Summer 2018 big trip - day 25

Tuesday 21st August

A typical Singaporean dish, usually had for breakfast or a snack, is kaya toast, and the best place in the city to have it, apparently, is Ya Kun Kaya Toast, a little place in Chinatown only a ten-minute walk from my hostel. I made my way there late morning.

Kaya toast is basically two slices of bread sandwiched with knobs of butter and kaya jam (made from coconut milk, eggs and sugar), toasted, and usually served with soft-boiled eggs dropped into a bowl (the whites only slightly set) and drizzled with soy sauce and ground pepper. You break the toast apart, dip it into the eggs, and eat.

Yum!

It does sound unusual - eggs, soy sauce, toast and sweet jam. Eggs, soy sauce and toast sounds fine, it's not that much different to dippy eggs with Marmite soldiers. But with jam too? I was definitely intrigued when I read about it. While I'm perfectly happy to mix sweet and savoury foods (put fruit in curries or have pineapple on pizza, for example), I do think that toast with something like strawberry jam or marmalade on, dipped into eggs with soy sauce and pepper, would be weird. But somehow with kaya jam it works, it's really good. Perhaps because it isn't as distinctly fruity as traditional western jams. I don't know. Hmm... I wonder if something like apricot jam might work, as it's sweet but not as fruity in taste, milder. Or pear and ginger jam. I'll have to try! :D

I left as the area started to fill up with office workers on their lunch break and, from Chinatown, headed up to Little India. It was quite cool, with the smells of spices and Indian food and loud Indian music playing out of many shops and stalls. I loved all the grocery shops, others displaying huge sacks of nuts, pulses and dried chillies, and the flower stalls - those bright, colourful flowers and garlands that are bought regularly for use in Hindu rituals and offerings. I wish traditional grocery shops and flower stalls were more widespread in the UK, it's a shame they're not everywhere anymore. The shops were relatively thin width-wise but went back a long way. It made me think of London, and areas of many cities, with lots of shops selling the same sorts of things. When I go to areas like that I always wonder both how they all make enough money to stay in business, and what businesses or shops were there fifty or a hundred years ago, if they were all as similar or if there was a lot more variety. ...I also passed the Abdul Gafoor Mosque, which was a beautiful building.

Abdul Gafoor Mosque in Little India

While I'm not vegetarian, I do enjoy vegetarian food and had researched (i.e. looked n Tripadvisor) the best vegetarian Indian restaurants in the city, and the best-rated was Gokul Vegetarian Restaurant in Little India, so I went there for a late lunch. It was just a regular, unassuming restaurant, nice but, happily for me, nothing fancy or posh. It did have a little motto, though, "Be Healthy, Wealthy, Wise", which I quite liked - both the motto and the fact that it had one, haha. Anyway, I ordered a mango lassi to drink, and a paneer makhani with a roti. I hadn't heard of a makhani before, but it sounded nice. It's from the Punjab region in the north of India, and the smooth, mild, slightly sweet sauce is made with tomatoes, butter and either ground cashew nuts or cream; it's very similar to, if not the same as, butter chicken, which is murgh makhani - 'makhan' is 'butter'. Paneer is a type of cottage cheese, soft and mild, and cutting open the little cubes in amongst the sauce means you're presented with the wonderful sight of little squares of pure creamy-whiteness contrasting delightfully against the lovely orangey-red of the sauce. (Also, I should have ordered a naan rather than a roti - rotis are thin like tortilla wraps, and there was lots of yummy sauce to mop up! I just had to use my spoon for most of it, haha.)

After slowly savouring and thoroughly enjoying that delicious meal, I went to find the Sri Veeramakaliamman Temple. It's one of the oldest Hindu temples in the city, dedicated to the goddess Kali, and is very visually distinctive and impressive because the top part of the front of the building is covered in hundreds of brightly painted little statues. It was cool, but I couldn't hang around and properly look at and appreciate it for as long as I would have liked, because it was so crowded outside and right on a main road, there's no space to sit or stand and look up at it.

