Monthly Archives: January 2021

Thanks to the pandemic, we couldn’t travel anywhere over the Christmas holidays. So instead we booked two nights at a local hotel called the Andaz. It’s fairly new, and pretty close to our home, on the edge of downtown. It was a nice little break. 

Here’s the outside of the building, and the lobby:

Here’s our boy and Slothie, relaxing by the windows and commenting, “I’m like a Roman emperor! Except with an apple instead of grapes.”

It’s a high-rise hotel; our room was on the 28th floor, the pool was on the 25th, and there’s a bar and open-air viewing platform up on the roof, at the 40th floor. So the views are pretty awesome.

And the infinity pool on the 25th floor was pretty nice too. Small, but nice.

We didn’t really do all that much on this staycation, since the whole point was to just relax. But we went to a few nearby restaurants, and had a walkabout through what’s called the Arab Quarter, the traditional Muslim neighborhood that the hotel is located right next to. The quarter is home to a beautiful mosque, so of course we posed for a goofy family pic.

We can’t wait til we are allowed to travel internationally again, but until then, little breaks like this help keep us sane!

Tiong Bahru is the name of a neighborhood not far from downtown Singapore. It’s known for its food shops, its cafes and its 1930s art deco architecture. One Sunday morning, Nyan and Daddy headed there for a casual stroll. It wasn’t all that exciting, but it was a nice change of pace.

We walked down the sidewalks and checked out the old wooden doors…

We admired a bright Vespa parked on the road:

Fun fact: Tiong Bahru is close to Singapore General Hospital, and back in WW2, the Japanese made a habit of trying to drop bombs on the hospital. Sometimes they would miss and hit Tiong Bahru, so the government built air raid shelters there, which you can still see the outside of. There’s a little display of old photos from inside, and an old advertisement from someone offering to build air raid shelters, I guess?

And finally: Tiong Bahru is kind of an artistic area, so we stumbled upon a mural of a giant goat. Not sure why, but we had to take photos, of course.

That’s it. Like we said, not the most exciting trip ever. But still nice!