Day 1 continued…

More on Day 1 in Singapore: love and noodles does House Hunters International! (Big HGTV fan right here…not sure if James even got the reference I kept making…)

Condo hunting in Singapore

The entire afternoon on my first day here was dedicated to – what else? – house hunting! The process to lease a condo can be a long one here, so we had to choose a place on my very first day in order to have a move in date in the first week in September.

We toured SIX places in just a few hours. I pretended I was on House Hunters International! All of the condos were big high rises – most of the units we toured were 25th story or above.

When you’re looking at condos in Singapore there can be a couple common themes:

• not a lot of space…talking under 400 sq ft. We still will definitely have a separate living room area, as this was really important to us for guests, but that’s about it.
• no ovens – only two burner stoves and microwaves. A bit of a bummer because I love to bake, but I’ll live.
• some really outstanding city views! And some views of the constant construction that is all over Singapore. (Really though, each place had at least one spot that had a great view – even if it was the bathroom window!)

Pools on pools

At every place, we also saw absolutely GORGEOUS facilities. Great gyms, tennis courts, and swimming pools/spas that looked like they belonged at resorts! James fully admits he stopped really looking at the units and solely judged on pools.

The great news: we LOVED two of the units! We loved them both so much that we almost couldn’t decide between them, they were both so great. We haven’t gotten final word on which one we’re living in yet, so I’m going to hold off on the neighborhood and condo details – I don’t want to jinx it!

Orchard Road and beyond

We ended the condo search near Singapore’s famous Orchard Road area, so we decided to walk around there and check it out for our evening activity. From what we could tell, Orchard Rd basically just has a TON of malls and high-end stores all on one strip. In general, malls are a huge thing here in Singapore. They’re a bit different from what I’m used to back home. These malls have tons of restaurants, large grocery stores, general/variety stores, and more. They are also where everyone hangs out – it’s like a middle school Friday all over again!

We’ll definitely hit up Orchard again in the future and continue to explore, but for the first day we weren’t in a mall mood. Instead we wound up walking through some of the side and back alleys away from the malls and high rises and into residential neighborhoods. The homes were incredibly beautiful, and illustrated some of the interesting juxtapositions that pop up everywhere in Singapore. I’m already really into these contrasts – the mix of old vs. new, traditional vs. modern, natural vs. industrial, Eastern vs. Western influences. They clash horribly yet compliment each other beautifully.

And that was PLENTY for day 1! Especially considering I started work bright and early on day 2. Details on that for a later post.

Love,
Em