Travel Notes

Mon Apr 15 08:06:33 2002 (rr) Book: South-East Asia Rough Guide Location: Singapore We're staying in a hotel in Chinatown, across the street from multiple karaoke joints and a traditional Thai massage parlor. A few blocks away is a street that exemplifies Straits Chinese neighborhoods of the past -- two-storied buildings with narrow fronts lined up next to each other. Each house has two or more doors (but really just windows now) on the second story and often similar down below. Each building is painted in different colors, all bright, often pastels. I can't seem to describe it too well here, so I'll try and find a picture. There's a small picture as well as a paragraph on Straits Chinese architecture at this link. They call the style Chinese Baroque. Downtown Singapore and Orchard Road is a consumer's paradise. Malls upon mall. All brands seem to do well here, especially the expensive Italian and French ones. American brands also seem popular. There was also a mall devoted entirely to all things computer. Most stores sold the usual PDAs, laptops and digital cameras, but others were more specialized -- for example, one store only sold memory. Singapore has strict litter laws, and the city is very clean, though not litter free. But it certainly seems to be cleaner than most places I've ever been to. The landscaping is very neat and pleasant -- pedestrian sky-bridges have a clinging flower growing over them, and beautiful canopied trees line the streets. The public parks are also quite nice. Earlier today, we rode the subway (MRT) out to the zoo. We transferred on to a bus to complete the ride, which featured air-con and live TV. The zoo was great, the first I've ever visited which rivals or may even surpass the San Diego Zoo. The enclosures hardly seemed as such -- monkeys would wander across the footpaths elsewhere, but somehow they still seem to know where home is and how to keep out of the white tiger enclosure. Out of internet time! More later... Mon Apr 15 08:02:19 2002 (rr) Book: Moon SE Asia Location: Singapore Food in Singapore! Yum! Here's a couple of highlights Bubble tea -- milky green tea with pearls variety This is a cold, sweet, and yes milky drink that tasted more of jasmine tea than green, and has little round brown colored "pearls" that are sweet and chewy and gelatinous. Delicious! Peranakan food. The Peranakan, or Straits Chinese, was the intermarriage of Chinese men and Malaysian women a long time ago. We tried a few different dishes at a restaurant called Blue Ginger in Chinatown. They included chicken with Indonesian black nuts. The black nuts are indeed black, kind of like plumper mussel shells in appearance, and you scrape out the pasty nut interior. Weird taste. We had problems trying to describe it. Nathan (who enjoyed this dish more) said it was "nutty", slightly "burnt." It reminded me of wet plaster or paint somewhat (but that makes it sound like I hated it. I didn't.) Another dish was tamarind prawns. Spicy is an understatement. I ended up eating this one mostly by myself. The tamarind was evident in spite of the chili overload. We also tried a spring roll which wasn't too memorable, although I liked the use of chinese five-spice in the filling. The fish cakes were excellent. They came wrapped up in green pandan leaves with toothpicks holding the package closed at both ends. Inside was the cake, which tasted perfectly of fish (not too much, but not too little) and lemongrass. Lots of lemongrass flavor. For dessert, we passed on the Chendol Durian, and tried something that I can't even remember -- sago something. It was great. Sago is a sweet fruit that they refrigerated and tastes similar to coffee ice cream. It came in a coconut milk sauce. McDonald's here sells chicken porridge, popular for breakfast. They also offer Durian cones. For those who haven't heard, the durian is a fruit that most find revolting in both smell and flavor. The others find it divine. I'm still working up the nerve to try it. My only food complaint is that Tiger Beer is expensive. I'm guessing they have some steep liquor taxes. Mon Apr 15 07:45:45 2002 (rr) Book: South-East Asia Rough Guide Location: Singapore Just a note: You may have noticed that books are listed next to all of the blog entries. This is leftover from our pre-trip planning days when we reported on what we had read in various books. As it turns out, I couldn't stand this particular Rough Guide, so we ditched it in favor of the Moon Guide South-East Asia, and more recently, supplemented it with the Lonely Planet Malaysia-Singapore-Brunei book.

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