Singapore: Feb 23: Attempt to Fly Home

Tuesday was an adventure. I had an early morning meeting at work. Then, before we ventured to the airport, I dragged Di Yin to various eateries somewhat near work that I wanted to hit for breakfast/lunch or that I wanted to stop by to pick up food to bring on the plane. After our excursion, we took the mrt to the airport.

The pictures document this morning excursion, and more.

We arrived at the airport to learn we missed check-in! Too much running around buying last minute food... I was too ambitious in constructing my food list, and the worst offender on it was the (disappointing) prawn omelette, which took an especially long time to arrive.

China Southern was nice enough to re-book us at no cost. We couldn't get a flight out of Singapore the same day, so they placed us on the same flight the following day.

Using the airport's free wireless, I found us a hotel in Singapore for the night: the Aqueen Hotel (Lavender). It turned out to be a modern yet inexpensive hotel, better than the price would indicate. A new hotel (built in the last year), it was probably under-pricing its true value in order to build a reputation and customer base. A sign of how modern it is: the doors open by RFID -- even fancier than the electronic key cards you have to slide into a card reader on the door.

Incidentally, the hotel is in Jalan Besar, the neighborhood I did a walking tour of two days before.

We settled into the hotel and ate a light dinner made from the food that was intended for the plane, then used the extra night in Singapore to do something I'd been itching to do: go to 2am Dessert Bar. I had a friend, D, who's been multiple times and raves about it.

We rode a double-decker bus across Singapore to Holland Village, the Singapore's expat hangout. The temperature was nice. I'd been to Holland Village once (ever so briefly) a long time before. After a bit of searching, we found the narrow entrance to 2am Dessert Bar at the building at the end of the block and climbed the stairs to its lounge.

2am Dessert Bar predominately serves desserts and beverages. Following the recommendation of my friend, we elected to do the six course tasting menu. We declined a beverage pairing. (They offered three different pairings: beer, wine, and tea!)

The meal was amazing, like nothing I've ever experienced! (For details see the pictures.) Now I will join D in raving about this place. The six courses were enough, but I wish there was more, though I can believe D's advice that ten would be too many. In addition to the desserts, the very friendly and chatty host/sommelier didn't hurt the experience either. I'm almost glad we missed our plane because it allowed me to go to this place.

After another double-decker ride back to our hotel we called it a night.