Playing It Safe - Singapore

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Singapore is an island and a city and a country in South East Asia, just off the southern coast of Malaysia. It's tropical, hot and humid, but I managed to wear jeans in the midday more than once, so it's not impossibly hot. Once per day it tends to rain quick and hard, sometimes you see it sometimes you don't notice.
My friends Chen Zichao and Ching Hei picked me up from Changi Airport around midnight and took me out for my first of many delicious meals. We ate Roti Prata - an Indian derived Singaporean stuffed pancake (I had one with mushrooms/cheese and one with egg). The way you eat this and most meals in Singapore is with a fork in your left hand to do the cutting of food and a spoon in your right hand to bring the food to your mouth. I wanted to have something before bed too so next door I picked up a double order of rice with fish cakes, something crunchy but not so good, chili paste, some other seafood paste (decent), and one or two other things. Then they took me to National Singapore University where Zic set me up with a bed in the dorms. Then the next day I got my first taste of the excellent bus system in Singapore; there are many buses and trains, they go everywhere, and they run frequently. I went to the Taipei Consulate for business, then took another bus to Ikea - the agreed upon meeting place between Me and a-Hei. I managed to down 5 or 6 cups of coffee along with a snack of You Tiao, something similar to a light, salted breadstick, supposedly with a filling of kaya (coconut jam) but I couldn't distinguish it, I can only say it was pleasant. Very pleased with the coffee in my system, I was off to my first hawker center - basically a giant food court with a large selection of cheap local delicacies. I learned here that it's a good idea to start the day off with something spicy - really get your body excited and ready for anything all day. Did you ever notice that spicy food in the states seems to build upon itself? It might not seem spicy at first, but each bite seems to get hotter and hotter. Not so in Asia - the spice is a steady stream. I tried the Laksa, which is a popular soup and can have a few variations in this area; mine had a thick yellow noodle, Vietnamese corriander, chili paste, a little seafood (but not shrimp), and it Hei ordered it without the cockles because he said a Westerner's stomach sometimes can't handle it. I also had some of his chicken and sprouts dish which tasted a lot like chicken fried rice in American Chinese restaurants. Also, to finish, he had me drink a Durian Shake, made from the durian AKA the king of fruits. Durian has a very strong smell and taste, which can take some acquiring. My drink was a westernized version, so i didn't get the full impact, but the taste is unique, and you can taste it for hours if you have a few burps. We spent the rest of the day getting around - Central Business District, Singapore river/marina, chinatown, theater district, near Istana (president's house), and Sentosa Beach in the south.
The next day we met up in the shopping district around Orchard Avenue - lots of high class shopping and also some regular shopping, except that it's underground. In this area all of the shops are connected underground, and the underground is 6 stories deep. They must love to dig! We went to a food court where a-Hei had Long John Silver's for some reason, while his Japanese teacher and I ate Mee Goreng, a Malaysian spicy noodle dish with vegetables, onion, maybe tofu, and chili. Afterward I had a snack of Curry Puff and a sesame ball with peanut inside. This day we spent much time in Little India (very authentic) and around Arab Street. Day 3 was museum day for me; Ching Hei got me a student pass so I could go to many of the museums for free. Then later I met him and Zic for a dinner with several other friends (it was also Hei's penultimate night in Singapore before going to China for a semester). We ate a bunch of dishes (chicken feet stew, sushi, something cake-like, dumplings, plus more), cruised around the red light district, then got dessert.
My final meal(s) was a bunch of pig parts - liver, kidney, body, plus some dough balls and lime juice, followed by duck rice with soup and BANDANG, a pretty looking rose milk tea which I pronounced very much like an American.
All-in-all, I'm glad I got to see my friends, and the food has a left a very good impression on me. Since I've been back, I've been finding it difficult to stop eating. In fact I might go scavenge right now...

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Photos

Rati Prata
My first meal, delicious

Zic and me wearing a tank
at our first meal in Singapore

Standing
probably about to have a snack at Old Chang Kee

The Esplanade
fancy theater

Jagged Yellow lines
there is going to be an F1 night race here

Merlion and CBD
The merlion is the official symbol of Singapore. CBD is Central Business District. Singapore is rich.

Baby Merlion
a little dinkier with his spittle

Stamford Raffles
Founder of modern Singapore

He named it "Lion City"
He thought he saw a lion here, but there are no lions here, so he's probably kinda dumb.

Not the Coat of Arms
so, not sure what the symbol is for

Comments

[kim]

Singapore!
Exciting trip to Singapore. I,m glad you met up with your friends to show you everything in Singapore. It looks like you had a great time with all of the site-seeing, I can't believe that their underground shopping is 6 stories high....And all of the eating of different foods that you ate.(brave).......You will have to take grammom to china-town to get all of those ingredients....I,m sure she can whip you up something delicious!mom

[ALINA]

What? Singapore? I missed something :)))) Nice!:))