Singapore (October 2019)

With this post, I’m starting to circle back to trips we took last year. We went to Singapore last October to visit family. Singapore is on the tip of Malaysia. It used to be part of Malaysia, but due to some arguments, Malaysia kicked them out in 1965. Those events made Singapore the only sovereign city-state in the world. It also made Singapore the only country to become independent unwillingly. Singapore is also the only city to have its own currency. It is a diverse city, with lots of different people and cultures living together. It even has 4 official languages!

As soon as we landed at the airport, we went to Hotel Elizabeth to drop off our things, then went to dinner with our Nanjing relatives (see Nanjing post). We went to a restaurant that also has a gallery that showcases Peranakan artifacts.

We enjoyed a delicious dinner of Nonya food. Nonya or Peranakan people are descendants of early Chinese migrants that intermarried with Malay, Indonesian and Thai locals.

In the picture above, there are many different types of Nonya food:

1. Sotong Masak Asam (top left) – squid cooked in tamarind sauce;
2. Ngoh Hiang (top right) – a delicious roll made from meat;
3. Chinchalok Okra (middle left) – chinchalok is made from fermented krill and tastes amazing on top of okra;
4. Ayam Buah Keluak (bottom left) – chicken with a sauce made from seeds of a kepayang (a mangrove tree). It is like a curry; and
5. Kueh Pie Ti (bottom right) – little cups made from crunchy crackers served with sliced vegetables and shrimp.

After dinner, we walked back to the hotel and went to bed. The next day, we went to a mall inside Marina Bay Sands, which is next to Gardens by the Bay, to have an early lunch. Marina Bay Sands is the world’s most expensive standalone casino property in the world. There was an extensive amount of Singaporean food in the food court (called Rasapura Masters), and we helped ourselves.

My favorite food was Bak Ku Teh, a delicious peppery pork broth served with pork ribs. In the picture below you can see:

1. Grilled Chicken Wings and Popiah (top left);
2. Fishball Mee Pok (top right) – Chinese flat noodles;
3. Singapore Laksa (middle left) – spicy noodles soup with curry coconut milk;
4. Bak Ku Teh with youtiao (middle right) – pork rib soup with Chinese crullers;
5. 2 versions of Chai Tow Kway (bottom left) – fried radish/carrot cake; and
6. Fried Hokkien Prawn Mee (bottom right)

In America, people think of food courts in malls as having low quality fast food. In Singapore, food courts offer delicious signature Singaporean food. Many of the stalls in malls came from hawker centers, where they were the best at their particular type of food. A hawker center is an outdoor area with public tables and many different stalls. They are a major part of Singapore’s culture.

On this trip, I didn’t go to a traditional hawker center (only Mom and Dad went), but I visited one last time I was in Singapore in 2013.

On the roof of the mall, there was an amazing view of Gardens by the Bay. After enjoying the great view, we went to Gardens by the Bay. It is a nature park spanning 250 acres next to the water. When we got there, we saw our Nanjing relatives, which was unexpected because they were supposed to be going to Universal Studios. First things first, we went to the Supertree Grove where there are giant metal poles that look like trees and are covered with plants. The tallest tree is sixteen stories high.

We walked on the giant 128-meter long skywalk that weaves in and out between the trees. It was extremely fun because it was up high (22 meters) and provided a nice view.

From the skywalk, you have a nice view of the Marina Bay Sands, which is where we ate.

Another popular area we went to was the Cloud Forest, which was a beautiful rainforest that looks like a huge glass dome from the outside. Inside it has a towering waterfall that is the world’s tallest indoor waterfall at 30 meters.

We took the elevator to the top floor. You could see the waterfall tumbling down. At the top floor was the Lost Forest, which contains exotic plants and flowers. After that, we went down floor by floor, looked at the exhibits and traversed all the skywalks.

After we did everything there was to do, we went to the Flower Dome, one of the largest greenhouses in the world. At the Flower Dome, there are flowers from all over the world. It was pretty boring. After we surveyed some of the flowers, we met up with our Nanjing relatives and went to the Singapore Flyer, which is the largest ferris wheel in Asia and used to be the largest in the world until 2014 when a taller one opened in Las Vegas called the High Roller.

