Sunday, January 16, 2011

Singapore/Malaysia Day 10: Orchard Road adventure

November 30, 2010
Singapore Day 10: Orchard Road adventure

Today I took a couple of photos on the way to work. There is an AMAZING building near the Dhoby Ghaut MRT station called "SOTA", the School of the Arts, Singapore. It's an amazing piece of architecture and some student work posted to the side of the building looks truly inspiring. I said to Matt that if we grew up in Singapore I bet we would have worked like crazy to get into that place!

For lunch I headed to Tampines Mall with Jess and Matt, on a search for this darn bathing suit for the present drive at the hotel. I was determined to find it! There was a Disney Store there and I thought we were definitely in luck - and they had an excellent pink dress with Belle on it from Beauty and the Beast, but no bathing suits!! Arrrgh! Anyway the scavenger hunt continued as I was super determined to find that girl the gift she wanted for Christmas.

We went to a Japanese place for lunch and I got some Okonomiyaki and I said "Arrigato Goziamas" to the waiters and they thought that was hilarious. I wanted one without pork or seafood, so he gave me a free "egg upgrade" which was nice. I got a Pocari Sweat (Japanese Gatorade) for lunch too which was great. After lunch we headed by a donut store called "JPops Donuts" and they had some interesting flavours: Avocado, Peanut Butter & Coffee, etc. Amazing! There was a sign for Timbits/Donut holes that said, "Baby Donuts... is born!" Hilarious.

At the end of the day Matt was tired and headed back to the hotel, and I took off on an adventure with Jess and Leila. We went to Orchard Road and to the Orchard iON mall, and it turns out you could go inside the glitter tree!! It was very cool. We spent a while wandering and trying to find "Forum" a mall with a lot of kids stuff. We kept getting different directions from different people, it was pretty crazy. But we eventually got oriented the right way and found lots of good stuff along the way. We walked by a bread/bakery store called "Bread Society" and Leila LOVED it. It was really good and I got an excellent flan with berries.

We then found Marks and Spencer and I bought my Dad a Christmas Cake there. In the single underpass between the Orchard iON mall and the other side of the road, we spent 1 hr there going between different shops, ate at like 3 places, and then finally got to the other side of the road! There was an Orange Julius there so I tried a small Mango Julius which rocked. We were almost there and finally found the Forum mall. There was a swimsuit store and it was... CLOSED!!!!!!!!! No!!!!!!! But there was a Toys R Us there and they didn't have the exact kind of suit I was looking for, but it was pretty good. It was more like a 2-piece wetsuit/surfing suit but it was good and mostly pink so I hope the girl from the present drive likes it. The lady at Toys R Us wrapped it for me which is great.

We headed back to Orchard iON area and Jess saw a sweet $8000 watch. Crazy. We got some steamed rice and the stationary store we visited gave us all HUGE shopping bags so we could carry our stuff/advertise for them. :) Whew, another exciting day and I dropped off the present with the folks at the front desk at the hotel. It was "due" that evening so I'm glad I managed to find it. Another busy day!

Amazing building for the "School of the Arts" in Singapore. Apparently this is actually a high school!! Wow. If I lived in Singapore I would have worked like crazy to get in here...

Cathay Mall near our hotel area (see how foggy the lens gets? That's allllll the humidity!)

Another view of the SOTA

Christmas Lights at the Orchard Ion Mall

Christmas tree outside of Orchard Ion

You could also walk inside the Christmas Tree! It was really cool in there.

Finally, we found a mall that sold stuff for kids so I could buy the bathing suit I was trying to find for the Christmas present drive. We saw some funny stuff there like this add for "Ergonomics for Children".

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