Every visit I’ve made to Singapore in the last 1.5 years has usually involved visa runs for Indonesia. We would meet our agent at Wheelock Place, and across from there, a huge shopping mall called Ion was under construction (above). However, on this visit, it was finally open for business… and it is a rather impressive structure on the outside. Shopping malls take a lot longer to build in Singapore than in Indonesia because in Singapore they actually have safety standards and building codes.
… sometimes they even have kooky public art out the front. As usual, I was hunting for food, so I headed down to the centre’s new food court. And wow… it’s pretty impressive. It comes with chandeliers!!
The food court was totally packed, and offers most of Singapore’s favourite hawker dishes. I decided to go for a delicious prawn laksa. The broth was so creamy, it was divine.
Just when I thought the food court couldn’t get any better, I noticed that it also had dim sum/yum cha carts! I was too full for any steamed buns or dumplings though. The dishes were all reasonably priced, no more expensive than other mall food courts.
Ion is located smack bang on top of Orchard MRT station on Orchard Road.
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Singapore’s new Marina Bay Sands Casino. I went to have a look because I heard it was ‘really cool’ with ‘amazing architecture’… yeah it was alright. But at the end of the day its just a place where people go to piss their money against the wall. And being a Singaporean casino, there were so many rules and so many security checks to get in it was ridiculous. It didn’t have the zeal of the American casinos shown to me on TV. It was about as non-exciting as Star City Casino in Sydney.
In an effort to avoid the social pitfalls of gambling, Singaporeans must by law pay a $100 levy to access the casino for 24 hours (whether they play or not). I (along with the Singaporean government) thought that this might deter the locals and mean that the place was essentially a tourist zone. But the place was PACKED. It was a Saturday, but still. There were two lines, one for Singaporeans and one for foreigners, and the Singaporean line was way longer. There were a lot of Chinese and Malaysians at the casino also.
But overall, I was bored. I put $10 in a pokie machine (that’s Australian for slot machine) and didn’t really win anything, then I left feeling “meh this place is boring” and went hunting for something fun, like a hawker centre. There were some nice views of the city and bay area though.
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Random food post I meant to put up weeks ago! On last visa run to Singapore, where my coworker Amee and I were both completely sleep deprived (so sleep deprived we encountered difficulty finding food in Singapore. Yes, that’s pretty bad!), we went to Bosses Dim Sum for lunch, in the VivoCity complex (I don’t even know how we ended up here, it was some kind of taxi misunderstanding), and it was really tasty. The food was also beautifully presented… but when I tried to take photos, I got in trouble!! But hahaha. You have to be fast to stop me from snapping away… I’d already shot a good 20 or so images before the telling off. We ordered some pretty standard yum cha dishes, and they were pretty delish, all using very good quality seafood. The restaurant was bright and airy with waterfront views… unfortunately, rather industrial waterfront views, but hey.
I also remember that the toilets were hard to find in my sleep deprived state, because the doors were invisible… it was all just this big mirrored panel and through random pushing on it, one found which panels were unlocked toilet cubicles. But they had the most amazing tap, that was like a big gushing fountain. Yes, it was definitely the tap, I didn’t wash my hands in a water feature, though I was probably about another hour of sleep deprivation away from potentially doing that.
For Singapore, I think the prices were pretty reasonable. I think the bill ended up being about SG $55-ish between the two of us for all the food and soft drinks, and we left very full.
But allow me to have a rant. I don’t GET why so many places are threatened by cameras. Seriously. In the age of food blogging, sharing on social networks and consumer food review websites, I can’t think of anything really negative that would come out of it. People share these photos, hence give free word of mouth publicity to your establishment. If your food is crap, they probably won’t bother snapping a photo. It’s just stupid to have a no photography policy. And what about special events? Birthdays, family gatherings? People want mementos, and telling them they can’t take photos will put a black mark against your establishment, no matter how good the dumplings are. It just makes no sense.
So in conclusion, Bosses had really good food and atmosphere, but a bad photography policy.
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The restaurant chain Din Tai Fung rocks my world. It rocks a lot of people’s worlds, judging by the queue at some of its stores in Singapore.
We also have DTF here in Jakarta, and a branch opened in Sydney just before I left Oz, so this is a food rant that knows no geographical bounds.
The soup filled dumplings, or Xiao Long Bao, are amazing. They are handmade, always have at least 10 delicate folds, and in lots of stores, you can see the hatted and face masked people making them in a glass windowed kitchen.
