- Hey, fellow Explorers.
I'm in one of my favorite cities in the entire world,
Singapore.
I'm spending five days here and in this video,
I'm gonna take you around on all of the great things
I see, do, and eat.
Alright, let's go.
Now, any good visit to Singapore starts right here.
And no, not at the Fullerton Hotel, but at Merlion Park,
which is right across from the Fullerton Hotel.
The Merlion is like the unofficial symbol of Singapore.
Half lion, half fish.
Singapore is often known as the Lion City,
and it's a big maritime city with shipping.
So there you go.
And right in the background is the Marina Bay Sands,
the most famous hotel and casino in Singapore.
There's a really neat swimming pool up there on top.
I'm not staying there.
I'm staying at the JW Marriott South Beach,
which is right here.
Neat. Fairly new Marriott Hotel in Singapore.
I'm gonna show you that later.
Just five minutes later, on my way to Chinatown,
my first rainstorm in Singapore.
Singapore, it's hot and it's humid.
And that means it rains a lot. Like, every day.
Like multiple times a day.
And the great part is a lot of it's covered.
So right now I'm underneath this office building
that has some cover.
But you'll definitely want to have your umbrella handy
when you come to Singapore,
'cause sometimes they can be short-lived,
but other times they can be short-lived
and really, really quite strong.
Chris, where's your umbrella?
You know, it's back in the hotel room.
That's a good place for it.
But you can learn from my mistakes, I think.
She had an umbrella. She was smart.
Okay, all good plans are made to be changed.
With the now pouring rain,
I decide to stop at Lau Pa Sat Festival market.
This is a really neat hawker center
right in the Central Business District.
I'll get my chicken rice in Chinatown in just a bit.
But I think I'm gonna eat something here instead
of continuing to get super wet.
Now this hawker center, the locals would tell you,
is probably not one of the most delicious.
It's one of the most touristy.
It has a really neat look in this old iron roof building,
big fans.
And I think it's a neat one for you to go to as a tourist.
Even why I stopped in here too.
And I didn't yet make it to my Tian Tian chicken rice
in Chinatown.
We're hopefully gonna get there when the rain dies down.
But for $8 here, total, I got a roasted chicken rice.
Let's have a bite of this.
Oh, chicken rice,
this is like the national dish of Singapore.
Generally comes with a few different sauces.
Chili sambal, dark soy sauce.
And so you dip the chicken rice in.
So we dip the chicken in the sauce.
Mmm. Moist. Flavorful.
And then the rice has generally been steamed, cooked,
in the chicken broth soup with ginger
and some other seasonings.
Often served with a soup.
Really quite good.
I should point out, when you come to hawker centers
in Singapore, and by the way,
this is not the first one I'm gonna go to in this video,
I'm gonna go to a lot more over the next five days,
is drinks.
There's generally just like one or two drink stalls.
Most of the stalls don't sell drinks.
And so you gotta seek out the drink stall.
I would get your drink first and then go get your food.
This place has all the sugar cane.
Also sells like lime juice.
It's the one stall in the middle of the hawker center.
That's often where it is.
And then there was a second stall that just sold beer.
But you know what?
There's so many places that sell chicken rice.
They're all pretty good.
I don't think you'll go wrong with any one of them.
And there's another great example of a pretty good specimen.
I'm loving my first lunch here in the Lion City.
All right, with my tummy kind of full-ish
and Lau Pa Sat in the distance,
and the rain not coming down as hard anymore.
I'm making my trek back to Chinatown again.
And so what started as a 22-minute walk at noon
has turned into two hours later.
It's now 2:00 PM.
I hear some thunder and lightning off in the distance.
And you know what?
Even if I had an umbrella,
I don't think I would've walked in that rain
because it was really, really, really heavy.
But it's nice now because the rain, like after the rain,
that's your time you want to go outside in Singapore.
'Cause it's cooled it down quite a bit.
It's actually quite comfortable now
and I probably don't notice if I sweat as much
'cause I'm just generally wet.
I know I'm getting closer to Chinatown
because the street signs now are changing
to Chinese characters
and the high-rise buildings are giving way
to little two or three-story Chinese shop houses.
All right, I found it right there.
The Maxwell Road Hawker Center across a rainy road.
I got a little bit wet, but that's okay.
I am a Raney after all. So this is my day.
Wow, this hawker center is so much busier than Lau Pa Sat.
And the line for Tian Tian chicken rice.
Oh my gosh.
It was like 30 people long and went out into the rain.
I waited probably about 20 minutes,
but I definitely had to get my chicken rice.
$6 for the medium set.
I got the steamed one and here we go.
I had to sit outside
because there was no place to sit inside.
So I'm kind of a little bit in the rain here.
But look, that's okay.
It's actually a little cooler to sit outside
than it is inside.
This is a much bigger chicken rice portion
than the last one that I had.
This only comes with one sauce, one piece.
No choices of sauces. Just you get that one, eh?
Mmm. Mmm. Mmm.
Wow. Wow.
This is so much better. This is so much better.
So why is it so much better?
