weaves the story of her grandmother’s making of chicken rice with Singapore’s language policies and its changes. I had the honor of being able to see Abby’s film and it was so beautifully done. You see this older woman passing a priceless gift to her granddaughter. Sure, she’s just teaching her how to cook, but there’s so much depth in it, she is passing down a part of her cultural heritage, part of her story. Now, Abby gets to take that story and mold it into her own. It made me want to go spend more time with my grandparents. In college, I recorded both of my grandparents telling me how they grew up and met, so I’m somewhat familiar with some of their stories, but I’m sure there is so much more I’m missing out on too. I need to find that cassette and keep it in a safe place, so my kids can listen to it one day.

In the film, Abby tells her grandmother, “You taught me how to cook chicken rice. This is my inheritance. This is an inheritance money cannot buy.” How precious is that inheritance indeed!

I’ve had this fabric for several years now and have vacillated on what to do with it. Initially, I wanted to make it like the tie style dress I made here, but then didn’t. Later, I thought it would be a cool romper for one of the girls, but that never happened. A few weeks ago, as I was internet browsing, I happened upon this dress and thought, “Oh that dress and fabric looks fun”, and then remembered I had similar colorful fabric, so I set out to recreate it.

It’s a trapeze dress and I did make the slits on the sides of the dress to slip a matching sash to tie around the waist if I wanted to. Here’s a sketch of the dress shape if you wanted to try your hand at making your own. I didn’t follow that, but what I did was similar. You can’t tell due to the busy pattern of the fabric, but I sewed bust darts.

It’s such a nice lightweight cotton and with it being over 90 degrees on Saturday, it was the perfect thing to wear out. The bag is a souvenir I brought home from my trip to Singapore. It’s a tote of the MRT (public transport) routes, and I tell you, it was so easy to use. I love looking at my bag and remembering all my favorite stops, which then reminds me of all the delicious food we indulged in while there.

on me: dress, handmade. black clogs, c/o lotta from stockholm. bag, from singapore.