Thursday, December 27, 2007

Day 1 @ Singapore

Part 1

On this day, we woke up as early as 7.30am to get ready for our 10.30am. That's was because SIL will be taking us there around 8.30am. The first thing we did when we reached, was to check in. There were already several long queues. Lucky us, they opened another counter and we were alert enough to notice that. Next, we went over to have our breakfast at my favourite fast food, Nando's. Too bad, they only have breakfast set instead of the usual chicken. Anyway, we ordered two sets, one M.GR Scramble-E (RM13.95) and another one M.Roll Breast-E(RM13.95). Both sets include either tea or coffee. Well, something new to us.
Tea for me and coffee for Hubs.GR Scramble Egg
Roll Breast Egg

Right before we down our breakfast, we realised that our seats numbering is separated. Hubs was in 49G and mine was 49E. So who's that in 49F?? Without wasting any time, Hubs rushed over like Superman to clarify it. Little did we know, there is no 49F in the plane. Was the number inauspicious? Didn't hear anything before this. The good thing is they didn't reserve 49F seat and purposely leave it empty (like those in Genting, if you get what I mean). You will never imagine who I saw in the airport. My CEO!!! And he's boarded the same plane. Saw him, waved a lil and moved on. He recognised me, the one who beat him during the drinking match ;p Or maybe he was still trying to recall where he had met me before?

We reached Singapore around 11.30am. Once there, we searched for the Uniquely Singapore counter. All this hassle was to get the Hippo Tour free ticket as stated here. The uncle who served us was not that nice. When we asked him for direction to our hotel using MRT, he sarcasticly answered us, " You think it's near? Haha....". HELLO! If we know, we wouldn't have approach you in the first place. Hubs was agitated and snapped back at him. Then only he felt a lil paiseh and said, "Well, it's raining. So taxi will be better." As if his son is the taxi driver, so he promoted for him. Do you know how convenient is the MRT? It's just a mere 10 mins walk from my hotel. If we were to follow his suggestion, God knows how much we have to spend on the fare instead of less than 2 dollar on MRT.

Ok, so using the map, we rode the MRT and walk under the drizzle rain and WAALLA!Our lovely marvelous spectacular Scarlet Hotel. We were mesmerized even with the outlook only. A little peep into the restaurant from the window, we felt head over heal in love with them.The lobby was amazing too, with different sofas on each corner. They even put up the chirstmas tree, UPSIDE DOWN. See, isn't that lovely? It saved space too.All these admiration stopped abruptly when we wanted to check in. Apparently, our reservation was cancelled. Without our acknowledgment! Here's how the story goes. We booked and done the whole payment to Komtar Tour & Travel during the last Matta Fair. We double confirmed the booking a month after the payment was done and was assured everything settled. Komtar Tour engaged with Quantum Reservation in Singapore to book Scarlet Hotel. However, the lady who handle our package had resigned and so Komtar Tour did not follow up with payment to Quantum. Thus, they cancelled our booking somewhere around October. If it was not bad enough, that day is a public holiday both for Malaysia and Singapore. Calls were made to Komtar and Quantum from Hubs and hotel receptionist, Winnie. Good thing is that time was not peak period yet. So there was still available rooms. We were given a room but we'll have to bear the payment in case they didn't receive anything from the travel agent. Komtar Tour agent said something about faxing over the invoice later. We have no choice but to wait for them to send over the payment. After giving them the details, we were brought to our room. Again the admiration continued.Yup, our room number is very auspicious. The black box below the number was the door bell and to the right of the picture was a leather pouch-like post box one for each door. We had the standard room. There are two types of design for standard room. I wasn't sure if they gave me the one with the roof window because we told them we were on honeymoon. But we sure are very happy with the room itself. Have a look yourself.
Picture taken from their websitePicture taken from my own digicam

Apart from the angle, I didn't see any difference. They are living up to their pictures. That is so good! Even the toilet was so beautiful I took picture of every corner.By now, you should have realise I'm CC (camera crazy). My passion for photo taking started when Hubs got me Canon IXUS850 IS. But that story for another day. After finish taking photos of every single corners in the room, we were ready to embark the journey of shopping. The first to go was Chinatown, also know as Niu Che Shui (Bullock Cart Water). Nothing much to talk about. Stalls selling mostly feng shui stuff at 10 dollar for 3 items. Pretty cheap but I don't know how to appreciate. We only bought some new year deco and pillow case there. It was already 3pm but we have yet to have our lunch. We saw stalls in Smith Street which has the feel of Petaling Street. We ordered the famous Peanut Soup and a Kuey Chiap.
This is nice. The tong yuan has lots of filling. You can choose to have several flavors in one bowl. Hubs ordered 2 peanut filing, 1 red bean and 1 green tea. The peanut was delicious, red bean was nothing to shout and the green tea tasted weird. Probably I only like green tea in the form of liquid tea. As for the kuey chaip, pricing at 4.50 per it comes with a bowl of kuey teow and a plate of intestine. All this while I do not favor kuey chiap but it's Hubs fav. However, this tasted nothing like the look it gave. It has strong pig smell . Even before I ate it, I can already smell the piggy smell. Hubs complained that it was no where near good.

After late lunch, we went back to hotel and take a good rest before continuing our journey to Orchard Rd. Stay tune for Part 2 of Day1

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