Today was my only full day in Singapore, and I had three main objectives: the first is to buy some more clothes, because I had learned that in India, they don't really have laundromats, people instead typically have machines at home or they hire a laundry service, and since I would be moving around a lot, I wanted to have some extra clothes (especially undergarments) in case I wouldn't have a good opportunity to do laundry. The second objective was to buy a new pair of shoes because I was starting to wear down my current pair and my shins and knees were sore. The third objective was to visit some of my favorite food spots in Singapore. What I didn't realize was that Chinatown Food Centre, located right around the corner from my hostel, was closed for cleaning for the weekend, so I wouldn't be able to visit any of the stalls there.

I walked down the street from my hostel to Nanyang Old Coffee to get some breakfast. They offer a classic Singaporean breakfast combo with kaya (coconut jam) butter toast, half-boiled egg with soy sauce and pepper, and a cup of Singaporean kopi (and in my opinion they have the best kopi in the city - the secret is that the beans are roasted with sugar, it is brewed with a big filter like Hong Kong-style milk tea, and they add condensed and evaporated milks). The whole thing is less than 4 USD.

After breakfast I took the MRT to Dhoby Ghaut, on the eastern end of Orchard Road, which is a famous shopping street. I got there around 10am but most shops don't really open until around 11am, so I just ended up doing a lot of walking to kill time, which wasn't great because it was raining. Luckily many of the shopping malls are connected underground throw a series of underpasses, and through a couple MRT stations. I went to Uniqlo and bought some clothes, then went back to my hostel to drop them off and headed for lunch. I headed to Maxwell Food Centre, which was about a 10 minute walk from the hostel. Maxwell is home to Tian Tian Hainanese Chicken Rice, which became famous after Anthony Bourdain visited and is also featured in the Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand. There is always a line during lunch time, so I grabbed a cup of calamansi (Filipino lime) juice and waited in the queue, which goes somewhat quickly. The chicken rice was fragrant, the chicken was juicy, and the chili sauce was spicier than I remembered. Overall the food was great, I only wish I would've got real cutlery, since the plastic fork and knife are flimsy.

It was still very rainy, but luckily they have opened a new MRT line in Singapore, the Thompson-East Coast Line, which stops at Maxwell Station, connected by a series of covered walkways to Maxwell Food Centre. I headed to Little India to go to Mustafa Centre, which is a big chaotic department store selling a wide variety of items, primarily to try to find a cheap screen protector for my phone and a plug adapter for India. After that stop I walked to Kampong Glam, Singapore's Muslim Quarter and home eto Overrun, one of my favorite ice cream shops. They had moved into a new storefront and were still getting set up, but they were open and I ordered an Overrun Chendol, which is basically an ice cream version of a typical cendol dessert: It features chendol soft serve, pandan jelly, coconut flakes, and palm sugar syrup, and is so delicious and refreshing.

After that tasty snack, I headed to Suntec City mall to go shoe shopping. I had been wearing Adidas Ultraboosts for the past couple of years, but I didn't want to spend so much on shoes, and I was also wondering if I should buy shoes with more arch support, so I went to Skechers and got some Arch Fit running shoes. The store was running a special sale, with 25% off purchases of S$150 and above, and the shoes cost S$149, so I had no choice but to buy some more socks to reduce the overall cost (I had already bought socks this morning at Uniqlo, and they aren't returnable, so I shouldn't have to worry about running out of clean socks in India I guess). There was a Skechers x Pokemon collaboration going on, and I would've loved to buy something from that collection instead, but it wasn't eligible for the promotion.

It continued to rain so I hung out in the Suntec City Mall, before heading back to the hostel to drop off my purchases. I headed to Chinatown Food Centre for dinner, and it was at this point that I realized it was closed for Spring cleaning. It was getting late and most food centres would be starting to close, so I went to Maxwell again because it was so close. Even there, most places were starting to run out of food, so I went to Marina South Delicious Food, one of the few open stalls, and got some white and black carrot cake (well I only wanted the black carrot cake, but the guy misunderstood my order). Singaporean carrot cake is actually chai tow kway, which is stir fried radish cake with eggs, and black carrot cake also has dark sweet soy sauce added, which I prefer.

After eating dinner I headed back to the hostel to do laundry. It took at least an hour longer than I had expected because the dryer wasn't very good. By the time I finished I was really hungry so I walked to People's Park Mall to go to McDonalds, which was the only thing open at the time, and I ordered some of the unique Singaporean McDonald's items: the McSpicy chicken sandwich and the Mudslide McFlurry (basically an Oreo McFlurry but with hot fudge added). I also got both regular and spicy ketchup.