Day Four: Scavenger Hunt, Part II

Task 3: Newton Hawker Center

I don't know much about the location of this one, but I know that it is a "hawker center." This is kind of just a food court, but the vendors own their stalls and the food is like home-cooked food. There are a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables and meat, and everything is pretty cheap. Oh, but they're also kind of dirty and "rough around the edges." Very "authentic," whatever that word means.

The task here was to spell the word "Newton" with our bodies...

And then to take a picture with a Singaporean family! But we couldn't find one, so we just sat down with these nice girls.

Task 4: 313 Mall

This is a swanky mall "in town," which means near the city-center. It has a 4-storey Forever 21 and a lot of famous European clothing stores.

It also has tons and tons of really beautiful places to buy food! We made a little detour to buy a snack at this store <-- Bread Talk. We asked our guide what the most "Singaporean" thing to buy would be, and she recommended a "pork floss" bun. Yes, it was a roll with shredded pork on top. It wasn't bad, but it was a little too strange for me to say that it was good.

There was also this neat terrace/patio outside the food court...

Where our task was to take a picture on the chess board!

I really love this picture a lot.

Task 5: Marina Barrage

This was by far the coolest place we went. No matter what I say about it, I can't convey how awesome it was. For one, it was amazing in and of itself, but it was also near the business district (i.e. skyscrapers), the Singapore Flyer (huge ferris wheel) and the new Sands Casino (three buildings with a boat-shaped structure on top). Perhaps the pictures can speak for themselves.

Hopefully you can kind of see that it's like one long, grassy ramp. It swoops up and curves around, opening onto a large field where people picnic, chill, and fly kites, and that is located ON TOP of the structure, and then circles back around to dive down into another field on the ground.

Here's an aerial shot from Google that helps make it more clear.

The picture below is of the "rooftop" field. The sky was really dramatic. Everything about this place was just so beautiful and neat!

The task here was to fly a kite, but instead of paying for that, we just took a funny picture with someone else flying the kite.

Then we took a really cool picture of us jumping...

then with the Flyer...

And the Casino!

And of both...

I'm running out of adjectives, but it was really a great place to have experienced. After this, we headed back, and the scavenger hunt was over! We would have won, but it started raining and so, instead of walking all the way to the metro station, we hailed cabs (which was cheating). Oops!

We're still winners in my book.

Friday night a lot of people (most of the group) decided to go out to a club. I was exhausted, though, so I stayed in. Another girl, Asia, also wound up staying, so we took a walk together and had a nice chat. It was neat to walk around the area surrounding our dorms at night - because of the weather, it kind of felt like being at Ocean Isle Beach.