The Singapore Flyer moved very slowly, and it took forty-five minutes to go all the way around. If you are there at certain times, there is a dining compartment and a cocktail compartment. There was a great view when we got to the top of the ferris wheel.

That night, Mom and Dad had to go out to Uncle Wei Yao and Auntie Steph’s wedding. In Singapore, weddings are big affairs, and this one lasted for three days (the beach wedding, the banquet and the brunch). Amazingly, when Mom and Dad tried to catch a cab in front of the hotel, they thought another couple was going to steal their cab. It turned out that the man (Uncle Gem) was Mom’s old friend from boarding school in England, and he and his wife (Aunt Shibi) were also going to the wedding. I am happy that they ran into each other because they ended up inviting us to Sri Lanka. While Mom and Dad were at the wedding, we went to the Paragon for dinner with Gong Gong and Po Po and had some pho. The Paragon is a mall on Orchard road, which is kind of like the Fifth Avenue of Singapore.

The next day, we went to a neighborhood called Dempsey where we were going to have lunch. Did you know that Dempsey used to be a military barracks for the British from 1860’s to World War II when the Japanese overtook it? Well I didn’t. Now Dempsey has been redeveloped into a big neighborhood with lots of shops and restaurants. We met Mom’s friends (Uncle Wen Wei and Auntie Beng) at Jumbo Seafood, where Mom and Dad had one of their post-wedding banquets in Asia in 2011 (top picture below). In the picture of the past, Uncle Wen Wei and Auntie Beng are in the top right corner. Uncle Wei Yao (groom of the wedding mentioned above) and Uncle Ming are the left two in the front row, and Uncle Andrew, who we met up with in Sentosa (my next post) is on the front right.

We ate chilli crab, vegetables and Mee Goreng (Malaysian spicy fried noodles). It was delicious.

After lunch, Uncle Wen Wei offered to drive us around the neighborhoods to see some old buildings, skyscrapers and houses. He showed us an apartment with a sky garage. The car elevator lifts the car into your living room. It was very cool. You can see for yourself in the video below.

He even took us to check if the durian stall was open. It was the off-season though so the stall was closed (not that I cared). Finally, we had dessert even though it was a couple hours after lunch. We had cakes and ice cream.

After dessert, we went back to the hotel so Mom and Dad could get ready for the wedding again. That night was the banquet. For dinner, we went to have ramen at the Paragon with Gong Gong and Po Po. The restaurant has a Michelin star and is famous for miso ramen. Their dumplings were also tasty.

When we woke up the next day, we got ready for the wedding brunch. The wedding brunch was at a restaurant called Open Farm, and they had booked out the entire restaurant for the wedding brunch! Not only that, they also hired two balloon artists to make balloons for the wedding guests!

After the wedding brunch, we went to Elise’s birthday party at Baat Yi Po’s place, and pretty much every relative in Singapore came. Elise’s birthday cake was a chocolate cake wrapped in a blue fondant that was topped with Frozen characters. The party lasted for the rest of the day.

In Cantonese, there are specific names for every relative. Consequently, a person could listen to how you address a family member and know exactly how you are related. As an example, my four great aunts are all Yi Pos to me. Yi Po means Po Po’s (maternal grandmother’s) sister. They’re distinguished by birth order using Cantonese numbers. They’re named Sei (4) Yi Po, Ng (5) Yi Po, Baat (8) Yi Po, and Gao (9) Yi Po. It’s very hard to remember what to call them.

You can see a photo of everyone at the party in this 360 link.

https://s.insta360.com/p/3cfc4e36dda885aeed347f1c8dfcded3

When we woke up the next morning, we got dressed, checked out, and then headed to lunch at the food court at ION on Orchard Road. My favorite was of course dessert, Ice Kacang. It’s kind of like a snow cone but with exotic fruit, red beans, creamy sweet corn, grass jelly and palm seeds drizzled with palm sugar syrup, rose syrup and condensed milk.

After that we went to our hotel in Sentosa.