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.
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| Abdul Gafoor Mosque in Little India |
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.
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.
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