Singapore Stopover

We arrived in Singapore early in the evening.  I'm generally against day flights for long haul flights, it seems like a bit of waste of a day.  Going the overnight flight seems to be the most optimal use of travel time given you'll be sleeping anyway.  We arrived early evening in Singapore, with the three hour time difference, it was very late in Australia and we were feeling a bit tired.  We were hungry though and I didn't want to waste any opportunities to get some food in Singapore.  We had booked a stay in Tanjong Pagar and so we were only a short walk to Maxwell Food Centre.  I missed living in Singapore, and I missed nothing more than the food in Singapore.  The blend of cultures in Singapore is an incredible thing, possibly one of the greatest achievements of Singapore as a country.  The food culture that has developed as a result of the blend is probably one of the greatest benefits they have reaped from this.

We spent the next few days visiting friends and eating.  The last few years of no travel had deprived me of the Singaporean food fix that I craved and I was keen to rectify this as much as possible.  We went around to different stalls, getting chicken rice, char kway teow, prawn mee, all the favourites I had missed.  Everything was always washed down with a strong kopi or a fresh lime juice.

With Chinese New Year approaching, we also got to walk around the night markets that had been set up in readiness for the festivities.  I had fond memories of Chinese New Year in Singapore.  The food was of course always great, but there were the extra special Nonya desserts and snacks which started to pop up around this time that I loved.  The little biscuits and the pineapple tarts would appear on tables around everyone's homes and it was just a happy time to be in Singapore.  

We also made sure to spend some time around some places to get some of our old favourites.  For me, I've always loved the simple Singaporean breakfast of kaya toast, poached eggs and a kopi.  It is a simple combination of foods, but the intensity of the flavours matches the tropical surroundings.  I feel the heat of Singapore as I sit there and the taste of the food and drink seems to cut through it all.  Veronica on the other hand wanted one thing and one thing only, and that was her beloved bak chor mee.  Twice she found herself at the famous bak chor mee stall near Lavendar station.  One of the first ever small hawkers in the world to be awarded a Michelin star, the flavours are intense with the vinegar sauce, and the noodles are cooked to give a perfect balance of bite that still yields.

As we were walking around Singapore, I found myself walking along the underpass that went from Orchard Station all the way to Ngee Ann City.  I must have walked along here dozens of times over the years.  One thing caught my eye as I was walking, it was the "Famous Amos" store!  This store had been here since I was a kid.  It must have been here for well over 20 or 25 years at this point.  Everything else around it had changed and shifted, yet somehow this store had remained strong and consistent throughout all this time.  There was a nice feeling of consistency and nostalgia to see it still here, and so I bought a bag of cookies to munch on back in the hotel.

On the day we were to leave, I wasn't feeling great.  I had been trying to tough it out of the last couple of days, but Veronica convinced me to go to the hospital before the flight.  There the doctor gave me drugs and painkillers to try and deal with the issue quickly.  I felt a bit relieved, but I still wasn't feeling very comfortable when I got on the plane back to Hong Kong.