The chicken is moist-er, the chicken's more flavorful.
And then this sauce,
it's just this amazing combination of spicy but gingery.
And the rice.
It's also so flavorful. And moist too.
I could eat this rice just by itself.
I am so happy I am here in Singapore today,
even though I'm a little wet and hot.
By the way, the comments about it being hot and wet,
they're not gonna end at this part of the video.
They're gonna go on for five days, probably.
'Cause that's a common theme. What have I got to drink?
Lime juice. Right here.
Sour. It makes you pucker. $1.50 Singaporean.
So $5 for this great meal with some fancy seating.
After having a full belly with the chicken rice,
the rain stopped.
And so I wandered around Chinatown a little bit.
There are some neat shopping streets, outdoor vendors.
It's one of Singapore's most colorful neighborhoods
and I just enjoy walking around.
But I've worked up an appetite now.
And so now I'm in the Chinatown Food Center.
This is the biggest hawker center in Singapore.
260 food stalls. And I decided it's time for dessert.
What do I have here? I have chendol.
What is chendol?
Ice, condensed milk, red bean and pandan leaves.
All together, $2.50.
Mmm. That's good. It's sweet.
It's also salty. It's sweet-salty. Together.
Mmm, look.
I mean, for $2.50, you can't go wrong.
And I got this from Old Amoy Chendol.
Kind of here in the back corner.
Have a stall number, 02008.
If you're looking for some cheap dessert here in Chinatown.
Oh,
and they definitely love their YouTubers here in Singapore.
This restaurant, Fortune Court,
has a screenshot saying,
"We were featured on Mike Chen's channel."
Maybe I should do a Yellow Productions video,
so they can be featured on Yellow Productions.
Fortune Court, I expect a poster.
Overall,
I probably spent a couple hours wandering the streets
of Chinatown.
I mean, I could spend more here. It's dinnertime.
But I think I'm gonna make my way back to the hotel
and call it an early night.
Being my first night here, the jet leg,
starting to get to me.
On my way back to the MRT,
I got a glance and a whiff of the People's Park food center,
and so, on second thought,
I think I'm gonna get my dinner over there.
I'm gonna make it today
as like an all hawker center marathon day.
And I've not been to this one yet.
So let's go see what tasty treats await us in there.
Wow, well, once I got in this place, it is massive in here!
And so after I did a lap for like 15 minutes
trying to figure out what I wanted to eat,
I decided on a place that sells the pork rice right there,
with the duck and the pork hanging in the window,
that also had some Michelin awards previous years.
So not recent years though.
Make me wonder, is it still as good? I don't know.
Not everybody can get the Michelin award all the time.
This pork rice right here, $5. This is a large size.
Mmm. Moist, crispy, salty.
Pretty good. Let's try the rice.
Mmm. Sweet rice.
And for the $5, it also came with a bowl of soup.
Pleasant. Pleasant. I think it's a chicken broth.
And to drink, I got an iced tea.
Everybody knows I like iced tea.
They like iced lemon tea here in Singapore.
There's a actual lemon in it.
And plus one point, yellow straw. Mm.
Lemony. I think this is also sweetened too.
It's got a lot of ice in it though.
Nice and cold, which I can use.
Oh, so I forgot to show you earlier,
was that it also comes with a chili sambal sauce
to make it spicier.
And as I'm sitting here eating this pork
with the sambal sauce, a local woman comes up to me,
I didn't get her name, I'm sorry.
But she goes and says, "Do you really like that?
It's so strange to see a foreigner eating the spicy sauce.
Do you like it?"
I'm like, "I love it."
It's not really as delicious as when you get this.
And honestly the sambal sauce in Singapore
just has an amazing quality to it
of like the complex flavors
that I just don't find anywhere else.
They also love their YouTubers here.
So when she said, "Are you a YouTuber?"
Then she wanted to take a selfie, which was awesome.
Today I have taken selfies with I think, six people.
And not everybody knows me.
They just are like, I hand 'em a card, and they're like,
"You're a YouTuber, and I wanna take a picture with you."
Now my daughter wants to take a picture.
And now my wife wants to take a picture with you.
But it was also great to run
into my fellow Explorers from Australia, Kai, from earlier.
I ran into a fellow Singaporean
who's from the San Francisco Bay area
over at the Chinatown Food Center.
So, mmm.
It's like a Yellow Productions meetup
here in Singapore today.
All right, well after that dinner, I need a walk.
And Google Maps here says it's a 31 minute walk
back to the hotel.
So that's what I'm gonna go ahead and do.
I'm gonna try to actually make this 31 minutes.
Everything today has gone way longer than I had planned.
But that's the thing about being a video creator,
is everything takes way longer
than a travel guide or something I would recommend.
When a book or a tour says like,
"Hey, this will only take an hour to do this tour."
And ends up taking me three, 'cause I gotta walk it,
and then decide what I want to shoot
and then actually shoot it.
I'm not really complaining.
Hey, this is a neat vending machine.
It's like a vending machine of toys. That's cool.
And there's a McDonald's here. I mean I just like walking.
