We spent December in Seattle and it was great seeing our friends and family but we got tired of the cold and rain pretty quick. We were really ready to get somewhere where we didn’t need a raincoat to walk to the grocery store. Southeast Asia seemed like the perfect place to start 2023. First stop – a ten hour flight followed by a 20 hour layover in Tokyo, Japan
We searched all last summer for a deal to get to Asia and weren’t finding any good deals for January 2023. One-way tickets were more expensive than roundtrip and the flights just weren’t right for us. But we found eventually found a roundtrip deal to Singapore and jumped on it… even though it made us drastically change our itinerary and spend a night in a country we had never stayed in. Our trip starts with one night in Japan which isn’t much warmer than Seattle in January. We checked in to our $41 hotel room close to Haneda airport and were struggling a bit from jetlag but we really wanted to take the subway into a bustling Tokyo neighborhood and have some Sushi. We had heard about Shibuya as a fun area, so headed there. We found a great place with a sushi conveyer belt and even found a whiskey bar down the street where we had a couple of drinks (featuring local Japanese whiskey) and talked to the bartender. Just a small taste of Japan and we really have the urge to come back and spend some more time. And it isn’t that expensive at all considering that the Yen isn’t so strong right now.
The next morning we went back to the airport and got some shorts and T-shirts on for our flight to Singapore. It was humid and hot! We also struggling getting back into walking shape after our time indoors in rainy Seattle. The first day we walked over 25,000 steps (12 miles?) and were really feeling it. Did I mention that it was HOT!
We wanted wandered around the Gardens by the Bay with their famous large metal tree sculptures. This was near the Marina Bay Sands Hotel which made for some cool pictures. We ended up going up in the hotel to have a drink and got some more great views.
Singapore is unlike any place we have ever been. It is very clean, modern and many high end shops. It is often called the most expensive city in the world but you can still find a lot of crazy cheap and good food in the many many hawker centers. Subways went everywhere, with great frequency, and the escalators always worked! (Seattle will figure it out someday??). No homeless people, no graffiti, and it is against the law to chew gum so even the sidewalks are always clean. It kind of reminds of us the fancy resorts in Las Vegas but Vegas has a dirty seedier side that we couldn’t find in Singapore. (Note: while the cleanliness and orderliness were pleasant and easy, it also felt a little…..characterless? Missing some grit? Bland?) Our favorite parts were the cheaper spots in town. We stayed in Little India and also walked through Chinatown a couple of times. Great food in both places. The Hawker centers were amazing – most meals are less than $5 and there are so many dishes that I have never heard of before. I want to stay a week and just try new things every night.
Singapore is really diverse, everyone seems to get along, and are proud of their melting pot country. It is amazing to be in a place with Malay, Chinese and Indian influences among other places but it also feels like it could be in America. Everyone speaks English and most people are bilingual. Signs are all in English. There are mosques, churches, Buddhist temples, Hindu temples and lots of other religious buildings that are beautiful and fun to walk through. We visited this awesome Buddhist temple below during the daytime when they were doing some sort of ceremony.
Overall, we were blown away by Singapore. So different that what I thought it would be. It is such a major hub in Southeast Asia that I am sure we will be back even though hotels and Airbnbs are a little above our budget. There are many attractions that we didn’t see and they are continually working on building more. Next stop is Thailand. We are going to fly to Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand and work are way South over the next few weeks.