The morning started out quite respectably, we got settled in Starbucks for a while, Col read the paper, I played Angry Birds and we waited for my friend (in Houston) Crystal’s friend Bev to arrive.

We’d agreed to meet to exchange packages, I had some things for Bev that Crystal had given me and vice versa!

We met around 10am and we chatted until almost midday! Bev was easy to talk to and we had a lot to talk about, especially for people who’d never previously met!

After we parted ways, Col and I went back to China Town for a visit.  We found the Maxwell St hawker centre where we had read about – this, was our location for lunch!

I had duck with noodles from one stand, Col had some chicken dish from another stand, mine wasn’t particularly nice, but it was nice to experience the local cultuer – and it was SERIOUSLY cheap!  Drinks-wise, we chugged down some lime juice – which is seriously delicious, and something I think the US should adopt as their national drink! LOL!!

As we were leaving the hawker centre, I found a stall that was selling Roti (an Indian type pancake) which wasn’t even S$1 and it came smothered in curry sauce.  I decided to try one (the guy tried to talk me in to buying more than one, and I have to admit, I was tempted!) – I even ate it like a local, with my fingers! I didn’t quite manage the one-handed technique that most of the people I’d seen eating, had down to an art, but I did get my hands dirty so to speak!

After a quick ‘second pass’ down China Town, we decided to get the MRT to the Dhobi Ghaut station, where Bev had told us, there was a good shopping centre, Plaza Singapura, that even had scrapbooking shops!

After a quick stop in a cafe inside Plaza Singapura, and a disgusting ‘original cornish pasty’, (which, as it turned out, was just curry sauce, potato and almost zero chicken – ugh.  Not cool! Col’s Black Forest cake wasn’t much better either!) we got back on the MRT and headed, once again, back to the Flyer where it was time to get on the hop on, hop off, Original bus tour.

These kinds of bus tours have become the somewhat, ‘staple’ of pretty much all of our vacations, whether near or far.  We normally do them early in our trip, get a lay of the land, an idea of what to see and what we could avoid etc.  This time, however, due to us having Groupon tickets that were blacked out during certain Grand Prix week dates, we had to save this activity til our last day in Singapore.

I’d love to say that it was worth the wait, however, it wasn’t.  It was, without question, the worst bus tour we’ve tried.  It was pretty crap, the commentary was automated and it was pretty much, ‘oh look, there’s a building’ and ‘to your right, there’s shiny things’…it was abysmal!

We originally planned to stay on the bus for the whole tour, plus, perhaps half again, to take us to the far side of the city where we wanted to be.  However, it was so bad, that we decided to hop off the bus at the end of the tour and walk to the MRT station instead, to avoid having to subject ourselves to any more of the tour.  Yes, that bad!

From the MRT station, it was back to Clarke Quay to meet up with the Stevensons for dinner at Hooters (yes, most of our trip was spent eating, but we’d been well informed ahead of time that this’d be the case!) we had discovered a British Fish and Chip shop, Smiths, online that we wanted to try before leaving, so, upon arriving at Clarke Quay, Col and I walked the whole way down to Smiths, to discover it was not yet opened (so much for ‘mid September!).

Instead, we parked ourselves at Hooters, ordered some chips and salsa and waited for the Stevensons to arrive, so we could figure out what to do for dinner.  Colin S. discovered another British pub, Old Brown Shoe, on his phone, and, since it was closer than the other branch of Smiths, we decided to give it a shot.

I kinda, in retrospect, wish we hadn’t as I wasn’t overly impressed, the chips were frozen and the fish was in a pool of grease, in spite of it coming in a traditional piece of newspaper, I’ve had better fish’n’chips here in the US (and that’s REALLY saying something) – not to mention, since we’ve left Singapore, Colin S. has tried Smiths and has reported back that it’s the ‘real deal’, grrr!!!!! LOL!

Back at home, it was more packing and getting organised for most of us, Amee and Michael were by now, booked on our return flight to Houston, so the house was littered with suitcases and empty shopping bags (whoops!)