If there’s one place I have a hard time writing about, it’s Singapore. There’s just too much history, special memories, dreams fulfilled, for me, in this city. There’s just not enough time to put all my travels, living and working adventures here, through the years ,together in one post. So I haven’t really blogged about this one city that feels like a second home to me, until now. Why? Because yet again, Singapore shares another special moment with me. This time around, it’s with my baby, his first time to see this place that is very close to his mum’s heart.

For E’s first birthday trip and our first New Year’s Eve abroad as a family, we flew to Singapore. This was also Elian’s first trip with his Angkong, Ama and Achiak and everybody was just excited and happy to travel with him. We were also very happy to bring the family around and experience things they haven’t done yet in this city.

First stop of course upon arriving is having my all-time favorite cereal prawns! Brings back so many happy memories with this dish — fell in love with this dish for the first time in 2006 with my sister in Lau Pa Sat, then this dish became my almost everyday meal when I lived here in 2010, and for every visit I would have this anywhere and every chance I can get. My favorite are the ones from No Signboard Board and Mel Ben but any hawker is also good!

The next day was zoo day. But before that, we started out to grab breakfast at Killiney Kopitiam the nearest one in our hotel in Mandarin Orchard. I really enjoy walking in the streets of Singapore early in the morning, seeing the gardens and the parks and reminiscing about moments in the past, and this time around I loved that I was sharing it with Elian. I missed having Kaya toast for brekky and E loved it so much too he had two!

When I was living here, Ken and I had a date once at the Night Safari but we never really went to the Zoo. Never did I think that we’d visit the Zoo with our baby one day. So it was actually nice to share this new experience with Elian! There’s a lot of attractions I’d like to bring him to, like the Bird Park maybe on our next trip here.

The zoo is huge and there’s a lot to see, but it’s very very hot and tiring. We didn’t get to explore all we wanted but we’re very happy to have met and fed the giraffes!

One thing we always love in Singapore are the food discoveries! It’s always a food trip in this city! For this trip, we got to try the different cheesetarts – Tarta in Vivo City and Bake in Ion. Bake is the best, hands down! We love love love it! E is just addicted to it! Too bad there’s a limit for your every purchase and too bad I wasn’t able to take photos of it. We are truly looking forward to our Japan trip just for this!

Also happy to have had a date night with Ken during our trip even if it’s just for a few hours before parenting duties called again. We got to try out House in Dempsey and it was lovely! Great food and a lovely ambiance makes this girl very happy! 🙂

For New Year’s Eve, we went to Gardens by the Bay for their Christmas Wonderland. It was quite disappointing as it was just the lights show and some shops and carollers but really nothing more. They didn’t light the Supertrees to give way to the lighted houses but the Supertrees were much more impressive. I prefer our previous experience in 2015 rather than this visit. Good thing we had a great dinner there though! After we went back to our hotel where there were some NYE festivities and countdown.

The next days were for enjoying food and other spots that we missed like brunching at PS Cafe, book shopping at Kinokuniya, Four Fingers in Ion, meeting up with E’s Ninong & Ninang in Sg, shopping for baby stuff in Paragon, etc. etc.

Again, 5 days were just not enough time to see and show him all that Sg has to offer but it was a fun first trip for Elian. There will definitely be more trips back here which is one of mom and dad’s favourite city in Asia. See you again soon Singapore!