From there, I walked for maybe twenty minutes to nearby Kampong Glam, also known as the Arab Quarter. It's the city's oldest urban quarter, allocated in 1822 to the Malay, Arab and Bugis communities, and is now a colourful, trendy area. (FYI, kampong means 'compound' in Malay, and glam is thought to derive from the name of a particular tree.) I came to a street with brightly-coloured shophouses and an ornate Middle-eastern/Arab archway through which you come to a pathway lined with beautiful, colourful murals - one end of Muscat Street. The archway, its twin located at the other end of Muscat Street, and the murals, were all created in 2002 as a joint project between Singapore and Oman. The images on the murals symbolise the early trading and maritime connections between the two countries.

I really liked this area straight away, probably partly because of all the Middle-eastern/Arab/Muslim architecture, which is beautiful, and the pedestrianised areas. There was another mosque, the impressive Masjid Sultan, and of course a lot of Turkish/Lebanese/Middle-eastern restaurants (what a shame I wasn't hungry!), shops selling those lovely colourful glass lamps, Turkish carpets, the obligatory tourist stuff ranging from dresses to woven bags, and - wonderfully - a couple of aromatics shops. These sold alcohol-free perfumes, essential oils and other fragrances, and the windows were filled, like the back wall of an old chemist shop, with displays of miniature bottles made of coloured glass. So lovely! And in amongst all this, there was, to my surprise, a Swedish bakery!

Eventually I came across Haji Lane. Now this was very cool - full of quirky shops, boutiques, trendy bars and cafes, with all sorts of music escaping from each place (I loved the 1940s/50s swing-jive). I wandered up and down, loving it. The boutiques were the quirky, shabby-chic treasure trove kind where there are bare floorboards, pairs of shoes lined up along the walls on top of old suitcases, and clothes rails almost overflowing. I spent a long time in one of them wishing I was more stylish, and trying to decide whether to let myself splash out on a gorgeous dress I knew I'd almost never get the chance to wear.

After buying the dress (and another...), I went and sat down at one of the tables outside a cafe/bar with brightly-painted walls. It was dark by this time, and a musician was performing on the other side of the lane; just a guy on a stool with an acoustic guitar and a mic, and he was actually really good. All the bar's juices were named after famous classic actresses, and I ordered an Audrey Hepburn - i.e. an apple, ginger and lemongrass juice - and some baklava. It was lively and busy, but not crowded. Usually I don't go out in the evenings in cities because, well, it's crowded and I'm often not comfortable, but this was fine, and I sat there very happily for about an hour, listening to the music, enjoying the juice and the baklava, and enjoying being there, being out on an evening for a change. :)

...That seems like a natural way to finish, a nice way to end the post. But, that wasn't the end of my day. Despite the fact that it was around 9pm by the time I left Haji Lane, which is late for me to be out by myself, instead of getting the MRT back to Chinatown to return to the hostel and go to bed, I stayed on a few more stops and got off at Bayfront, where Marina Bay Sands and the Gardens by the Bay are located. I was planning to go there the next afternoon and evening, but Singapore is a very safe city to walk around at night and I wanted to take the opportunity to see them twice instead of just once. Because I did go there the following afternoon and evening, I won't talk about them in this post, but I just wanted to mention it. Staying out a bit longer was a good thing for me, not something I usually do, and I'm glad I did, both for that reason and because they are absolutely amazing places, beautiful, incredible, very impressive examples of architecture and design. As I said, more on that tomorrow - but photos from that wonder-filled first impression below.

Summer 2018 big trip - day 24.2

Monday 20th August, part 2

I have a friend in Singapore. We became friends about eleven years ago through a very small online forum we were both members of in our mid-teens, and kept in touch when it drifted out of existence, but we've never met. So when I knew I was going to go there, I asked if she'd like to meet up – she did! She met me at the MRT station closest to the Pinnacle, and we took the bus (air-conditioned!) to the Alexandra area, again away from the city centre.

