Moving to Singapore Part 3: Quarantine

The Singapore government has imposed some of the strictest Covid regulations in the world. Despite relatively low case numbers in their population, incoming travelers must quarantine for two weeks in a dedicated "SHN" (Stay Home Notice) facility. We are sooooo thankful that HR at Travis' company was able to secure us two connecting rooms at the Ritz Carlton. I lost a lot of sleep in the weeks leading up to our move being worried we'd either all be in one hotel room or split across two separate rooms. If we'd had to split up it would have taken me HOURS to separate the luggage. Not to mention I didn't have a Singapore cell phone number (or any way to get one) which would have made the daily check ins with the government very tricky. Thankfully we had found out a few days before, but it had made the initial packing stressful not knowing for sure if we'd be able to secure connecting rooms.

On the bus. At this point it had been about 39 hours since we left home. As you can see Ellie is over it

On the bus ride in. Gardens by the Bay are the behind the ribbed structures on the left, then you can see the Marina Bay Sands, the Flyer Ferris wheel, the Lotus museum (I don't know what it's actually called but it looks like a lotus flower) and our hotel is the white building on the right.

Did I mention we have a lot of bags? Took this pic after the luggage guys (in full  HazMat gear... in case our luggage is spreading covid?) let Travis' guitar fall on it's face. It's ok but we won't let them handle it again.

Wooooow what a hotel room! Unfortunately once we moved our 25 items in it never looked this nice again

And woooooooooow what a view!

Was AWESOME to have a foyer to store our bags

Kids room. We were absolutely spoiled by this setup.

The night time view was even prettier

Unfortunately, since we literally could not leave the room for two weeks, the view started to seem more like a screensaver. We did keep tabs on the soccer pitch renovation. First they were covering what looked like bare concrete with this black layer.

How it started (Sept 15)

Then the black layer was covered with another white layer, then they'd use the teal strips (sometimes), then one day they carved what looked like a maze in the front by scooping up the green in those weird black squares, then eventually they'd cover the teal with more green. But it wasn't in any particular order that we could discern. Sometimes they'd also put down white where the line should be. 

Sept 20

Sept 24

While they fixed the green parts in the center, the edges looked like a much bigger mess than when they started.

Sept 25

And if that was boring to you, imagine how we felt Maybe someday we'll get to see the finished product. We did enjoy seeing the locals walk and bike along that promenade in front of the pitch. At first look Singapore appears to be an active community!

We found some fun ways to pass the time, however to be honest we just let the kids have mostly unlimited screen time. Travis was working, the girls had virtual school work to do, and my engineering background in no way prepared me for being locked in a room with 4 other opinionated people for two weeks straight. I did enjoy regular peloton workouts thanks to the marriott streaming app on the tv. As we've discussed on FB, the food was AWFUL. I'm not one to complain about food that I'm not paying for, but this was bad. After about 3 days we learned how to order  delivery and that improved our lives a lot.

Decorating pumpkin cookies. Thanks Ms. Patricia!

Max kept falling asleep by 6 pm

An example of "Breakfast". "BBQ Chicken" sandwich with hard boiled eggs (those were fine) and a weird grainy dragonfruit jello.

Not certain if this was the dish that gave Travis food poisoning but it probably did. It definitely looks better than it tasted.

A wonderful, necessary gift from one of Travis' new coworkers

Our first Amazon Fresh delivery--our first taste of freedom!

A rare moment of playtime in between ipad time

Back to virtual violin lessons. Thought we were done with these. But grateful for the option.

That one magical morning where the lighting was perfect, and we all felt rested enough for a nice pic with mugs of hot cocoa

Game night! This particular evening we played Charades. Max caught on and he was ADORABLE. I remember he acted out vacuuming and an airplane.

Making bath bombs. I had brought the popcorn popper to make popcorn but had mistakenly assumed there would be a microwave in the room. Glad we had that to use as a bowl for other various activities.

A fun "local" gift from a new friend. We tried them-- they were pretty good! A little spicy for the kids. Definitely more of a savory flavor. And how funny, I look over at Ellie and she's eating the Hainanese ones right now!

The almost daily Cosmic Kids Yoga (on towels we happened to bring in our suitcase)

I believe this was take out from Hawker Chan, a world renowned restuarant. We actually enjoyed our meal for the first time in a week.

"Beef" stew. This actually had pretty good flavor, but it was a challenge to find any actual meat in those cubes. Definitely instant potatoes. The hash brown thing was weird.

Wrist was healing, but not as quickly as I would have liked. The dermabond fell off the top part a little too early.

We saw some really cool thunderstorms and rainbows from this vantage point

Some sweet friends dropped off a box of magnatiles which infinitely increased our hours of enjoyment

Ellie was thrilled to get another Wellie Wisher for her quarantine birthday!

A friend dropped off this AMAZING chocolate cake for us!

All the birthday festivities put Max to sleep. The girls thought it was funny to pretend to sleep next to him.

Our chocolate cake friend also left some toys, including this "make your own slime kit"!

Take out from Din Tai Fung! DTF is known for their dumplings, but they won't deliver those, so we settled for fried rice, pork chop and noodles, pork buns, and fried dumplings. The fried rice was possibly the best I'd ever had. So good we ordered delivery again a couple nights ago!

I've learned from previous experience that anytime we move I gotta put my two favorite knives in my (carry on) suitcase. We also brought a small thing of dishsoap, some kids cups, a dish brush, and our 30A Tervis mugs. Can't trust that a hotel will have appropriately sized coffee mugs and I proved myself right. I also had a bag of plastic knives which proved to be necessary because the delivered meals only came with spoons and forks.

Another day, another breakfast of muesli, 'eggs', and beans. At least the fruit was usually good.

Luggage in a cart can only mean one thing--RELEASE DAY!!

It was a long two weeks, but honestly I didn't mind it too much (except for the government provided food. SO GROSS). We were grateful for two very comfortable hotel rooms, lots of snacks, great delivery services, and enough activities to keep us going. This would have been REALLY hard without quality internet access though!

Next up: Settling into our serviced apartment