Singapore: A Birthday Rendezvous to the First World
I’m currently in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, enjoying some downtime before heading onto the ever-popular Bali. We were in Singapore July 29-August 5. For my other posts on the trip, please click here. I hope you enjoy!
Man, we needed Singapore. Laos had taken us for quite the journey, and we certainly missed our creature comforts of the first world. And Singapore manages to impress even before you leave the airport. I’m talking about the Jewel of course, a highlight of Changi Airport and the city as a whole. A massive circular water/light funnel that cascades four or five stories. Brilliantly lit up, there are even light shows every hour or so, which we luckily got a glimpse of.
We soon headed to our hotel, and got a couple hours of downtime before getting a couple Singapore Slings for a mini-midnight birthday celebration. They were pretty good too! Also on the menu, under “Craft Beer” was PBR. Yeah, that PBR — Pabst Blue Ribbon. At S$16 (US$13)!! I mean, if you say so. I stuck with my cocktail, though in hindsight it would have been a fitting way for a Richmond kid to celebrate. Another fun fact: I visited my 25th country on my 25th birthday.
The next day, we went one of the signature hawker courts (Singapore’s Street food) and I got carrot cake. One catch though, it’s a different carrot cake. Its a stir fry of radish cubes, and the black variant has soy sauce.
Very good, super different. On a whim I also went to the dessert stall and grabbed some Ice Kacang (“Kachang”). Man was that strange. It had shaved ice, red bean paste, grass jelly, sweet corn, condensed milk, and I’m sure other ingredients. It was odd. Not bad, just odd. Considering how expensive Singapore is, it was quite nice how cheap hawker stalls were (US$2–4), a welcome reprieve from the rest of the city. The hawker stalls (and Food-republics laden in many malls) had Asian delicacies from just about every region one could imagine, and more that I had never head of.
There was Hainanese Chicken Rice (originally from the Chinese Island of the same name, Hainan), Little Hanoi, Malaysian, Hong Kongese, Korean, Cantonese, Shanghainese, Thai, Indian — the list goes on and on. One of the hawker Stalls even recently got Michellin Starred — though we were not willing to wait the 3+ hours for the signature Hong Kong Soya Sauce Chicken Rice and Noodle.
Upscale options are arguably even more plentiful. To give you a brief idea, Tripadvisor alone has 11,000 restaurants listed. After somehow navigating all the options, Lena picked out the lovely Maggie Joan’s for my birthday dinner, lovely western fare tucked in hidden in a back alley. I got the most wonderful roast duck, along with a bunch of other goodies. The waiter even bought us birthday drinks!
The next day, we did a bit of sightseeing, seeing a very colorful Hindu temple and Masjid (Mosque) Sultan. We couldn’t go in the Hindu temple, but the exteriors are decorated with lovely hues of pastel blues, greens, reds and golds of a plethora of various figures atop the structures.
The mosque was big and the prayer space was empty, though I did manage to read the first 2 pages of the Quran with the help of one of the attendants there. For lunch we even ate at a Cuban Sandwich place, but it was far from authentic. They didn’t even have the proper Cuban sandwich!
We also stuck our heads in the National Design Centre, dedicated to the origins and progression of design of Singapore’s cities, products, and transportation throughout its 60-odd year history. I really enjoyed all of the touches and inspiration brought to the design of this and that: I would love to be a designer myself one day, or at least have a chance to incorporate it into my daily work.
That’s all for my first article — keep an eye out for the second half of my time in Singapore.
