February 17th, 2005
Clark Quay (pronounced Clark Key) was on the way back to Clementi (where we live) and so we thought we'd check it out. Neither of us had been there yet, and we thought seeing it at night, since it's along the waterfront, it would look cool. And it was pretty neat, but what we noticed getting off of the MRT, was that all the 'white' folks got off at the Clark Quay MRT station. Now when I say 'white' I mean they could be from Australia, which many are, or from Britain which many are, or from the US, which there aren't many...so, right off the bat, we knew we were going to a tourist place. Once we exited the MRT station we were right on the waterfront which was basically a river that ran through the area of Clark Quay. Along the opposite side from where we were, the river was lined with many restaurants, pubs, coffee houses, and karaoke bars. There was even a Hooters! Asian Hooters girls in the same small orange shorts. Jer wouldn't take a pix for the blog, sorry! There were bridges at both ends and so we decided to walk along the whole waterfront and check out the scene.


Welcome to Clark Quay!


River boat rides were available if you wanted.

You could book a ride on the river Taxi, which I'm not sure where it would take you, but at least you could get a ride up and down the river...many people were lined up for this and there were probably a dozen boats running up and down the river.


There were lots of shopping opportunities which we were not interested in and everything here, was really expensive! An ice cream cone was $2.50 and you got about as much ice cream as you could at McDonald's for $.25!

At the far end of activities there was this bungee slingshot thing that hurled it's participants a hundred feet into the air in a cage and you came bouncing back down, spinning and screaming the whole way. We did not do this, as it was rather expensive too, $30 per person. The whole ride was about 3 mins long but it was very entertaining to watch others do it. There was a huge line for this ride, folks proving they were not scared. Unfortunatly, we have no pix of this either. We were laughing too much to take pix.


And, as I have mentioned in earlier blogs, there are cats everywhere!

This is just a small sampling of the about 10 that were just outside the MRT as we were leaving Clark Quay. It has been told to us, that if a cat has it's one ear clipped off, notched if you will, which each of these cats and most all of the ones at this MRT did, that meant that the gov't had seized them and spayed and neutered them and then re-released them. The cats aren't afraid of people, but they keep their distance from them. They are wild cats and fend for themselves. Most of them are pretty much the size of LUNA, Meredith's cat.

In the end, I had a very nice birthday and have recieved cards from Mom and Clark, Cheryl and David and Joey, Aunt Ardie (x2) and Uncle Jim, Aunt Ginny, and of course e-cards and birthday emails. (Sue, yours really was hilarious!) Thanks to you all for remembering and for helping me to feel not so far away from home.

Now lucky me, not only was my birthday the beginning of Chinese New Year here, which allowed me more than one day actually....but Valentines Day also happened AND Jeremy and I have officially been together for just over a year! SO, we had much to celebrate in the last week!

Dim Sum with Davis

In celebration of the Chinese New Year, Davis, Jeremy's boss, is now back (for a few weeks anyway) and he wanted to take us all out for festive Dim Sum. Ling, Kazue, Jeremy and me. He took us to a restaurant near Chinatown which was crazy busy! Apparently this is a hot spot for folks wanting some Dim Sum. Basically we went in, sat down, and Davis ordered different tapis style foods for us to try. Of course he can speak the language so he knew what we were getting. The workers there wheel these carts of food around and you point and choose how many of each thing you want to try. The orders are small, so it's not like you're making a huge commitment. We tried all kinds of bite sized chinese foods, some tasted good, others better but I have to admit, that while I was scared to death of what I might encounter with the Chicken Feet, after Jeremy described them so disgustingly to me over the phone before my arrival, I had them two different ways, and while I'm not big into pickling things, it really wasn't so bad. And the other way we had them, had this special sauce on them, and the 'meat' it's really just a bunch of fat, just fell off the chicken's digits. It's not something I would want to eat a lot of, but for a sampler, it wasn't so bad. We should have taken a picture so you could see what we were eating....but alas it was a busy place and the food just kept coming, so you had to be on your toes.



Davis trying a new dessert even to him!


I am about to try porriadge (sp?).

It's supposed to aid in digestion, and have lots of good stuff in it, like what I'm pointing at, 'thousand year old egg'. It's, to put in Davis's words, "basically a rotten egg". It's the black thing on my spoon.


Ling, always so cheerful for the camera! Notice the empty seat next to her. Kazue is camera shy!

© December 6, 2008