Before the trip she had sent me an online article listing 30 foods to try in Singapore, and asked me to pick some I'd love to try while I was there. Laksa - a spicy noodle soup made with coconut milk and prawns/seafood or chicken - was one, so first of all we headed to a shopping centre she knew had a food stall that did really good laksa. It was a tiny place, arranged a bit like a sushi bar where there are benches round the outside facing inwards and the food prep and cooking happens in the middle, in front of you. Nothing fancy at all, just plonked in the middle of a regular shopping centre in a normal, non-touristy area.

We got a bowl of seafood laksa and a plate of chicken curry to share, plus a lemon juice drink and some barley water. The latter was a thick white beverage full of the soft grains of cooked barley, and slightly sweetened. It was surprisingly good! I've since read that barley water is a traditional (and nutritious) drink in various parts of the world, including Britain - hence the 'Fruit & Barley' squash drinks. I'll have a go at making it one day soon! Anyway, the drinks and the food were all very tasty. I worried the manager/head cook a bit by having only a few spoonfuls of  the laksa before trying the curry - she came over and spoke in Chinese to my friend, who replied and then, as the woman walked away, said to me that "Auntie asked if you didn't like the laksa." (I like this custom, too, of calling people auntie or uncle or grandfather or grandmother or brother or sister, as a sign of respect. In the west, we'd just gesture and say "she..."). It was only a handful of women running this stall, all busy and hectic and, it seemed, perfectly organised, they knew what they were doing and got on with it with practised efficiency. It was fast food, but really good fast food.

For a kind of dessert we also got muah chee, little balls made from glutinous rice flour and covered in crushed peanuts. They were soft, smooth, chewy... I can't think of anything to compare the texture to, perhaps a little like soft Turkish Delight without the flavour? The word 'glutinous' comes from its glue-like tendencies, rather than meaning it contains gluten, so things made from glutinous rice flour tend to be stretchy. It was good though!

We went next to Alexandra Food Village, just a few minutes' walk away. Oh the choice of dishes to be had! We wandered round and my friend made lots of suggestions for the things I should try; in the end we got bak kuh teh, a broth made from pork ribs, and a bowl of braised peanuts, which were soft and amazing. My friend gave me a little lesson in using chopsticks properly; the bottom stick goes in the vee of the hand between the base of the thumb and the forefinger, about a third of the way from the top, and doesn't move, and the upper stick is held a bit like a pencil, resting on the ring finger and moved using the middle and forefingers. I kind of got it eventually! Obviously need practice though, haha.

On the way out I bought an avocado milkshake to go, and a few minutes later we passed a little bakery where I got a few kueh. Kueh or kuih is a fairly broad term that covers a range of bite-sized snacks or desserts which we would variously call cakes, biscuits, pastries, etc. One was a little green chiffon cake coloured with pandang leaves, one was kueh dadar, the same as the delicious coconut-filled green pancake I'd had at the cooking class in Bali, and one was kueh lapis, a slice of colourful, firm, steamed layered 'cake' made from glutinous rice flour (lapis means 'layers' in Malay). Despite being stuffed and not really wanting to eat anything else, I ate them back at the hostel, and drank most of the avocado milkshake, because I didn't know where the fridge was or if they'd keep! Honestly, I probably would have enjoyed the cakes more if I wasn't so full up - but the pancake was nice, and the avocado milkshake was goooooooood! Still, I did only manage about half of it, if that. I'm glad I tried them, though.

What a brilliant day! Usually, I find solo city trips exhausting and - not being the sort of person to be sociable and make conversation with others in the hostel or to go out to bars and clubs - will happily go to bed at 9pm. But here I didn't get back to the hostel until half ten, eleven perhaps, and wasn't massively tired, despite having been awake since 4am. Well, no, I was tired and ready to sleep, but in a good way; I wasn't drained. It had been an energising day, rather than a tiring one, which was great. And of course, finally meeting my friend was really nice, it was lovely spending time with her, chatting and eating and wandering around, I really enjoyed it and am grateful I had the opportunity :)

Summer 2018 big trip - day 24.1

Monday 20th August, part 1

Singaporesingaporesingaporesingaporesingapore! Singapore. Yaaaaaaaaaaaay! Finally. Now I was very excited to be here, I had been looking forward to it for months.

