sooyindotcom

Hubby and I drove down to Singapore two weekends ago for a weekend getaway. Ok…hubby drove. I slept…heh!

We had originally planned to start our journey at an ambitious 8am, but before we went to sleep the night before at 1am, I suggested 9am instead…hubby readily agreed. However, we overslept and dilly-dallied the next morning…so we ended up driving off at 10am instead! Still, it was a nice leisurely drive…no speed traps, I hope…and we arrived at Tuas checkpoint at 1pm.

I was feeling stressed out about having to navigate from the checkpoint to the hotel since I got us all lost the previous time we drove to Singapore in December! Not my fault, really…I usually navigate pretty well (proof would be that we’re back in Malaysia and not still stuck somewhere in New Zealand, k?), but the roads in Singapore are just so confusing! Nevertheless, we arrived at the hotel, Royal Plaza on Scotts, safe and sound. Phew!

This was our first time staying at the Royal Plaza (we usually stay at Pan Pac @ Marina)…it had just been renovated, and for the price we paid, I feel it was pretty reasonable considering we were staying right smack at Orchard Road/Scotts Road and next to DFS Galleria (be still my wallet!). A plus point for me was that the whole hotel is a smoke-free hotel…no offense to smokers out there, but one of the things that can totally ruin a holiday for me is having to stay in a room that smells of stale ciggie smoke! My only complaint would be that the car park is not connected directly to the hotel…not very guest friendly if you have a a couple of luggages to lug around!

Our room consisted of a king sized bed, a plasma tv, a small dresser/desk, and surprise surprise…a walk-in wardrobe. Well, a only-one-person-can-walk-in wardrobe, to be honest! It was tastefully done up with dark brown furniture and white linen…simple and nice.

The room

Did I mention that there’s free broadband service?

Bathroom

Yayy…freebies!

After unpacking, we headed out to Sun with Moon Japanese Dining & Cafe @ Wheelock Place for a late lunch. Despite the time, the restaurant was still quite packed…luckily there were some empty tables left!

I ordered a Gindara Teriyaki set while hubby went for beef…something (you see, this is the problem about procrastinating…now I can’t remember half of the things we ate!). For dessert, hubby had Green Tea Tiramisu, while I ordered Japanese red bean pancake with strawberries. I really like the food at Sun with Moon even though it’s a bit on the expensive side, and considering that there are alot of Japanese patrons there, I would assume the food is authentic Japanese!

Sashimi salad that came with my lunch set

Gindara Teriyaki

Hubby’s beef *something* set

I love tomatoes!

Hubby’s smoothie…he said it was too sour…

Green Tea tiramisu

My yummy dessert

One of the light features at the restaurant…nice, eh?

After our late lunch, we took a walk around the Orchard area through our usual haunts…the Apple centre @ Wheelock, Borders, Wisma Atria and Taka before taking a cab to Marina Shopping Centre. As soon as we reached, I made a beeline for a small t-shirt shop that sells Slurplife t-shirts. I’d bought a cute pink-coloured baby tee from that shop back in December, and was hoping that they had new designs in. Well, they did, but the cutting was different…looser! Luckily, they still had the same t-shirts that I’d bought earlier in different colours, and on sale too! I ended up buying three more…one in blue, another in rose red, and one more in the exact same shade of pink as my first one to save for a rainy day… I also bought another two tees, one long-sleeved and the other, sleeveless, also by Slurplife.

Happy with my first purchase(s) of the day, I wandered into Crocs. I wanted to buy a pair of Crocs Capri that is currently sold out in KL (only my size, and only the color that I wanted…sheesh!), and to my delight, not only were there plenty there…there was a new design in as well! I ended up purchasing the newer design which is called Cleo, as it didn’t look as casual as the Capri flip-flops, plus it’s not yet available in M’sia yet (I think!).

My new Crocs Cleo

After dropping by at the games shop where hubby purchased a new Xbox (or was it PSP?) game, we decided to head over to Suntec City. Along the way, we detoured into a small camera shop where we ended up spending a good 20 minutes browsing through camera accessories. I don’t understand why it’s so hard to find some of the most basic camera accessories in M’sia, yet with just a hop and a skip over the border, it’s easily available and cheaper too! Well, more power to the Singapore economy then! We left after purchasing a memory card holder each, plus a 2GB memory card for M which was much cheaper than if she bought it in M’sia (well, in the first place, we couldn’t find it in M’sia!). Oh…and we spotted an 8GB Compact Flash card for SGD260! And a 4GB Extreme IV CF card! Me wants!

We had only three places to go to at Suntec…the IT centre (for hubby), Tony Romas (also for hubby…*grin*) and the tau foo fa stall, Pinle, next to Tony Romas. Unfortunately for me, the soya beancurd was all sold out by the time we reached there… Oh well, there’s always Jollibean at Paragon! *grin*

As for the pork ribs at Tony Romas, well, it’s still as good as ever…

Baby pork ribs…mine, all mine!

Hubby’s ribs platter…4 different types of ribs…meat overload!

…and coupled with the butter rice and fries, it was a satisfying dinner and a good ending to the day indeed!