Singapore - Day 6

We headed over to Orchard Road today. Most of the day was spent inside in huge, beautiful malls. The selection of stores was staggering. Not only could you find every upscale brand (over and over again) but there was a huge selection of one-of-a-kind stores. Jeff found a gallery that had huge paper-mache marionettes in the window. He bought an acrylic-resin horse that I’m now packing around.

We had the best dim sum ever in our lives today for lunch, in a mall! We learned another interesting factoid about Singapore. There seems to be a constant free-flow of traffic in the city which is surprising for a city this size. Come to find out, to own a car there is a 100% excise tax on the purchase price of a new car. After 10 years of ownership, you have to pay a $10,000 tax and wait in a long line to pay it. Both of these things lead to Singapore being the largest exporter of used cars in the world since no one here wants to keep their old car. All of this makes public transportation a great alternative.

We were having cocktails in the private club of the hotel. The head chef from the hotel’s Italian restaurant came over with a tray of appetizers. After talking to us for awhile, he invited us to have dinner in the restaurant and he would personally cook our meal. We started with antipasto accompanied with a great Presco. That was followed by beef tartare on a potato pancake topped with caviar. For our entrees, Jeff had Australian rack of lamb and I had an entire sea bass coated in macadamia bread crumbs. For desert, we had glasses of Muscadet along with ten little ice cream cones with ten types of ice creams the chef had made. It was a most excellent meal!


Sorry for the weak picture selection, shooting moving staircases didn’t do it for me.