Apart from the few days in Sydney, I had spent the whole trip in the Tropics – the latitudes between the two Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn – so it had been very hot and very humid in both Queensland and Bali. But this city-state is smack bang in the centre of the Tropics at just 88 miles north of the equator and my goodness do you know it when you step outside. The airport and the MRT (metro) trains and stations are air-conditioned, so when I exited the station at Chinatown, where my hostel was, I just hit a wall of heat and humidity like nothing I've experienced before. Thankfully, a lot of the pavements are covered, so you can get some respite from the sun at least, and every building is air-conditioned.

On trips, if I'm by myself, I always go on a free guided walking tour on my first or second day in a new city, and had booked onto a five-hour one (!) for the afternoon of my first day here. My flight was due to land shortly after 9am and the tour wasn’t until 1pm, but my flight was delayed and then it took longer than expected to get to my hostel in Chinatown, so I didn't arrive till about 12:30. I called the tour company and asked if there was somewhere I could meet the group as I wouldn't get to the starting point in time; thankfully they said I could meet the group at a hotel in Chinatown where they'd be taking a short break. I left my bag at the hostel as I couldn't check in yet, and found my way to the hotel. After 45 minutes of standing outside getting increasingly concerned (and hungry, as I hadn't had a chance to have lunch), I was relieved when the group turned up, led by a bright and cheerful Singaporean woman whose English name was Priscilla.

The tour was excellent, the best I've been on anywhere. It was in the downtown core area but completely off the tourist trail. There were only six of us in the group, too, which was nice. The hotel I met them in started life as a Chinese temple; there's a low little wall several inches high across the doorway which you need to raise your feet to step over, which acts as a flood barrier, a symbolic threshold from the mundane to the spiritual, and has the function of making you do a little bow as you enter (in the act of stepping over something relatively high, you naturally lean forward as you put your foot down). It then became a museum, and is now a heritage-listed building, so the hotel has to let the public in to wander round the ground floor, where it's still a small museum. After a break sitting in the air-conditioned lobby, we went back outside and Priscilla led us to a traditional Chinese bakery. It's one of those with the open store-fronts, and lots of boxes with bags of biscuits and things in. The tour included some food tastings, so here we got the first one of some tapioca wafers (large thin circles, brightly coloured) and black sesame caramel sticks.

Many of the older buildings in the city centre are the traditional dwellings called shophouses: terraced buildings two or three stories high with a shop or other business on the ground floor and living quarters above. In the city's early days, poverty was rife and these buildings were full to bursting with families, living conditions were awful. Many also have "five-foot-ways" out front, generally along the length of the street. These are five-foot-wide covered walkways, built for shelter against the frequent rain and hot sun. The buildings can be quite colourful and pretty, and some shops have little shrines outside the door on the walkway.

We visited Thian Hock Keng Temple, a beautiful Chinese Taoist-Buddhist temple on the edge of Chinatown. It started in the early 1820s as a small waterfront joss house, built by immigrants from the Hokkien region of China and dedicated to the sea goddess Ma Zu, where sailors and settlers could go to give thanks for their safe arrival. Nowadays it's a large, elaborately decorated proper temple with several buildings or pavilions centered around a courtyard. There are several large shrines, like chapels in a church – one to Ma Zu, one Buddhist, one Confucian, one for ancestral tablets, and a few others. Priscilla showed us how people pray there and explained a bit about the different shrines and the faiths. I've never been to a temple before, and this one was amazing, so beautiful and interesting, I loved it. The back wall of the temple, outside on the street, was decorated with a mural about the history of the city's Chinese population, and the designers of the modern building opposite the front of the temple included two large eye-shaped holes in the top of it to 'watch over' the temple and keep it safe.

Not a good photo, but you can see the mural and the 'eyes' at the top of the glassy building.

