After having our passports held hostage at the Indian embassy in Australia and making it onto the plane by the skin of our teeth, we were relieved to finally be out of Australia and on to Singapore. We loved Australia. We had an amazing time there. But we were ready to move on. It was time for some new energy for our trip… and Singapore has energy in spades.
Singapore is a hodge podge of cultures and Indian culture plays a big part in that. Since it was almost Diwali, we decided to stay in Little India to celebrate the holiday in style. We made it to Little India around 8 AM (our flight had landed at 4) so we had plenty of time to find a place to stay. We checked out a couple of hostels and were able to leave our bags at one while we continued our search. But not before we stopped for our first cup of masala chai. For those who are not familiar with it, masala chai is a delicious concoction created by the Indians in a flash of pure genius. It is a milk based tea with spices (some combination of ginger, cinnamon, clove, black pepper, mint, and/or cardamom – what masalas you get depends on who is making it) and sugar. It is the peak of deliciousness. In Singapore they put their own little twist on it by using condensed milk. Mmmm, mmmm good.
We decided to take a room at the hostel that we left our bags with. Since there was a festival going on, rooms were filling up fast. It seemed like a nice enough place so we just went with it. Then we went to check out the neighborhood. The decorations were beautiful. Singapore really goes all out for a festival – although, it probably doesn’t hurt that the Prime Minister is Indian. The decorations were top notch. Jigar said that the decorations in India aren’t that nice. We stopped by the temple along our way.
We rested in the afternoon because we wanted to go on the evening tour that conveniently started at our hostel. Before the tour, we went to get something to eat. Finally, decent, cheap Indian food! In Australia, Indian food was $20 per plate… far out of our budget. We stopped by Chellas near our hotel for some snacks. Jigar was very excited to find Bhaji Pau. The place was packed so they sat us at a table with a single diner. It turns out she was a college student from Singapore named Tanushree. We had a long, leisurely meal with her but then we had to run or we’d miss our tour!
Our tour guide was really nice. He guided us through the craziness that is Little India on the eve of Diwali. He was very excited to have Jigar on the tour – a real, live Indian person. We went through a market (where we got free garlands and some snacks) and then walked through the neighborhood. The streets were all lit up for Diwali – the festival of lights! Along the way, Elijah (our tour guide) would stop and explain various Indian customs or fill us in on some history. After the tour, we stopped by a restaurant that Elijah had recommended. Jigar got onion baji and I got a dosa. Onion baji is basically onion dipped in chick pea flour and fried. It was really good. Dosa is a big (and I mean big) pancake (or more like a crepe really) stuffed with potato. It is really good. When the bill came, we thought there must be some mistake. My dosa was only $1.50. But there was no mistake. That’s how much it cost. After penny pinching in NZ and Oz for the last four months, our relief was palpable. We knew traveling in Asia would bring its own issues, but it would be nice to not have to worry about money for a while. Exhausted after a long day, we headed back to our hotel for a good night’s sleep. The whirlwind of leaving Darwin and basically not sleeping the whole night was catching up with us.
The next day, we decided to explore some more. We weren’t feeling any pressure to see all of Singapore since we’d be flying back through in March. I was hoping to catch up with my friend from high school, Dotsie, since she lives in Singapore these days. Unfortunately, since we couldn’t give her much notice (as in, "Hi! We're in Sinapore. What are you up to?"), she wasn’t available so we’ll see her in March. With no plans for our last day in Singapore, we headed out on foot.
We thought we’d head toward Clarke Quay. Jigar had been in Singapore a couple of years ago and he had fond memories of the neighborhood. We stopped to ask someone directions and they told us to take public transportation. Singapore has lovely public transportation, but we wanted to walk. The woman we were speaking with told us it was impossible to walk there. It didn’t look impossible according to our map, so we pressed on. Was there some obstacle not on our map that blocked our way? Next we stopped by a camera store because Jigar wanted to price some equipment. As we were leaving, we asked the man who had been helping us how to get to Clarke Quay by foot. He told us that it wasn’t possible. Intrigued, we asked why. He said that it was as if we walked from Little India to his store. I told him we had just walked from Little India to his store. He said, “Well, it is 10 times that long!” It had only taken us about 5 to 10 minutes to make that walk so we weren’t too concerned. We just kind of wandered around the city, heading generally in the right direction. We walked through a Chinese market. We passed a Hindu temple. Then we came across a place to eat that our friend, Tanushree, had recommended the day before. It is called Kopitiam. It is cafeteria style dining with all different types of food – Malay, Chinese, and Indian to name a few. We ordered some sort of flavored ice concoction. They pack a bowl FULL of shaved ice and then pour flavors over it. Ours was rose and pineapple and a few other flavors that were delicious but not easy to identify. Then they cover the whole thing with beans. Underneath the ice is flavorless gelatin and corn. OK, well, we’d give it a try. We figured these people knew what they were doing. And other people seemed to be really enjoying this dessert. We thought that the beans and the corn were probably sweetened and the gelatin would taste like jello. Nope, on both counts. It was pretty much just as you’d expect – if you take away the corn, the beans, and the gelatin, the shaved ice part was quite tasty. We enjoyed it (after scraping the beans off the top). It was a fun experience.
We finally made it to Clarke Quay after about two hours of walking. It would have been a 10 minute subway ride. Maybe that is why everyone was telling us to take the train… It was a cool area, but Jigar says it is a lot more fun at night than on a Sunday afternoon. After checking out the area, we decided to spend the rest of the afternoon in the Joo Chiat area.
Joo Chiat/Katong is an area unique to Singapore. The people who settled the area were predominantly of mixed race – wealthy Chinese men and their Malay wives. As a result, there is a mixing of cultures in that neighborhood which gives rise to some particularly delicious food along with some interesting history. Our true goal in visiting this neighborhood was the Laksa – a particularly delicious soup that originates from this neighborhood. After 15 minutes on the train and a 30 minute walk, we found the famous laksa. And it was good! We refreshed ourselves with lime juice and lychee juice and enjoyed big steaming bowls of seafood laksa. Then it was time to go head back to our hostel and pick up our bags and head to the airport. Our 36 hour layover in Singapore was coming to an end. It was a lot of fun. We look forward to going back to Singapore and visiting the world famous zoo and catching up with Dotsie, but we were really excited to get to India in time for Diwali!
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