Singapore

First impression of Singapore: reminds us a lot of Hong Kong - first-world Asian city with a lot of white expats, professionals, and tourists running around. Port city. Former British colony. Both are mixing pots of many different cultures, equaling a diverse population as well as cuisine. Singapore probably doesn’t retain as noticeable of a British aftertaste as Hong Kong does, but it has been independent of Britain since the 1950’s so much longer than Hong Kong. The mix of cultural influences in Singapore is also different - there is a very large Chinese population but also stong Indian and Malaysian influences as well. That brings us to cuisine - Singapore is known for it’s good food, and 95% of our research into the city was focused on what to eat and where to get it. If you are a follower of our blog you’ll know what big fans we are of Asian shopping malls - not so much for the shopping as for the food courts that inevitable occupy either the basement or top level of the mall, or sometimes both. This is no different in Singapore, though their food courts are much too commercial - there are actual chains of food courts (if that makes sense) and they all have a theme to which they are decorated to the max. We tried them a couple times, but opted for the much more hole-in-the-wall hawker centers instead. Think of a big open-air cafeteria with lots of tables set up and row after row of food stalls, each selling only a few dishes as they do in our beloved Thai food courts. The popular opinion of these hawker centers is too see which stands had the longest lines of locals and get in line with them. If, however, you aren’t into porridge (whatever that is), which always seemed to have the longest line, you can always go with chicken rice. Chicken rice is a classic Singaporean dish - fragrant rice cooked in chicken broth with slices of poached chicken on top. That’s it, not to weird huh? You can put chili sauce on it or a dark, sweet soy sauce. It only costs about 2 or 3 bucks per plate and while it is good, it didn’t exactly blow our mind (it is just chicken and rice, after all). Our favorite dish that we tried turned out to be black carrot cake, and it’s not what you are thinking. It’s kind of like a stir fry of carrots, onions, radish, cubes of rice dough, and egg with a sauce that seems to be primarily the dark soy sauce. It sounds weird but it is good, though I’m not sure I’d want it for breakfast as it is often enjoyed in Singapore.

Chicken Rice

Carrot Cake

We tried a lot of different food in Singapore - most of it we liked, though anything containing seafood pretty much didn’t get eaten. Probably my favorite was the dried BBQ pork - a favorite gift for Chinese New Year. It’s sort of in the middle between bacon and jerky - not too dry but still nice and chewy with a thin layer of barbeque sauce. Perfection. Steph even liked it though don’t tell her that it tastes a lot like bacon.

Steph with dried BBQ pork

Singapore was hot! I guess this shouldn’t shock anybody as it is very close to the equator, but we were not ready for this kind of heat. When we travel we like to walk around a lot, mainly because we are cheap but also to get a feel for the city we are in. This held true in Singapore, but we had to take lots and lots of breaks to stay reasonably cool. Luckily AC is the name of the game in Singapore, and we would sigh with relief every time we’d hop onto the metro or detour through a mall (there are literally hundreds of malls in Singapore). Probably the longest air conditioning fast we had to make was during our trip to the botanical gardens. The gardens were nice but the real attraction was the orchid garden - aka Steph heaven. I moped around while Steph took about 491 pictures of the orchids, which I must admit were lovely. Luckily the gift shop had AC and I was able to pick up a refreshing isotonic drink to replenish my electrolytes - because when you are sweating profusely, why not pick up a can of Pocari Sweat?

This stuff was actually pretty good, but what's with the name? Who came up with that?

While there aren’t really any famous landmarks that I’d ever heard of in Singapore, there is plenty to see if you can brave the heat. Chinatown was our first stop - mainly for the food but also to admire the touristy but charming nevertheless row houses.

Little India was another district we visited primarily for the food (butter chicken and fresh baked naan…yummy), though we enjoyed seeing a small peek into Indian culture. After all, this is probably the closest to India we will ever get. The last district we visited in Singapore was the riverside district - containing a mixture of modern skyscrapers and colonial heritage. This is the area where Sir Thomas Raffles first made land in what is now Singapore’s CBD, which eventually led to the area becoming a British colony. Probably the most significant landmark, at least for tourists, is the statue of the Merlion - apparently the official symbol of Singapore, a half-cat, half-fish statue that squirts water out of it’s mouth. The tourism board came up with the idea, and judging by the throngs of tourists taking typically touristy pictures, it worked. Though apparently in Singapore slang, the word merlion means to vomit…

Classy, as always

Cool building - the Marina Bay Sands

For our final day in Singapore we chose to go to the zoo. No, the zoo is not for children. Singapore Zoo has a very good reputation as the “best zoo in Asia,” but judging by the standards set by any zoo I’ve been to outside the US, that didn’t necessarily mean much. We were, however, pleasantly surprised. The zoo was in every way as good as any zoo we have ever been to, with the added benefit (I think) of them being able to get away with things I’m not sure you could in the States. For one - there were lots of open-air exhibits. The orangutans were basically free to run amok, with ropes and bridges for them crossing the walking paths for us humans. If they decided to come to ground level they could easily walk over and visit the lions in their enclosure. They don’t of course, but they are funny animals. We’re very looking forward to seeing them in the wild when we visit (spoiler alert!) Borneo soon.

There was also a big open-air enclosure full of big fruit bats, birds, sloths, mouse deer and ring-tailed lemurs. It was really cool to get up close to the lemurs as they would generally ignore you, but I’m surprised they don’t have a problem with people trying to touch them and getting their finger bitten off.

Ring-tailed lemur

The rest of the zoo was pretty much like any other good zoo you could visit - there were elephants and monkeys and different areas for wildlife from various parts of the globe, all with spacious and natural enclosures. Steph liked the giraffes and I liked watching the gibbons swing from tree to tree. It was a good day.

Overall Singapore was great - certainly not our favorite city we’ve ever visited (not even our favorite Asian city), but it’s a good ‘intro to Asia’ city and could definitely keep anyone entertained for a few days at least. I must add a few thoughts about the strict rules that Singaporeans live by. The heated debates that often divide Americans on what the government should or shouldn’t allow us to have pale in comparison to the restrictions set on the people of Singapore. Gum is outlawed. No, not gun (well, that too), GUM. I’m not kidding. It, apparently, is just too messy so it’s banned. The only way you can get it is with a prescription from your doctor! That’s just one extreme example, though the restrictions and the highly publicized and hefty fines that you would incur should you break them are legendary - so much so that you can buy tshirts at every souvenir shop with the major infractions and the corresponding fine. Chewing gum - $1000, jaywalking - $1000, littering - $1000, spitting in the streets - $1000, having food on the metro - $500. If that's not harsh enough, having illegal narcotics is a mandatory death sentence! Steph was constantly paranoid about jaywalking, which is quite frankly one of my favorite hobbies. Anyways, we made it 3 days in Singapore with not one single fine and off we are to Borneo!

For more orchid pictures, and others from around Singapore, check out the album HERE!