My second day continued in much the same vain as day one did with a few minor disappointments in terms of finding places closed!! Firstly, the stall I wanted food from at Maxwell Road Food Market was not open (whilst many others were!) when I was there just after 8am. There would be a couple more places closed but before all that I walked on down to the beautiful Marina Bay area to see the very striking Marina Bay Sands Hotel across the water with the modern-art looking ArtScience Museum alongside it.

A bit further up the road from there, just past the picturesque Fullerton Bay Hotel, was Merlion Park which is quite possibly the most popular sightseeing spot in Singapore. The place was packed with tourists capturing their moment in front of the water-spouting half fish half lion.

From there, I wandered on past a few nice buildings such as City Hall and continued on up to The Padang which is basically just a lawn used for the likes of cricket and rugby but sadly I couldn’t get a real feel for this symbol of British imperialism as it was out of season and there was obviously nothing going on at this green at 9.30 am!!

Fort Canning Park had been earmarked in advance as a priority for the morning and I was  very much looking forward to seeing the WWII bunker known as Battle Box but typically of this trip it was closed when I finally reached it in the middle of the park following a steep-ish ascend up many steps from street level.

Nevertheless, it there were still some interesting little buildings dotted around the place and it was nice to amble round the slopes in a city/country possessing quite a lot of green.

After the park, I returned to my hotel at 11 am to pack, shower and chill for a bit before the noon checkout. Maxwell Road Food Market (again!) was to be my final destination and having failed twice I finally got to join the huge line to get chicken rice from Tian Tian Hainanese Chicken Rice restaurant which featured in ‘Anthony Bourdain No Reservations‘ (S04E01) on the Travel Channel in 2008. This food stand was by far the most popular one in the place and it even had a picture and quote from Bourdain out the front. I’m not one to usually line up for any food but I made an exception for this one and to be fair I’m not really sure if it was worth it. It was of course very nice but I don’t know if my taste buds are strong enough to tell the difference between a plate of chicken rice at this place and a plate of the same thing from one of its competitors!

The other dish pictured below is of fish head soup and rice which tasted way better than it should with a name like that! The soup, in particular, was very nice and reminiscent of the noodle soup dishes I’ve sampled in Vietnam before.

Re-fueled and refreshed, it was time to leave Singapore behind and take the ferry from Harbourfront to a nearby Indonesian island to see my eldest sister and her family for the weekend. I would be back though!

You can read ‘Singapore 2014 Pt III: Day Three’ here.