Cheaper Than I Thought

Okay, so correction from yesterday: Everything in Singapore is CHEAPER than in America. Yesterday I said it was a little above American prices, when in actuality I was converting the Singapore dollar equal to the US dollar, when the conversion is 1 US Dollar buys you 1.51 Singapore Dollars. So in actuality, things are pretty cheap here. Our cabs are cheap and we ate a terrific meal for 3 with 2 large fresh squeezed juices for lunch for $15.00 Singapore dollars, which was almost $10 US dollars. I can't even buy us fast food in America for that cheap. Now I understand why Expats love it here.

So this morning we slept in, again. We're still adjusting our jetlag. Woke up to a gorgeous day. Made it outside about noon and headed straight for the Maxwell Road Food Center, where Anthony Bourdain swears one can find the best Chicken and Rice in all of Singapore. If you haven't seen his episode of No Reservations on Singapore, watch it. You can download it from iTunes Store. In the episode he talks about why the way THIS chicken and rice place, Tian Tian, cooks their food makes is so good. Anyway, the Hawker Center--as they are so called here--is, in essence, a glorified foodcourt. But a big one with LOTS of choices of food. And at Tian Tian in Maxwell Road Food Center, the line hinted that this place just might be THAT good. It was the only place with a line. All the other hawker stands had maybe one person in line. But Tian Tian had a 10-15 minute wait for food. So was it really worth it? Yes. DELICIOUS! Really good and a great local experience. Afterwards we got fresh squeezed papaya/mango juice and fresh-squeezed carrot juice. Really yummy...and did I mention cheap?


Maxwell Road Food Court is across the way from Singapore's China Town, so we took a stroll and found a place to buy some really great "Lawrence of Arabia" scarves for Dave and Declan and I. They seem to have a thriving Sunday market with almost anything under the sun available to buy.
Then we headed to the Arab part of town to walk around. The Arabs here seem to specialize in rugs (big surprise there) and textile/fabric--especially silks. After browsing a bit, it started to look like rain was abrewin, so we decided to alight to a hole in the wall "turkish tea house". David got to smoke a Shisha, apple flavored. And he had a turkish coffee and I had a generic drink (no caffeine for this nursing moms). We sat at a table next to the alley-like road (though hardly any cars could pass down the narrow passage), under an eave and watched the rain start to fall. Actually it poured. Declan fell asleep in the stroller, and I held the baby. It was a relaxing and enjoyable way to spend a Sunday afternoon. And funny enough, just as we were thinking it might be time to catch a cab home, a cab appeared in the rain, right in front of the little restaurant, saving us a long walk back in the rain to the major thoroughfare. And now we're home, waiting out the storm, and waiting for Dave's parents to arrive from Switzerland. So here we are, doing one of my favorite things during a rain storm--having tea and cookies, together.