Singapore
The plan with Lummi was that I would go to Singapore a few days before her, so I flew across the Pacific, arrived on a Saturday afternoon, and subsequently had a Welcome to Singapore, bitch moment when I got trapped in the local grocery store by a sudden downpour. I took my bags and waited it out at the neighboring coffee shop, then went back to the Airbnb, made instant noodles for dinner, watched the thunderstorm from the patio, and passed out from exhaustion.
On Sunday, I worked on my blog in the morning, then met my friend Laurie – who moved to Singapore from San Francisco – for a hawker center lunch. We went to Maxwell Food Center for Tian Tian chicken rice, dumplings, bok choy, sugar cane juice, cendol, and passion fruit juice.
Afterwards, we met her friends for coffee at Merci Marcel, a cute French cafe in Tiong Bahru, before I set out for my Airbnb walking tour in Joo Chiat. Jonathan (the host) took me around several of the neighborhoods, interleaving the city’s history with modern history and, of course, lots of eating: Katong laksa, roti prata, Nyonya sticky rice dumplings from Kim Choo, and putu piring, Malaysian (Halal/Muslim) sweets with palm sugar and shredded coconut.
Monday was a workday, so I checked into The Hive and had a pretty productive day, publishing a blog post and catching up on actual work. After work, in the interest of immersing myself into the city, I went to a data visualization tech talk at Google HQ. No networking happened, but it was a really interesting talk and also really nice to walk around the Google campus and surrounding area. While walking back to MRT, I stopped in a mall food court and had some surprisingly good, surprisingly spicy curry mee. Of course there’s a mall on my route, of course there’s a food court, of course the food is amazing, and of course it’s cheap.
On Tuesday after work, I took MRT to the airport and picked up Lummi, then we had wine and dinner with her old roommate at Ginett. The next day, Lummi and I took MRT downtown so she could get her bearings and go to Din Tai Fung for lunch. After I was done with work, we went to Marina Bay Sands for cocktails, then the Gardens by the Bay to see the supertrees and the Christmas light show, then Newton Food Center on the way home since it was only one MRT stop away. Upon arriving, we realized it was outdoors and the food center from Crazy Rich Asians! Clearly we hadn’t done our homework here, so this was a pleasant surprise. We had fried crab, an oyster omelet, and “carrot cake”.
Thursday evening, we had hotpot with Laurie and her boyfriend, then cocktails at Lantern, then super fancy cocktails at Operation Dagger, a great cocktail lounge with real mixologists. The bathroom has a fake CCTV camera and monitor for an extra bit of WTF.
Friday evening after I was done for the week/year, we walked around Joo Chiat, sort of trying to recreate my walking tour from Sunday. We had dinner at Guan Hoe Soon, the oldest Peranakan restaurant in Singapore (Anthony Bourdain went there in the Singapore episode of Parts Unknown). We wandered around the neighborhood afterwards, went to the always excellent Cat Socrates, ate some vegan soft serve, then turned in early.
See Singapore for more!
Koh Lipe
Our time in Singapore was over, so we hopped on a flight to Hat Yai, checked into a surprisingly nice local hotel just for the night, then treated ourselves to some cheap eats and shopping at Greenway Night Market. The next morning, the minibus picked us up thirty minutes before we were supposed to be ready. The subsequent speedboat to Koh Lipe was as expected, including a stop at some kind of lovers’ arch on a neighboring island. Once we were set up in our hotel (Cabana Lipe Beach Resort) adjacent to the gypsy village, we had the usual routine of lunch, massage, walking around, reggae bar, and dinner.
Our first morning on the island (Christmas Eve), we joined locals, expats, and other tourists for the weekly Koh Lipe trash cleanup. The armada of long-tails took a while to get to a beach on the north side of Koh Rawi, so we had plenty of time to check out the wrinkly package of an old man who sat at the front of the boat and wore trunks that were a bit too short. Once we arrived on the island, we worked up quite a sweat picking up garbage for an hour. So much trash! Mostly plastic and foam, but also a lot of light bulbs for some reason. The garbage trucks hauling away the trash spewed a ton of smoke into the air, so I guess we’re trading trash for air pollution? I accidentally stubbed my toe in the jungle and it was bad enough that it was bleeding for a while, required attention for the rest of the trip, and was still healing weeks later.
On Christmas Day, we had some morning beach time, massages, and then lunch down the beach. For dinner, we went to Forever Restaurant on the other side of the island and had a fantastic home-cooked meal. The rain on the tin roof was really loud, the stray dog in front got really happy when the husband came home, and the bathroom in the woods required a flashlight and a sense of adventure. We had a blast at Maya for the rest of the evening: a party family with terrible DJs, “El Max” tequila, fire poi, fun house music once the real DJ started, and some G&S teenagers (glitter and shots).
Wednesday was a classic beach day – sun and sand and surf all day long. We went to the reggae bar in the evening and smoked a joint of crappy who-knows-what and watched the light and shadows of the fire poi in front of us.
On Thursday we hired a boat for a private trip to three beaches and saw this awkward French-Thai foursome (two couples) at two of them. We took lots and lots and lots of photos at Monkey Beach, then had a photo session back on our beach at sunset, which was the best of the trip.
See Koh Lipe for more!
Bangkok
On Friday, our last day on the island, we woke up early to catch the sunrise and take lots of great photos before our transfer to Bangkok. Funny that on the way to the island, there’s a rest stop and a stop at the lovers’ arch, but on the way out there’s nothing. Basically: “You’re not spending money here anymore, so GTFO!” Once in the city, we checked into our Airbnb, ate really good duck red curry at the hotel restaurant next door, then walked to Vanilla Sky for a couple of cocktails.
Before heading out on Saturday, we stopped by li-bra-ry (yes, that’s the name) and had our first taste of pandan, in the form of curved, three-dimensional waffles. Afterwards, we went downtown and wandered the malls around Siam, making sure to check out Yayoi Kusama’s art installation at CentralWorld as part of the Bangkok Art Biennale.
We had our big party night that evening, which started with a few drinks – including a coconut negroni! – at Havana Social, a Cuban-inspired cocktail lounge with a secret entrance that requires entering a password into a phone booth. We then walked to our main destination of the evening: Sing Sing, a gorgeous nightclub decked out with dark wood and red Chinese lanterns.
On Sunday, we basically spent the entire day at Chatuchak Market, one of the largest open-air markets in the world. We bought some clothes and incense and other little things, had a lot of snacks and drinks, and even had an “emergency” foot massage in one of the aircon tents nestled amongst the shops. After making it back to our Airbnb and resting for a bit, we got dressed, headed out, and rolled up to the Banyan Tree Hotel in a tuk-tuk – like a boss! – so we could go to Moon Bar for drinks. It was surprisingly busy on a Sunday, even late.
On our final day of the trip, we went out to Terminal 21 for some more shopping and ended the evening/trip with a deadly 2-hour massage. We ended up staying in after dinner and having a low-key evening since Lummi was basically half-dead at this point from all her injuries. We watched some local Bangkok NYE coverage, watched the fireworks from the balcony at midnight, then went to bed. It was a wonderful, very memorable trip and ended with a reminder that Bangkok is not for the faint of heart!