Day 4 - Chinatown and New Years Eve

Today was new years eve! Knowing that we would be staying up till late we thought a bit of a sleep in and late start to the day would be ok, so we took it easy.

Once we were all ready to go, we decided to check out Chinatown. We normally use trains to get everywhere, but this time the route didn't seem as direct, so we asked our concierge and he pointed out that we could catch a bus from the front of our hotel and it would take us straight there.
The buses use the same prepaid EZ-Link cards as the train, so we just had to touch on and touch off.

The bus stop in front of our hotel

Chinatown has a fairly big market. It's a pretty typical market selling lots of little gift-shop style trinkets and food, nothing really stood out, but it was nice to take a look anyway.

Chinatown

Chinatown is also pretty famous for its hawker stalls. It had a "food street" full of little shops preparing for the lunchtime rush.
One of the places had coconuts for sale so as Anthony and Amy had never tried them before we bought two to share and sat down to try them before continuing through the rest of the market.

Anthony and Amy's first coconut drink

Unfortunately my foot has not stop hurting since day 1 and walking around a large market is not the best thing for it. Among the gift shops and food stands there are also people offering massages and "foot reflexology" so I thought I would give it a go.

One of the massage salesman led me to a room upstairs above some of the stalls where I was greeted by the therapist. I showed her where the pain was coming from on my left foot and she said that she could help - of course.
I signed in, took my shoes and socks off and put my feet up. The therapist immediately found where the sore parts of my left foot were! Hurt like hell but she assured me that it was going to help in the long term.
After the massage I was amazed that I could actually walk fairly normal instead of limping and was pretty happy so we went to get lunch.

We headed back to the food street and bought some food. My meal was a Chicken Rice dish that was pretty nice. After lunch Sarma ordered one of the desserts that seemed to be quite popular.
It looks like a big snow cone without the cone. Inside was sweet corn, beans, jelly pieces and some other strange ingredients that I couldn't name. On the outside was crushed ice with different flavored syrups poured on top.

Ice dessert

From here we went back to the hotel and on the way we stopped at the chemist so I could buy some anti-inflammatory cream for my foot before heading out to Marina Bay to celebrate new years.
We decided that we could stay at the hotel till fairly late and so I showered, did a little bit of blogging and put some anti-inflammatory cream on my foot while the others decided to go to Simlim.

Simlim is a multistory electronics store like Low Yat Plaza in KL. I kind of wanted to see it, but with my sore foot and having already seen Low Yat (and going back to KL next week) I thought it would be best to stay home.
When they got back they said it wasn't that impressive as noted in Amy's blog.
They also brought back some dinner. As Sarma was craving some western food, they brought back KFC. The chicken was really oily, but the burger wasn't that bad.

After everyone was ready we all made our way to Marina Bay Sands to try get a spot by the water for a view of the fireworks. They had lasers and spotlights everywhere and the city was nicely lit up. The wishing spheres on the water were also lit up and kept changing colors.

The city view from Marina Bay Sands

After a lengthy wait the fireworks show finally started and what a show it was!
The fireworks came from barges on the water and were incredibly big! At any given moment there would be massive explosions high in the sky along with some low fireworks to fill up the sky from no matter where you were standing - very impressive.

Fireworks high and low in the sky

Fireworks shooting out the sides of the main explosion

As soon as it was over the crowd quickly started to clear out, so we stayed back a little and attempted to get some nice night shots of the city.
From such a massive fireworks display, where were huge smoke clouds drifting through the city that was big enough to hide entire buildings from view.

Thick smoke from the fireworks

The smoke moving into the city

Unfortunately the walk from the station to Marina Bay Sands was quite long and my feet were punishing me for it and now we had to back track along with a big crowd of people to get to the station. We walked for what seemed like hours before I needed to sit down for a little bit. We finally got to the station and made it back.
One of the things that was on the todo list for the holiday was to have a Singapore Sling in Singapore and we thought what better time to do it that new years day.
Near our hotel in the Arab Quarter is a strip of bars on a road called "Bali Street" so we hoped into one called Bazuka Bar to get a drink.
The drinks were fairly strong, but quite nice. Amy and Sarma felt fairly tipsy after this one drink, especially on an empty stomach.
Amy described it as "dizziness" and Sarma described it as "lag" - not big drinkers :)

We made our way home and we were all ready for bed.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!