feb 21 - singapore to malaysia

The hotel breakfast place was open again, but despite being open at 7:00am as posted they said they were not opening until 7:30am.   Oh well.

Took a walk and ended up in front of Tak Po, the Dim Sum restaurant (what a surprise!) and it was finally OPEN again!

So I sat down and ordered breakfast, trying for slightly different items than before.   Also, instead of ordering my normal Chinese or jasmine tea I went for

the Milk Tea on the bet that this was what I'd had yesterday on Arab Street.   It was!   Yum!!!

So after finishing my Dim Sum I waddled back to the hotel and went into their breakfast area, but only to have some orange juice, a few pieces of fruit (pineapple, papaya and watermelon), and a small

bowl of dry cereal with milk (special-K or corn flakes).   Then back up to my room to enter all of this in and -- you guessed it -- take a nap!    I really don't want to head out for more food until around 11am as

I don't believe any major hawker stands will be open until then and right now I'm so full from the above wonderful Dim Sum.

So I headed out again in the early afternoon and thought I would go back to the "Newton Street Food Court" on the MRT exit.   I spent a little time getting there only to find out that the entire place was

still more or less shutdown for Chinese new years!   Weird as its not in Chinatown, and many things in Chinatown (like the Dim Sum place) are now back open.  Oh well.   Hopped back one MRT to Orchid Street

"Mall" area and their food court was open and more or less in full swing.   I just wanted a snack at this point, so I went to a Tea House and got two dessert items and, just to be different, a cofe-milk (which 

is milked coffee).   Verysimilar somewhat sweet frothy coffee version of the tea I'd had in the morning and very much to my liking.    The pastry on the left was a piece of green colored cake with a little bit of whipped sour frosting (I think it was almost a creamed cheesecake type of frosting on top) -- probably green was pistachio, but not entirely sure.   The baked bun on the right was very flakey and filled with an almond colored sweet paste, probably lotus.

Also very good.

I passed by another dessert place on my way out and took these photos of their counter -- I was tempted but since I was already buzzed on the two desserts + coffee I skipped getting any.

I know my chocoholic friends will be upset!

Before leaving the Orchid Road mall area I stopped by a store and bought some nail clippers and dental floss -- hadn't brought clippers and needed a pair and had probably left my dental floss in Japan 

as I am sure I packed and used it but wasn't able to find it when I looked.   Got these items and hopped the MRT to head back to my hotel for, yes, another nap!

Unfortunately when I arrived housekeeping was just about ready to clean my room, so I gave them a tip for the last few days and headed out again around the corner for some additional lunch.

Really at this point I probably could have done without, but since I had to be out of the room for 30-45 minutes I figured this was an easy solution.    I just went up the hill a block to one of the

shophouse garage stands and decided to get a fish-head curry with rice as that is on the list of things to get in Singapore that I had not done yet.   It was, of course, too much food of me, but what I did eat of

it was a nice flakey soft white fish with the flesh falling off the bones in a flavorful but not too spicy curry sauce.   I also got a canned drink of passionfruit tea, bottled by Coca-Cola Singapore.   Boy I wish they

had this back in the US -- it was not super sweet, really just right, and was really good and refreshing.

After eating what I could (I couldn't finish it all) I waddled back to the hotel, uploaded these image and -- once again -- took a nap!

Did not feel like a big dinner so I did a little R&D on the Internet and found what looked like a really good Tiramisu place just one subway ride away.

I hopped on the subway and headed to Clark Quay to check it out.   Unfortunately, although I found it turns out that even they were closed due to Chinese New Years!

Ack!    Fortunately upstairs there was another bread and pastry place that was open.   I got myself a piece of Tiramisu cake, a chocolate

croissant and a mango tart.

Yum!  That all hit the spot!    I walked around the area -- pretty much a touristy zone with lots of high end tourist restaurants.   It was hot so I got some Lychee Ice Cream from one of the places, but also

decided that the "main food" places were all too much food for me, so I ate my ice cream while walking around and then headed back on the MRT to Chinatown.

After getting back to Chinatown I decided to get a little protein for dinner and went back to TakPo, my default Dim Sum place.

Dinner was good but I was actually full.   So I went back to the hotel to clean up and watch a little TV before heading to the MRT to get to the bus that would take me to the Train Station later tonight.

I took a little time to enter the above items and also to take a picture of the rather cool room I've been staying in.    It's pretty boutique -- and since my room is a rather "rectangular" corner of Hotel 1929

its layout internally is very cool   When you walk in you see the bed and a sink and then a "combined" walk-in shower that also houses the toilet.    I have 3 windows that are shuttered on the outside and

look out towards, in part, the road with a little temple that I've mentioned earlier.    Here's a picture of the room as well as the temple (the last one taken from the road, not from my hotel room)

Watched some TV until it was time to leave (~9:15pm) and headed with my luggage over to the MRT station in Chinatown for a bit of a ride to the Woodlands

MRT station.   Took about 35-40 minutes to get there and then I had to go downstairs and figure out which bus to get onto to get to the woodlands checkpoint

staiton, which is where trains leaving for Malaysia take of from.    This ended up being a bit tricky -- I had a 'cheat sheet' that the MRT office had given me

listing multiple buses that I could take, so getting onto a bus wasn't too much of problem.   However, that cheat sheet didn't say which station name or stop number

to get off at!   The bus driver either didn't like foreigners or really really didn't speak a word of english, so he was no help.  Intact, he gave every indication that my

visitor MRT card wouldn't let me on the bus (which it did -- as soon as I swiped it on the reader and it lit up green he didn't have much of a choice but to acknowledge that

I was okay getting on the bus, but he wasn't going to help me get off!)   Fortunately I asked some ladies near me and one older one tried to be very helpful and let me know

which stop, though she wasn't sure if it was stop 10 or 11.   Another younger lady who lives in Malaysia and commutes daily to work in Singapore saved the day by 

stepping up and getting involved -- she even walked me to the station as she had to pass through it to walk over the border herself!   Very nice of both of them.

Anyway, made it to the station about ten minutes before customs line was going to open up and got at the end of the line at 11pm.  The line moved fairly quickly and I was

soon through "exit" immigration for Singapore and then through "entrance" immigration for Malaysia.   I got onto the train and found my sleeper berths and get settled in.

Here's a photo I took of the sleeper berth area (I actually bought both the upper and lower as I wasn't sure which station I'd start at and figured it would be a win to have 

no one sleeping above me  (or below me) in case anyone was loud -- turns out it wasn't necessary, everyone was very quiet and respectful, so noise wasn't an issue.

The only 'bad news' on this trip was that even though my berth was about 3 beds into the car, the car in front of us was the bathroom car and

bathrooms on these cars are basically toilets with 'holes' that just drop out under the train.   The issue was that the entire car had a very unpleasant 

urine smell in the background.   Ugh!    All I could do was wipe all the surfaces down in my bed area with the antiseptic stuff I brought with me, put on 

my long pants and my fleece jacket (the air conditioner was on a bit, so this wasn't a heat problem).   I also put a spare shirt over the pillowcase, just to be

safe.    Ugh!    I didn't sleep all that well on the ~7 hour train ride, but then again I wasn't up all night.   All in all it was an experience, but not one that I

think I would bother repeating at this point.