You Ok! We Ok! Singapore Ok!
Trip Start
May 03, 2010
1
39
40
Trip End
Oct 18, 2011
Singapore, Singapore
Thursday, September 22, 2011
The weekend that I was in Singapore happened to be the weekend that the Grand Prix was being held there, so in addition to a jam packed airplane, there were lots of special events going on. I arrived late on a Thursday night so after a quick visit, Jade and I both crashed to be able to get up early the next morning. I grabbed a bus with her to the central bus station where she treated me to my first traditional Singaporean breakfast: Kaya Toast, a soft boiled egg served with a coconut and butter toast sandwich. (Unfortunately Jade requested that I not post any photos of her due to her work so I have included pics of everything and everyone else :) Then she hopped on a bus to go to work and I took a different bus to explore the city.
My first stop was Bukit Timah Nature reserve, the biggest patch of primary rain forest reserve in Singapore. Apparently, the entire city (I mean, country, er, same thing) used to be covered in this dense foliage, but after many years of development, this original landscape has slowly been reduced to 1.64 km of park. Along the way to the park, I noticed how clean and orderly the streets were. The lanes were clear of the sea of motorbikes they have in Thailand and Vietnam, and the sidewalks looked empty without food vendors lined up along the sidewalks like they do in Bangkok. I all of a sudden remembered that it is illegal to chew gum in Singapore and the pack I had brought with me was now burning a hole in my bag. The still do caning and executions in these Southeast Asian countries, I told myself while simultaneously kicking myself in the ass. Luckily I did not get caught. Anyway, regardless of its relatively small size to the city (right, country), the park is still a pretty impressive sight. I literally walked off of a big four lane street and into this reserve that quickly became a forest dense with lush jungle flora and fauna. I reached the summit of 163 meters, did a little dance, took a picture of the sign instead of myself and headed back down the trail. I took a wrong turn at one point and walked maybe a half a mile in the wrong direction (because when you’re tired, hungry and almost out of water what better thing to do than walk a mile out of your way? Why? Because it makes me feel alive!).
After my long walk I was late to dinner at Candlenut but Jade and her friends, Deric and Peter, had ordered some very interesting local dishes for me to try: fried pork ribs, sweet and sour seafood noodle and fish curry. These were all Peranakan and Nyonya dishes cooked Straits Chinese style. I had told Jade about my quest to find Singapore Hainan Pork and Malaysian Nyonya Laksa, my two favorite dishes at Rock Sugar in Los Angeles, so the pork dish they ordered was an attempt to fulfill my request for the Hainan Pork. Apparently, it’s not a well known dish out there, and since she is vegetarian, she was having trouble figuring out where we could find it. Regardless, everything they ordered was delicious and new and I appreciated their thoughtfulness to introduce me to local and traditional Singaporean food. Later than night, we met up with Shannon and his friends Mark and Richard at 83 Club Street and we all went to Ku De Ta, a super swanky night club filled with locals and expats alike. It was 200 meters high and had an incredible view of the Marina Bay Sands Skypark and the Singapore Strait around which the Gran Prix track was built. Earlier that day they had done some trial runs that people went out to see. I was busy running around the jungle so I didn’t catch it but I could see the track from the balcony we were on. Well, long story short, a long night and a couple bars and clubs later the sun was rising and Shannon led us all to eat breakfast at the most famous Chinese 24-hour dim sum restaurant in the city (country? right!) along Sims Avenue. It’s possible that after a night of drinking and dancing anything would have tasted as spectacular as that dim sum, but I have to say it was the best dim sum I’ve ever had in my life. We ate everything from shrimp dumplings to pork wontons to vegetable egg rolls with enthusiasm. Bellies full, we all stumbled home to sleep the day away.
The next night, after a Chinese seafood dinner with Jade and her friend in Changi Village (including cereal prawns which was, no joke, steamed prawns coated in frosted flakes - I swear), we met up with Shannon and Mark and we were at it again, this time at Velvet Underground for a special guest performance by Azari and III, a group I had never heard of. It turned out to be four guys from Canada including two DJs and two MCs who were all incredible performers of a very moody blend of electronica music. Maybe it was the excitement of being in Singapore, maybe it was the Long Island Iced Teas or maybe it was just the novelty of new music, but these guys gave an incredible show. The music was exhilarating and the two guys singing and dancing were so much fun to watch. After the performance Jade treated me to another traditional Singaporean dessert at Rochor Beancurd House: dou hua and you tiao (soybean pudding with a fried bread stick on the side) plus another sweet dumpling. It was yummmmmy. *sigh* I love Asian food.
I was too tired the next day for a bike ride (I guess two nights out in a row was too much for my 30 year old bones!), so Jade went out without me and I met Shannon instead for lunch. He took me to a local hawker stall where we had the Singaporean version of Nasi Lemak, which included the same basic components of coconut rice and sambal chili but had a very different twist in everything else: boiled egg, steamed vegetables, fried anchovies and pickles. It was even more magnificent than the Nasi Lemak I had in Langkawi, and to top off such a great weekend: I finally got to try Nyonya Laksa! It was very similar to the Asam Laksa, with a very fishy flavor, just with coconut milk added to it. It was delicious, but really not at all like the dish served at Rock Sugar in Los Angeles. But by that time, I had abandoned my expectation that it would be anything like it and just enjoyed this dish for what it was: a big bowl of fishy, soupy, creamy noodles with interesting bites of fishcakes, egg, prawns and "hum" (sea cockles). Fantastic. On the wall of this hawker stall was a sign advising local Singaporeans to wash their hands after the toilet, when they are sick, etc. and the slogan was "You Ok! We Ok! Singapore Ok!" Hence, the tittle of this entry.
I thought it was ironic that I had to go to Singapore to eat a Malaysian dish and couldn’t find the dish that I was supposed to find there, but yet again I enjoyed everything else I ate along the way so much that it didn’t matter. To be sure, Rock Sugar will be seeing me again when I get back to Los Angeles but now I’ve got an arsenal of SE Asian dishes that far exceeds the foodie repertoire I came with. Singapore was a world apart from every other city (and country!) I visited in Southeast Asia and I left wondering how different my experience of living and working abroad would have been if I had lived and worked there. I felt like I had seen a peek at the ex-pat community and life in Singapore while I was there and I had so much fun with both Jade and Shannon. They encouraged me to explore the possibility of living there and the idea was quite tempting. I was just a week away from quitting my job at AIT and moving out of my apartment in Bangkok in preparation for the move to Australia, and as I walked off the plane and in to the Suvarnabhumi airport in Thailand, I was all of a sudden overwhelmed with the feeling that I didn’t want to leave Southeast Asia. All of my experiences from traveling and living in the area came flooding back to me; I really couldn’t let go and I didn’t want to either. I wanted to see more, do more and I needed more time to do it. As I lay in bed that night, I found myself trying to figure out ways to extend my life in Asia, and woke up with a resolve… that it didn’t have to be over if I didn’t want it to be.