I contemplated for a moment taking a taxi,
but the taxi would take eight minutes.
But then I'm like, I'll get back to the hotel at seven,
and then what am I gonna do before I go to bed?
I mean I could go to bed early.
But if I go to bed much before nine,
then I'll wake up at five in the morning
and breakfast doesn't start till 7:30 in the morning.
This is the plight of the jet-lagged.
And so the great way to just keep myself up is to walk.
People often ask me,
"Chris, how do you beat jet lag?"
And my first day in a destination,
I try to just be outside as much as I possibly can.
And that really seems to help me adjust
'cause then I'm actually really quite tired.
But if I go back to the hotel,
then I will absolutely
(snores)
like a sleeping little baby.
Okay, so it's official.
I failed miserably on walking straight back to the hotel.
But I saw Clarke Quay,
and it was on my list of places that I wanted
to go and check out.
It's a big nightlife area, as you can tell,
because it has a branch of Hooters.
That's right. Hooters in Singapore.
And it turns out this Hooters
was actually the first in Asia.
But Clarke Quay really gets going late at night.
It's along the Singapore River.
You can take boat cruises from here
if you're looking for things to do at night
and even in the rain, this is a pretty good spot
because there's a neat kind of like covered street up here
with lots of lights on it.
This is a pretty lively spot and I'm glad I made the detour.
This is kind of like how I often plan my trips.
I don't like super plan them out
but I have a list of all the things I want to see
that I start with at the beginning.
And then each day,
I decide on a few things I'm gonna go look at,
and then when I end up near other things,
then I just check those out when I'm there.
From Clarke Quay,
you can also get a really unique picture
of the Marina Bay Sands.
You need to have a good zoom lens to get this photo,
but it's neat to have these illuminated bridges
over the river with that Marina Bay Sands in the back.
One of the really nice things about walking around Singapore
is it's all like really safe.
There's no apparently sketchy part of Singapore.
Now walking through Clarke Quay district,
I'm in the civic district.
Right back there was the Singapore Parliament
in a really neat colonial building.
That's another great juxtaposition
between 1800s colonial architecture
and the modern Singapore skyline in the back.
8:20. Made it back to the hotel.
And it has a really trippy entrance.
This is the JW Marriott Singapore South Beach.
You come up to this digital screen,
some funky lounge music in here.
This feels more like a W Hotel
than it does a JW Marriott.
And something tells me it maybe used to be the W Hotel
and was renamed the JW Marriott.
It's apparently owned by the same person
that owns the JW Marriott in Hong Kong,
which is one of my favorite Marriotts in the chain.
Over the check-in desk,
they've got these things that make it look like candles.
And then the weirdness continues
as we get in the elevator that I want to show you here.
Let's push that button and wait for one of these to show up.
Here we go.
All right, we come in the elevator,
it's got like fish on the back and color changing lights
and you gotta tap this room key.
I always have a hard time finding my number.
15. Doors closed and here we are.
Oh, I actually want to go to the lounge
before I go into my room. Whoa. Too far. Stop. Come back!
Second floor. All right.
Like the lounge is totally why I stay here.
Let's go see if they have some dessert.
Well, no dice on the lounge even though it's open till nine.
Dessert ends at 7:30. All that was left was drinks.
And I guess I probably don't need
to eat anymore tonight anyway.
All right, room 1515. Finally back in the room.
Oh, I want to show you a couple cool things of it.
There will be a full hotel review in a moment
but the bathroom right here has got this little thing
that looks out into the room
although you can close it with this mirror.
That's pretty neat.
Housekeeping organized all my stuff for me down here.
That was all strewn out about the counter
and then coming into the room, really nice bed.
I slept in there super like a little baby Jesus last night.
But the coolest part about the room, I think is this view.
All the Central Business District down there,
Marina Bay off to the left.
And then in true "Lost in Translation" style,
it's got this neat big sofa right in front of it
to just sit there and admire the view.
But now it's time for me to hit the hay.
I'll see you in the morning.
All right, well hey, good morning.
It's 7:30 AM Singapore time.
I've been up since about six. I couldn't sleep anymore.
Breakfast doesn't start till 7:30,
so I did some video editing
of my United Premium Plus review to get out here.
Look forward to that soon.
Now I'm gonna go down
and get some breakfast in the lounge, which is amazing.
I mean,
this is one of the best Marriott lounge breakfasts-es.
Breakfasts-es? Is that even a word?
Marriott breakfast that I've ever had.
And today, since I'm up early,
I'm gonna head off to the Singapore Zoo.
I'll see you there.
And I would love for you to join me in part two of this vlog
as I explore the Singapore Zoo
and more great attractions in this city state.
This video became too long
so I did break it out into another video.
You'll find a link here on the screen
as soon as that vlog is out.
In the meantime, if that one's not out yet,
check out some more of my videos from Singapore,
where I dive into my favorite hawker centers
and some of my other favorite attractions.
Well, fellow Explorers, as usual, I won't say goodbye,
'cause I'll see you in one of those videos.
You'll also find links in the description below.