Due to the limited amount of land in Singapore, the vast majority of people live in high-rise subsidised public housing apartment blocks, built by the Housing and Development Board and so referred to as HDBs. Most if not all of them have a market (basic shops like grocers, hairdressers, bank, a small bakery perhaps) and food centre, or hawker centre, either as part of the building or nearby. Hawker centres are a bit like food courts with a variety of places to choose from and lots of tables, but are open-air (roof but no walls) and the stalls are run by independent hawkers (no chain places). They began to spring up in the 1950s and '60s as a more sanitary version of streetside mobile hawker stalls, where hygiene wasn't always great. The food is generally simple, very cheap (on average a couple of Singaporean dollars a meal) and can be very good. I've since found out that there are even a couple of stalls in the city that have been awarded Michelin Stars!

We stopped at Maxwell Food Centre for a proper break and Priscilla bought us a sugarcane juice drink to try. It was delicious! Lovely and sweet and ever so refreshing. For food, we got to try two typical Singaporean dishes: carrot cake, and chicken rice. Carrot cake in Singapore is not carrot cake as we know it – it’s basically an omelette filled with chopped radish. Very tasty though!

Now - chicken rice. Chiiiiickeeen riiiiice! Widely considered to be Singapore's national dish, it is now one of the dishes that I love because it is so simple and yet so delicious, if done well. Basically: poached chicken, rice cooked in the stock from the chicken, and a bowl of chicken broth. Omigod. Wow. Big smile!

After half an hour or so, Priscilla returned and we left to continue the tour, stopping next at the Singapore City Gallery, where there is a giant scale model of the island on the ground floor, which was really cool. On the same floor was an exhibition about this year's President's Design Award, which was about "Creating a better world by design"; the entries were designs for things that would provide solutions to a range of issues like homelessness and environmental damage. The first panel was about a special tent, based on those used in the military and extreme-condition explorations, which could provide privacy and security for women living in refugee camps, or decent shelter for other homeless people. Reading a small summary online, apparently the gallery is about how Singapore came to be, how the city was planned to be able to fit a large population onto a relatively small island (approx 50km/31 miles east-west, 27km/17 miles north-south), and how city planners continue to plan sustainably. I would have liked to have gone back to the gallery and had a proper look round all of it, but didn’t have time/didn't prioritise it on this visit.

I love how 'green' and environmentally-aware Singapore is. Everyone always says it's the cleanest city in the world, and it is very clean, it's probably true, it's great... but it's also a small island that has no natural resources of its own and is now completely urbanised, so it's had to develop very good waste-recycling systems, make use of renewable energy sources, and make a sustainable future an absolute priority. Apparently it's the only country to have green building regulations in its legislation. Priscilla told us that, by law, a building developer has to re-plant the same amount of land it built on, and on a horizontal plane. So if a new building takes up twenty square metres of land on the ground in the city, the developer has to fill twenty square metres of land somewhere else with plants (though that doesn't necessarily have to be in Singapore) - it cannot cover twenty square metres of the building facade with plants (as good as that is, too). I love that! Many more cities and countries need to learn from them and follow suit, ignore the selfish interests of Big Business such as fossil fuel companies, look to the long-term wellbeing of the planet and all of its inhabitants (not just humans), and stop acting as if sustainability, conservation and protecting the environment are at odds with economic development.

Our last stop was the ‘Pinnacle@Duxton’, in the Tanjong Pagar area. This is an amazing modern HDB building, consisting of seven 50-story blocks linked by two 500m-long sky gardens on the 26^th and 50^th floors. Uniquely, for this project the Housing and Development Board decided to hold a worldwide competition for its design, which attracted more than 200 entries. The sky gardens are terraces surrounding the whole structure, so you can wander round and get amazing views over the city in every direction. It's kind of like a park, on top of a building; there isn't any grass, but there are plenty of plants and trees, and a few seating areas. Looking south you can see some islands across the water, and to the north you can see some skyscrapers beyond the distant hills - Indonesia and Malaysia respectively, both so close. We had 45 minutes there, to wander at our leisure, before the tour ended and we all left.