Author: JT

I met up with my friend Sue and her boyfriend and two more friends for dinner on Sunday,

Starting from City Hall MRT, it’s a 15 minute walk through underground shopping arcades to and malls to reach the Esplanade on the north side of Marina Bay.

We ate a tasty seafood dinner at the open-air hawker centre with a view on the water, despite it threatening to rain (luckily we only got a handful of drops, as the covered tables were all taken). Family style of course. With a beer, dinner came to S$23/US$18 each.
While I enjoyed the stingray and always enjoy trying something new, I don’t think it was worth the premium price (though not as expensive as chilli crab!)

Good conversation, nice to meet new people, good food, being outdoors. Excellent evening!

After dinner we walked south along the bridge (towards Merlion Park) to watch the nightly light show put on by the Marina Bay Sands hotel (both laster lights and a lit fountain).

Some tidbits of enlightenment about life in Singapore from that evening (i.e. from locals):

• Singaporeans go for the 5 C’s: credit card, career, condo, car and carat (as in wedding ring). i.e. big families are certainly not a priority with mine and younger generations
• Before you can buy a car, you have to get a COE – Certificate of Entitlement. There are limited numbers of these auctioned off each month, sometimes as high as S$80,000/US$64,000!!!
• The other way the gov’t limits cars in the city core is via ERP – Electronic Road Pricing on various roads/times in the core city. Every car has a little transponder box on the dashboard.
• Good places for walks in gardens/outdoors: Southern Ridges (parks connecting to Mt Faber), Singapore Botanical Gardens, MacRitchie (tree-top walk), Sungei Bulok, Lower Pierce, Bukit Timah Nature Reserve