As soon as I came into the Changi Airport, I could feel the amazing beauty of the country. The spaciousness and the amazing transit from Airport’s Terminal 3 to Terminal 2 to catch the MRT was the beginning of an amazing journey. I entered the train with some more folks and some  air hostesses who had arrived via Air Canada flights and were probably heading to their respective hotels. The train just took me in a jiffy to the Terminal from where I got the MRT to go to Pasir Ris. After a bit of struggle operating the MRT card system, I managed to get my ticket and board the MRT. That was something I was going to get used to soon 🙂

The place was so vacant and felt so amazingly clean and neat it wasn’t even funny. As soon as I arrived in Singapore on Saturday I checked into my hostel at Costa Sands! As soon as I arrived in Singapore, I truly was Enchanté (French: Delighted to Meet You) Indeed, the country/city/island has a beauty that mesmerizes anyone… The most amazing thing about this place is its penchant for a certain meticulous way of life is what caught my attention. Yet it brings quite a certain delight for first time visitors especially with it’s multitude of cultural diversity and to be able to bump in with almost any kind of people from the world and for that matter to be able to visit places and eat food which is in the truest sense, ethnically and worldly different. Out of the world is the phrase to best express myself in this context.

Being a backpacker, I booked a Youth Hostel (Hosteling International) reservation online well in advance, and here I was at the Costa Sands Resort in Downtown East… One of the most interesting things I felt after staying here in the hostel is that, it wasn’t actually a hostel at all… It was more like a four star hotel with three people staying in one room… Surprisingly, no one was checked in for the first three days and later on, Sam from Taiwan came along… He was here for work and mostly out during the day… But yeah, the overall feeling was great… Loved the discipline and the meticulous way Singapore has built itself. Being quite a small place and with population round about 4.5 million, I guess it’s easier to do… But overall the feel was pretty good as soon as I entered.

Since I’m on the go I’ll go ahead and share my Photo Travelogue for now… I hope you enjoy the beauty of Singapore through my blog and most certainly once I get back home, a beautiful story about the sojourns of Singapore is in order and you shall certainly receive it.

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My dorm at the Costa Sands Resort @ Downtown East

A view from my dorm room

My first meal in Singapore – Mixed Vegetable Garlic Chicken rice… Ate it to my tummy’s fill and yeah, with Chopsticks… 🙂

Post lunch I met up with a friend who’s just got a job here recently and started working in Singapore… We strolled around the Marina Bay Area and checked out some amazing sights at the River HangBo festival that was happening.

The view of the other side of the Marina Bay from the Helix Bridge

The amazingly beautiful, Lotus Shaped Arts & Science Center

The beautiful and colourful Hangbo River festival

We strolled around and checked out various interesting installations and walked a bit to the different installations of the astrological signs that were present there… Very beautiful and decorated nicely, this truly showed how much significance the Chinese New Year has during this time of the year in Singapore. In fact, we were lucky enough to get a few chocolates from the Giver of Fortune…. Usually it’s tradition amongst Chinese to give oranges, gifts, red envelopes filled with money, bonuses to the employees by the employers and in this case some chocolates were being distributed by someone dressed as the fortune giving man. (Don’t exactly know what he’s called yet.)

The Chinese giver of fortune

These are actual moving installations, which were moving as if they were playing music, the birds wings were actually moving.

Paper puppets installation at the Hangbo River Festival

Once we were done visiting the place, we headed to grab some food at a local old hawker center… Before that I couldn’t resist but to get a glimpse of the beautiful night by the bay…

Interesting collection of old / antique items found in the Old Hawker center near Marina Bay on your way to the High Flyer…

The Buddha Tooth Relic temple near Chinatown

A beautiful sculpture outside this temple

Chinatown at night… Beautiful lanterns especially since its The Chinese New Year

If you are a Tintin aficionado then this is the place for you to be… From keychains, to mugs, to merchandise to comics to DVDs they have almost everything… A bit expensive of course, but you can take your pick….

If you enjoy partying, and you’re a night crawler, then Clarke Quay is the place to be in Singapore!

Generally on Chinatown, you can go grab a bite at any place… Plenty of them good food places especially on Pagoda street. But one of the best you can find is Chinatown Heritage…. Do go there if you are around Chinatown…

I also happened to check out this amazingly spacious, minimalistic Zen like joint at Tanjong Pagar Rd… A Thai Vegan / Veg food joint… Brilliantly healthy and tasty food that I could eat.

If you like Thai and Veg food, then Whole Earth near Tanjong Pagar is the place to be…

The other side of Clarke Quay is Boat Quay… This place is very popular for its sea food… This is near the Parliament House / Arts House…

The Parliament House

The Arts House

This is the place where you’ll find screenings of great artistic shows and collection of brilliant artwork and something that you’ll enjoy if you are a fan of any form of art.

That’s a Half a century old Morris Minor near the Arts House.

And that’s me standing next to it… My undying love for vintage cars is truly undying… Couldn’t resist… 😉

Some really cool graffiti at the underpass around the Boat Quay / Parliament House area..

Some really interesting building structures on the streets of Singapore