Day 0 - 1: Sao Paulo - A Comfortable Start
- Vik Leann
- Sep 11, 2015
- 4 min read
August 13 - 14, 2015
First of all, a big thanks to our families, Joel, Lershan, Poh Heng, Mingwen, and our Uber Driver Justin "Bieber" Wong for sending us off that day. We apologise for the long awaited updates on our blog, but hope we have done enough to share snippets of our trip through other forms of social media. So begins the first stop: Sao Paulo!
View of Barcelona after the short layover
The 24hr flight on SIA went by faster than Vik imagined, which only meant that he enjoyed the journey, it being the first time he's ever on SIA. We met Nick when we got kicked (ushered) off the plane while transiting in Barcelona. I soon found out from this executive coach that has been in Sao Paulo for 8 years that the Singaporean community was really small and mostly in Sao Paulo. Thanks to him, we got a free Uber ride from the Airport directly to Alvin's place in the rather upscale Jardins area. Nick obviously knew his way around and was able to give us an intro to Sao Paulo and the Brazilian culture.
Vik enjoying the movies on the long flight while the wifey naps!
Alvin's apartment was sized like a 4-room in Singapore. We loved that it was spacious, neat and well furnished: a much needed luxury for us to recover from our jet lag. That night, we were immediately treated to a rather posh charruscaria and the traditional and modern versions of a caipirinha. Alcohol, as we soon realised, was common, as it was cheap. People drank on every occasion. Long story short, we were fed an excellent Brazilian meal, and we felt the food coma hitting us head on, especially under the influence of alcohol.
Alvin's well designed and spacious bachelor's pad
That's our jetlagged and fully stuffed faces after the Churrascaria! Thanks Alvin!
We explored Sao Paulo the following day, with the expectation that there was nothing much to see.
We started with the Mercado Municipal (Municipal Market), one of the highlights of Sao Paulo due to the unique foods and fruits available. As we stepped out of the Sao Bento Metro Station, we were overwhelmed by peddlers of all sorts selling everything from bottled water to Nike shoes. Took us a while to orientate, but I was immediately alert of any danger with the bustling crowd that stretched down the entire road. It was a rather stark contrast to the clean and organised Paulista area we came from. Roads were littered with rubbish, noisy with the hustling of peddlers, and the stench of pee could be detected occasionally. This was Rue 25 de Marco: the wholesalers street for anything and everything.
Peddlers of all sorts on 25 Rue de Marco!
10 minutes later, hungry, we charaded and pointed to have a mortadella sandwich at a shop outside the Mercado. It was then we realized how unprepared we were for the communication barrier. We then entered the Mercado Municipal, and immediately felt underwhelmed. It was indeed a nice covered market, but other than the interesting fruit stalls, and the organised lanes compared to the chaos outside, the only interesting thing was how expensive the food was. The mortadella sandwich we ate outside was a mere R$5, but it was more than R$18 inside. We toured the place for 15 minutes got bored and moved on, thus chancing upon another outdoor stall where we bought a codfish pastry for R$8 and a sugar cane juice for R$4.
Success! Our first interaction to get our mortadella sandwich!
The rather empty but pricey market, and the fruit stalls that offer free fruits for you to try!
Not very fantastic pastry but sweet and refreshing sugar cane juice!
It might have been the jetlag, but we completed the rest of Sao Paulo in 3 hours. Most of our time consumed by walking from place to place. First to Republica to check out the outdoor market, then a train to Se to check out the Cathedral, and then walking down to Liberdade to check out the Asian area and have lunch at the famed Aska Lamen.
Aska Lamen was not bad but we tasted better in Singapore! One bowl for 2 of us!
Before long we were already back at Paulista, and exploring the Melissa and Havaianas outlets of Oscar Friere. At home base, the Melissas and Havaianas cost almost a third of their prices in Singapore, but while we were spoilt for choice at the Havaianas store, Leann sadly couldn’t find the right shoe at Melissa. After a quick stopover to drop off our flipflops, we headed off to Vila Madalena to meet Tati Suzuki, a Japanese Brazilian friend Leann met on her Eurotrip in 2010. She was actually on the same exchange programme with Leann’s dearest “Lesbo” Jessica. 5 years on, and there was much to catch up, and more to understand about the real Brazilian culture in Sao Paulo.
Vik still felt a little jet lagged, and we thus bid good bye to Tati and headed off back home to rest. We chanced upon a few other Brazil-based Singaporeans at breakfast the next morning, and had a pretty good healthy breakfast with interesting fruit juices, before we grabbed our bags to head out to the bus terminal. Buying the tickets were surprisingly easy, as the bus companies that headed to Rio were side by side, and had frequent buses to Rio. We were even more glad to find out that the buses were comfy and had Wi-fi, although intermittent. 5 hours didn’t feel too long.. =)
Next Stop: Rio de Janeiro!