Staycation #8 of 2020 (P's birthday staycation) Day 1 (28th November 2020)

This is the first staycation of this year which did not happen in MBS and it's also our first and only one we stayed for two nights. I've planned this so that we can celebrate P's birthday in a nice hotel room and I decided to splurge a little to get the signature room for the two nights so that we can have lounge access.

Our hotel room with modern wood finishing

Big bathing area with bathtub

The view from outside our door

Exterior of Park Royal Collection on the Pickering

The hotel is renowned for its green efforts 

I chose Park Royal Collection on the Pickering as it had good reviews when the Milelion stayed and there was also a promotion for the hotel many weeks ago. We were both actually looking forward to the staycation as there were posts on the social media about the magnificent exterior of the hotel. I also planned and booked dinner for the two nights even though we could eat at the lounge the whole day. Check in on Saturday at 2pm was quick and a breeze as they've added counters on the second floor to ease the human traffic. We saw the hotel's efforts in green initiatives as the bottles of the water in the room were in glass bottles, there were lots of plants everywhere and the outside of our room was actually non-aircon and overlooking the HDB flats in the area. 

The tea at the lounge from 2pm-4pm

The sunset view when we were going out for dinner

After we settled down in the room, we went to Hong Lim Park just opposite the hotel as P wanted to get some good shots of the exterior from some distance. We visited the pool at Level 6 and then headed to the lounge to have our tea. 

It is inevitable that we'll compare the rooms of MBS with Park Royal Pickering. We kind of miss the nice view from MBS rooms as usually we stay on much higher floors with awesome view. Park Royal Pickering rooms are very modern and well furnished but it is not as spacious, though the saving grace was the bathtub that we have in the room thanks the hotel upgrading us to a more spacious signature room. As for the pool, I've booked sessions for all three days but P find it quite meh as it's just on the 6th floor and its quite small compared to MBS pool and our pool at home. So after visiting the pool level on the first day, we did not go there at all. After staying for two days, I was a little disappointed that we did not enjoy our stay as much as expected and I guess we'll just wait for MBS to give us more free stays in 2021 instead of splurging on staycations as FOC is always better lol. 

Another qualms we had was the crowd and poor service at the lounge. The first time we went up, we had to wait a little for seats as the lounge was quite crowded and the few staff looked busy and flustered. It was quite disappointing as the food at the lounge was not bad but we could not really recommend it due to the poor service. The next day's breakfast at the lounge was the same again and we decided to have our breakfast at Lime restaurant instead on our last day, which was really much better. Milelion had very good reviews at the hotel and the lounge though, I guess he stayed there when it just reopened for booking and it was on a weekday.

Took this picture due to the mural

Dinner at the Yan restaurant (National Gallery)

Prawns with salted egg sauce

We've been craving for this

The yummy hairy crabs!

Our walk back to the hotel 

After tea, we had some time to take a short nap before heading out for dinner. P's birthday is always during the hairy crab season and 5 years ago we first tasted it for mum's birthday. That same year, we also booked dinner at some hotel to have another round of hairy crab and it has been 5 years since we tasted the delicacy. P was craving for it so I researched and booked dinner at Yan restaurant, which is walking distance from the hotel. It was a nice walk from our hotel to the restaurant at National Gallery as the surroundings is what we have not explored before. 

Usually hairy crab is served by cantonese chinese restaurant,  its quite rare for us to step into a chinese restaurant other than DTF. The steaming time of the crab took 40 min so there was a lot of waiting. We ordered a portion of hairy crab soup and that was served first, then the spinach with three eggs and prawns came next. P always eat everything with rice but the fried rice took super long to turn up, even though the steamed crab eventually came. I suspected they cook or serve it according to chinese course dinner sequence, as the mains like rice and noodles always come last, right before desserts. We prefer to eat everything at one go like zichar style instead of having a course dinner so we reminded them quite a few times to serve the rice. I was on the verge of getting quite impatient as the other dishes were all getting cold when the rice finally came. In overall, I would say the food quality is really good as the seafood are really fresh and of good quality, and the hairy crab was sooooooo good. The highlight of eating the hairy crab was devouring the roe and it was really a treat. They also served us some ginger tea to neutralise the taste after the dinner. It was not cheap to enjoy hairy crab and the damage for the dinner came up to $350 for both of us, we brought back the leftovers prawn and fried rice to the hotel room as its a sin to waste the expensive food. 

P was suddenly quite particular about cake cutting at midnight and I was totally unprepared for that. I remembered two years ago I just arrive back from Japan and he did not seem as bothered about it though I surprised him with candles on some tokyo bananas. We had to get a small cake from 7-11 on our way back and I was really thinking hard how I could get hold of a candle and lighter. We managed to get a candle from Lime restaurant and I called the reception at 11.45pm to borrow a lighter but they claimed they do not have one at the hotel and suggested that we get one from 7-11. Finally P told me to just download the candle apps on my phone and use it instead.