Blue Heart Journey: 2015

It seems as though we visit Chinatown in most of the cities we visit in Asia. We’ve yet to find Americatown, but we will continue to look. Chinatown in Singapore was just a tad different from the rest. The layout was better and the scene was not so gritty and rough like most other Chinatowns we’d visited. It was also cleaner and more open than others which made it that much more welcoming. There were still the usual traditional Chinatown shops that overflowed into the market, making it the ideal venue to purchase gifts and souvenirs. Chinatown is an excellent place to shop on a budget. Bartering prices is welcomed and encouraged. Very few vendors sold items for fixed prices. We were able to find hand painted Christmas ornaments, a perfect find since we now collect unique ornaments for our Christmas tree.

Our favorite experience while in Chinatown was dining at the various food stalls and restaurants. I had read about a popular stall at a food court located in the area. It sold a Hainanese dish consisting of boiled chicken served with seasoned rice and vegetables. It didn’t sound like anything special but was highly recommended to eat while in Singapore, and this particular location received rave reviews. We decided to eat there for dinner on our first evening visit to Chinatown. When we got to the food court we found that this stall was no longer in business. I was so disappointed. I began checking out the other stalls for a second option. We settled on a nearby stall that had a long line of Westerners – a great sign that the place had to be good. While in line, we read some articles on the storefront. Come to find out that the chef of the food stall we originally planned to dine at quit that place and started his own stall only two spots away – the same one we were in line for. We ended up eating the same dish that was talked about in the reviews after all. It was delicious for such a simple dish. Douglas and I contemplated eating there again for lunch on another day – that’s how good it was.

As we exited the Chinatown market we spotted a large outdoor restaurant called Chinese Seafood. The restaurant didn’t sound too alluring from its simple name, but we decided to check it out anyway. The menu looked pretty good. One of the waiters approached us and told us more about the place. Something about it felt good. That evening I looked the restaurant up online and read some reviews. There were nothing but good things said about the venue so we decided it would be an ideal place to get Singapore’s famous chili crab. We knew what to expect having had the crab at the hotel buffet but we were still excited to try this one. We went back for lunch on our last day in Singapore.

When the bowl of crab came to the table it looked delectable. Chili crab is such a messy dish that all etiquette goes out the window when eating it. You just have to get your fingers in that sauce and get crackin’! The crab was so good we ordered a second serving halfway through the first one. I don’t usually eat much white rice but I especially loved mixing my soft white rice with the sauce from the dish. Douglas got to have little bread rolls with his and said they were also good with the sauce. I am a sucker for saucy dishes (which is probably why I favor Indian food so much). This restaurant provided wonderful service along with great food. Glad we went with our gut instinct in choosing to dine at Chinese Seafood.

They were not roasting on an open fire but I'm sure they were good.

I cannot remember what this building was, but it was very nice.

Our Hainanese food was in this food center.

I would have had to look this up before we ate here...I don't think we would have otherwise!

Food so good, the place next door just shut down.

This was one of the articles about the chef leaving. Apparently he did not leave on the best terms...

The man himself.

Tiger Radler Beer - we could not find this stuff again after leaving here. Douglas loved it.

Douglas got the 3 in 1 and said it was really good. I had to take his word for it.

The crabs came in different sizes.

You know you are in for it when the bib shows up...

Douglas getting ready to go to work on some crab!

Iced tea and a Singapore sling

I'd like to say that my hair did not look like this when I left the hotel! What the heck???

Definite satisfaction! Much different from any other crab we've had.

The search to find a hotel in Singapore that fit our price range was quite a challenge. My readers should know by now that when traveling, I like to stay at nice hotels for affordable prices. I always do a lengthy amount of research and comparisons to find the perfect spot. I hadn’t booked a bad room yet and didn’t plan to break that streak for our last vacation. Since we traveled to Singapore during the holiday season it seemed the hotel prices were higher than their already high prices. I aimed to snag a location off of Orchard Road, the swanky boulevard lined with restaurants, malls, hotels, and gorgeous Christmas decorations during the holiday season.

Orchard Road is a one-way street about 1.5 miles long. I had the pleasure of walking the full length a few mornings. I don’t usually tote my camera around when exercising, but I specifically carried it with me while I powerwalked down the beautiful street. At times I felt like I was in a garden with all the lush greenery I passed. Visiting from Hanoi was a welcomed and refreshing change in atmosphere. As much as I have enjoyed my time in Hanoi, I have greatly missed clean air and streets landscaped with flowers, greenery, and convenience shops that sell items I actually want to buy.

There were moments when my heart raced with excitement upon passing a 7-Eleven. Seriously, a 7-freakin’- Eleven…who gets excited about that? A girl whose been living in two third-world countries over the past three years, that’s who! I mainly thought of Douglas each time I crossed paths with one because he loves their Slurpees, particularly the red, blue, and orange ones. I wanted us to walk the street at night to adore all the colorful Christmas lights hanging from the trees along the road. But, somehow, we never made it to Orchard Road at night; either it was raining or we had already spent the entire day wandering around the city and were worn out by the time we returned to the room.

The surrounding area was adorned with Christmas decorations everywhere.

It was nice to see some greenery on the roadways as we walked around.

INTERPOL Singapore

Entrance/exit for the subway

Douglas wanted to explore his photographic side...not bad!

We got a new lens for the camera that took wide-view and extreme close-ups.

