Decided on an easier day today. Found a little coffee house on Orchard road for breakfast. I ordered congee, Chinese rice porridge. But it came with this black stuff that tasted incredibly foul. It turned out to be egg marinated in tea. Yep, yummy ; ) After organising some activities for the next couple of days we boarded the MRT again and headed to Chinatown. Out on to Pagoda Street, a very colourful street with tonnes of shops selling mainly touristy stuff. Every forth shop seemed to be a tailor, who tried to pull me into his shop. We dropped into the Sri Mariamman Hindu temple and witnessed a very noisy prayer session (which Ryan slept through). Continuing along the walking tour the smells from some of the shops were very strange. But I guess you can expect that when you also see dried seahorses on sale.
Arrived back at the Thian Hock Keng Temple again to take a less rushed look at that. Then we just decided to walk and see if we could get lost. Tried to find some satay for lunch in a few food centres with little luck. Too early I guess as we saw a lot of women preparing food on the tables, gee that was a lot of chillies. Managed to walk through the financial part of town and Raffles place and found ourselves at the Fullerton Hotel building.
As we were so close to the Merlion we thought we would have another look at it, and take some video of it this time. But several meters short we found a little food stall that sold SATAY. My mission was over. I ordered the 10 satay sticks and Zuz saw something she liked called Roti jon. Bread battered in omelette sort of thing. All it cost was $10, being so close to a major tourist attraction we expected much more. And just quietly it was bloody nice. After snapping another 400 photos at the Merlion and introducing Ryan to the Singapore River we decided to call it an arvo. Back to the MRT station that whisked us away to the hotel. But not before finding a technological marvel. We thought the escalator were dead, not a nice thing when pushing a stroller. But as we were about to climb up it, it started up. Hmm, automatic escalators. Lucky we did not try to go down it, eh? So that was a trap for the unsuspecting traveller.
Had a rest before grabbing our bus leaflet to the Night Safari and headed off. The leaflet said Le Meridion Hotel at 10 to 6. We got there and no one knew anything about it. We were sent in 3 different directions by 3 different people in the end before giving up hope and headed back down the main drag. Obviously someone was looking out for us as not only did the bus drive past, the driver even spotted us waving him down. 30 minutes later we arrived at the Night Safari. We bought our tickets for the Safari, Zoo and Jurong Bird Park. Top value at $30 each. Inside we went and headed straight for the creatures of the night show. Not bad, but dragged on a bit. Now time to explore. It was a very different experience.
