I knew the day would be a fine one even before I woke up because the sunlight was seeping in through the curtains and eventually into people's foreheads. Well rested, but still rather pissed off at the sunshine, I found some relief at the fact that the breakfast was free from the hostel. As you can imagine, free breakfast from a place that's $8 a night is just coffee and toast but it was all I needed anyway.
I spent most of the morning hanging out with Tom from Ireland, who was sleeping on the other side of the dorm. He turned out to be an accountant who's traveling around the world and eventually heading over to New Zealand later next year to work for a few months. He and I got along pretty well - both of us having been raised in a country that is divided north and south, we landed on some interesting topics - we talked quite a bit about everything from Politics and Economies to Rugby. After being ripped off at a local restaurant - we both asked for a dish that was $2.50 each on the menu, but the guy said we were given the wrong order and asked us to pay $4.50 each. Fortunately for them, they did not speak hardly any English and I wasn't in the mood to argue any further in this weather - Tom was off to Thailand and I begin my own trek.
Entrance into Suntec City Mall from the MRT Station - this is steaming outdoors BTW,
don't let roof fool you. Beyond those doors is sweet, sweet air-conditioning!!!
Since I was planning to go on a guided tour of the other parts of the city, I chose Suntec City Mall as my first destination and decided to walk aimlessly inside and around, which I did. After almost an hour of not-pretending-to-be-lost, I finally gave in and looked at the building directory. After scrutinising the layout, I then realised that I was doing circles in only ONE of the FIVE towers that make up the complex... Later on in the trip, I found out that the buildings were constructed so that each of the 5 towers represent a finger of the left hand, with one 'thumb' tower being shorter than the rest. Supposedly, according to Chinese Geomancy, the fountain in the 'palm' area of the complex is supposed to symbolise "Wealth flowing into one's hand", guess its a good thing.
By 5:30PM, I was getting rather hungry from all that walking so I hesitantly walked out of Toys R'us and checked out the restaurants on the other side. Japanese, Hong Kong, Turkish, Steamboat... Bingo, Korean restaurant. And guess what they had on the menu.
냉면 Naeng-myun - Possibly the food that I like the most in the world, and this dish happened to be a specialty of this place. Cold noodles with pickled radish and cucumbers. Very chewy noodles, sweet yet vinegary goodness. Not to mention, the ice cold soup was a godsend in the weather.
Around the time I was halfway through the bowl, the Korean owner came up to me and started conversation since I was the only customer there. He was a man around 50 He was curious as to why I was having dinner so early and explained to me that restaurants don't get much customers until at least 8PM - apparently Southeast Asians (or any countries with a hot climate) follow a somewhat delayed daily timetable compared to the rest of the world. Once I literally cleaned up the bowl, the gentleman kindly pointed out places to check out and where to grab cheap, decent food on my tourist map. After saying thanks, I headed outside where I was met by drizzly skies...