I finally booked our reservation at Hotel Jen Orchardgateway. It was situated almost mid-way between the beginning and ending of Orchard Road – perfect location. This hotel was different than others I’d booked because it was situated on top of a mall. Most of the malls in Singapore are found underground so it’s no surprise to have establishments built above them. The hotel has a separate entrance from the mall that is located slightly off Orchard Road. You enter the elevator from a general lobby area and get off on the 10^th floor to find the main hotel lobby. If anything were a tad inconvenient about staying at Hotel Jen it would have been the need to take two different elevators just to get to your room from outside or inside the mall. It was cumbersome but definitely not a deal breaker. Otherwise the hotel was lovely in its simplicity.

Though the room was smaller than most we had stayed in, it was perfectly designed to give the illusion of a bigger space. Neither of us ever felt cramped moving about the room or when storing our luggage and shopping bags. The hotel conveniently had a small fridge in the room which we used to store our breakfast food and snacks. Our hotel reservation did not include breakfast, which I usually arrange, so we planned to dine out for breakfast. However, after seeing the price options of most breakfast establishments we decided we’d get more bang for our buck by going to the nearby grocery store and buying our own food. This would not be the first time we did something like this; we grocery shopped at the base commissary in Seoul for the majority of our breakfast and lunch meals. Not only were the prices extremely high there, but we also didn’t favor Korean food. Our decision to visit the grocery store while in Singapore proved to be a great choice. We didn’t have to plan to exit the room by a certain time to make the hotel buffet breakfast and we ate light to save room for outside food during the rest of the day.

Our favorite part of staying at Hotel Jen was dining at its Makan Restaurant for the seafood buffet. One night when Douglas and I exited the hotel lobby elevator, I turned around and found my husband’s jaw nearly on the ground as he gawked at something I could not see. I walked over to see what caught his attention…a massive bucket of crab legs. Douglas is a crab leg fiend and could eat them all day! We asked the staff member outside the restaurant for more details. She explained the hotel had a seafood buffet every Friday and Saturday evening available to their guests. Uh…yes, please! At the time it was Friday evening, so there was no other option but to go the following night. I did have previous arrangements at a restaurant in town to try Singapore’s famous chili crab but this alternative would be extremely hard to pass up. What made the buffet even more tantalizing was the cost – only $44. The total cost would be cheaper than what I planned to spend for us to eat dinner at a popular chili crab restaurant in the city. After a very short conversation, we decided to add the seafood buffet to our itinerary. This entire conversation went down just after midnight Saturday morning. Both of us were excited to get to bed just to wake up and check out the buffet that evening.

We spent our Saturday visiting the scheduled locations on our itinerary. Douglas came up with the bright idea for us to basically starve ourselves throughout the day so we could enjoy all that the seafood buffet had to offer. I mean, is that American or what?! This plan was clearly ridiculous but I went along with it because I too wanted to enjoy the buffet without packing on too many extra calories in the day. We ate a very light breakfast and snack food for lunch. I also powerwalked about 8 miles that morning to earn my prize that evening. We planned to eat at the buffet at 8pm and stay until closing at 10pm. Only problem was that I was done just after 6! We were about to visit one last location when I told Douglas I couldn’t see another sight unless it was being served on a plate. He and I were starving at that point. We both decided to go directly to the hotel, bypass our room, and go straight to the restaurant.

We arrived at Makan at 7. The woman at the front pleasantly greeted us as we told her we were there for the buffet. She then said, “Okay, do you have a reservation?” Without batting an eye I told her no and that we spoke with a lady the previous night and she said we could come back that night. The lady then proceeded to ask us for our names so she could try to find us in the computer. Now, we knew good and well our names were not in that computer, but there was no way we were not getting into that restaurant. We had come too far. Douglas poked my arm at one point as if to say baby, it’s not going to happen. I pursed my lips together as if to say dude, you must not know who I am. I offered the woman our names, hotel room number, anything to aid her search that was already hopeless. During those passing seconds I thought to myself, This man done had me starve myself…I done walked eight damn miles to prepare for this meal…oh, we are getting at that seafood buffet tonight! All the while I was cool as a cucumber not displaying any sign of trepidation or disappointment. After about five minutes the lady informed us that she didn’t have our names but she did have an open table in the back. We didn’t care if the table was in the kitchen itself – we were taking it! We were escorted to our seats which were nowhere near the back. We actually sat towards the front which was perfect! All Douglas could do was bow his head and say wow, just…wow. I imagine it’s moments like that when a husband thanks God for the moment he said “I do.” Yes, moments like that will have any man reflecting on the joy of making a woman of such persistence his wife. LOL

That buffet was so much more than we envisioned. They had everything a seafood lover would want – crab legs, whole crabs, cocktail shrimp, oysters, mussels, clams, a grilling station with freshly cooked jumbo prawns, salmon, tuna steaks, lobster tails covered in melted cheese, Singapore’s famous chili crab, seafood paella, and even roasted pork with veggies for those that wanted to give their palette a moment’s rest from all the delicious seafood. And the dessert bar was just as extravagant. There were about eight different flavors of gelato with every topping imaginable, cakes, pies, pastries, and more. I don’t usually get excited about buffets but this was not your typical buffet. We had a grand time filling our bellies with gastronomical delights. All of that scrumptiousness for only $44 per person…now what seafood buffet do you know, anywhere, would serve such a selection at that low cost? Since Hotel Jen had opened a few months prior to our visit, they started this special as a way to lure more customers to their hotel. Great decision! I didn’t even know about this offering when we booked here but would surely book again in the future just to have another outstanding seafood experience.