They burst in your mouth, full of flavour. The tastiest dumplings I have ever eaten in my life. And I love them, so I have eaten a lot. Sadly, in Jakarta, we don’t have them with pork because pork isn’t very popular in this mostly Muslim nation, but they are still really good with chicken as a substitute. But I had the pork and crab dumplings in Singapore though, and life, including dumplings, is better with pork… sorry Muslim friends.
Everything else is good there too. The wantons. The vegetables. The steamed buns. The gyoza. The neverending supply of tea, filled up so quickly, you can’t keep track of how many litres you may have consumed. I’ve been a couple of times, this wasn’t all in one sitting!
So if you have a Din Tai Fung in your city… GO! I implore you. It’s worth having to wait for a table.
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One of the best things about Singapore is the food. The hawker centres offer such a great variety, the cultural fusion of Singapore’s inhabitants mean you can get some pretty special nosh for a pretty good price. I was back in Singapore again for another visa run (hopefully the last for quite some time), and I spent the weekend gorging myself on Singaporean delights like Hainese Chicken Rice, Laksa, BBQ Pork Buns and more.
One of the things I tried that I didn’t get a chance to try last time was Fried Carrot Cake. It comes in two varieties, white or black. I went with the sweet black kind, which was all manner of wonderful. The main ingredient is white radish, which is known as white carrot in Singapore, hence the name. White radish is pretty awesome, I have had it before at a vegan restaurant in Sydney. It has a reall robust taste, especially when fried.
Some of the hawker food around is pretty crazy, especially some of the sweet stuff. Because I am an adventurous sort, I was at a dessert stand at one of the hawker centers and decided to go for the weirdest dessert on the menu.
Peanut and Corn Sweet Ice.
All the other ices were fruit flavoured. But no, that’s boring.
Despite looking a bit like vomit on ice (some might argue that’s the same as Disney on Ice), it actually wasn’t bad at all. It just tasted like sweet peanut, with chunks of corn, on ice. A bit weird, but not unpleasant. Down the bottom there were bits of jelly and sweet red kidney beans.
One of the other hawker places I found myself at was satay street. I didn’t eat any, because satay is pretty run of the mill in Indonesia so I was focusing more on the food you can’t get as readily here, but it was interesting. The stalls along the street only sold satay, so of course, the competition was fierce. Which meant the hawkers weren’t going to let you walk peacefully down the street. And they didn’t stick with the polite Indonesian “hello misses” either.
“Hello sexy, come here to eat, I will find you a beautiful boy to sit with you.”
“Where are you from? I know exactly how to make satay that Australians will like.”
“You are walking away? You are breaking my heart!” (complete with mime of heart being ripped from chest).
Intense but comical.
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My eye must have been wheely caught by the rickshaws on my trip to Singapore this time. I just came back with heaps of photos of them and I don’t really know why. Here’s a couple.
This one isn’t really about the rickshaws. I just thought it was an interesting contrast between those who wheel for leisure and those who wheel for life.
At the Esplanade at sunset.
In Chinatown.
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Food at a little eatery in Little India, Singapore. For SG $6, you got as much tasty curry and rice as your heart could ever desire. Bliss.
Is it just me, or could a lot of the world’s dilemmas be solved if everyone just ate off banana leaves? No washing up. Biodegradable. In tropical climes, a never ending supply. Waterproof. Greaseproof. It’s the world’s perfect packaging. And it looks kind of trendster too…
Ma’af the blog has been neglected. Our newspaper has been launching, I was in Singapore for a while for visa reasons and I am trying to learn bahasa Indonesia (which involves remembering how exactly to do that thing they call “studying”).
I also have tons of photos to post but my home internet connection is waging a war on Flickr. It will upload photos, and then won’t let me see them… it’s very weird.
Will post more soon.
But for now, just ponder the wondeful-ness of banana leaves. What other problems could they solve? So many possibilities….
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Last Singapore post, I promise! Chinatown is another of Singapore’s cool cultural enclaves, with a night market selling clothes, fans, beads, electronics (at tourist prices, I warn you! Go to Sim Lim Square electronics mall if you want to be able to bargain, but if you are shopping for electronics, do your research. Lots of places tried to rip me off when I was shopping for my lens, but I knew what it was worth… none of them have marked prices, it’s all about bargaining power) and cheap sunglasses.
So, that’s the end of the Singapore stories for this time. Bye bye Singapore.
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Visited the Sri Mariamman Temple, Singapore’s oldest and most important Hindu Temple, at prayer time. Here are the pics, it was a very beautiful place. I have never been to a Hindu temple before, so it was very interesting. Because it was getting quite dark, many of my pics were blurry though unfortunately.
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