Day 13: 12/1/23 - Farewells and Friday Night Markets

On our last day in Singapore, we finally made time to go the Marina Bay Sands. This behemoth of a hotel/convention center/casino is quite a sight to behold. Despite my general aversion to this level of raw, unbridled ego-capitalism, it offered two of our favorite things to seek out: views from on high and gardens. 

The gardens were extensive if not overly sanitized and with a fair number of paywalls, and the view was truly unparalleled, as the Sands sits so far from other buildings of similar prominence. The Sands' proximity to the water also gave us a chance to see first hand the price of being the world's second busiest port. 

We bade farewell to the (hopefully not, but probably) once in a lifetime experience of Raffles hotel, and Grabbed to SIN, with one of Singapore's main tourist attractions: the Jewel. Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I didn't really get it. Colored by my anxiety of if we would get to our gate early enough (some of us are still recovering from growing up getting there 4 hours early!), it looked mostly like the cooling system that Tom Cruise jumps into in Mission: Impossible - Rouge Nation stuck in Bezos' balls (the amazon spheres, for those outside of Seattle). We bid farewell to Karen, as we would be continuing on to Malaysia, and she was headed back to Minnesota. 

After a quick lounge dinner, and less quick flight to Kota Kinabalu Internation Airport (formerly/still in transition from BKI), we arrived on the north shore of Borneo. Our financial culture shock began with a 2 dollar 30 minute Grab to our hotel, which was cut short a block from our hotel. With all the roads blocked off we walked our bags the last couple of blocks to see...a night market directly in front of our hotel! We dropped our bags and wandered the market, eventually settling on a sit down dinner with a view of the market, excited to return to it tomorrow evening.