Making love out of nothing at all: Singapore 2004, 2008

I thought I’ll follow up my post on KL with Singapore. The same person who had asked about KL had put up a query on what to do over a day at Singapore too.

I really admire and envy Singapore. Their vision is fantastic. In a way they are the Vegas of the Far East. They have made this amazing city out of nothing. They are very clear, London has the eye? Make a bigger one. It snows in Christmas? Make artificial snow here. Australia has a Coral Reef? They have Sentosa. And so the story continues.

In India we have the British colonial buildings at South Mumbai and Kolkata’s Dalhousie, a historical monument in every second road of Delhi, a Chinatown (Tangra) at Calcutta, a pub crawler’s trail at Bangalore…yet these guys at Singapore go to town and make tourist attractions out of their Chinatowns, Little Indias and colonial hotels and cricket clubs. Hats off to them. We have our swamps such as the Tolly Nullah at Kolkata, the Mithi River at Mumbai, the Yamuna at Delhi and yet these guys at Singapore make hot party spots out of their river dumps at Clark Quay and relaxed riverside café joints at Boat Quay. We have a rich history going back to the Stone Age and a freedom struggle which has thrown up leaders the world admire. Yet these guys have built lovely museums – places where you feel like going even if the ‘history’ is at times younger than one’s age.

I have made two work trips to Singapore so far. And can think of enough things to do. And I have not even been to the famous amusement island of Sentosa!

Well first things first. Singapore in my opinion is truly the food capital of the world. You get all cuisines and at all prices. The people speak English so it’s not that difficult to get what one wants even if one has food restrictions (vegetarians rejoice). And for those who don’t beef, pork, fowl, venison, quail… you will get it all there.

A visit to the food courts or hawker centres is a must. These are the most economical places to eat. You have myriad stalls – Chinese, Thai, Philipino, sandwiches, Indian (dosas, mughlai). You place your order and then eat at the plastic tables in the centre. You will find these all over the city but Lau Pa Sat and East Coast are some of the nice one’s to go to.

For something more exciting and glitzy, go to Clark Quay, the river front, especially at night. This is the food Ibiza with laser lights, modern steel and chrome restaurants, belly dancers and even Bollywood lighting up the night. The food spread here is even broader with German, Italian, Mongolian, Indian, Persian, Tibetian and what have you.

Boat Quay, the other river front, is slightly more relaxed and frumpy compared to Clark Quay. They have quite a few pubs too based on the pubs of English. Plus nice river front sea food joints.

A visit to the Night Safari is worth it. Coming so close to animals, though in a typically antiseptic environment, is quite cool. Going to a zoo is one thing but seeing the creatures of the night lose, separated by a glass pane from you, is quite cool. They had a nice live show also. You can walk the trail or go on a little train inside the safari. It’s an hour’s bus ride from the city centre. You get food there too though its slightly more expensive than the city.

Singapore has its share of glitzy malls and of course the famous shopping street of Orchard City. Shopping is expensive here but walking down these streets and the malls can be a nice experience especially if you are into window shopping. The variety is still more than what you get in India. And they often have sales going on.

The trick is to go the famous Mustafa Shopping Centre at Little India if you are on the lookout for a good deal. This place is open 24X7 and is crowded as a Virar local or a Kolkata private bus. It used to be very popular for buying cheap branded stuff. Frankly not that a big deal if you live at Mumbai now with Alfa, Circuit City, My Dollar Store and the Gujarati food imported food shops. Still it’s worth a visit for the sheer range. Quite a Singapore icon.

The Chinatown is interesting – Chinese temples, houses, trishaws. I went there in the morning so was in and out in half an hour. I reckon that it makes more sense to go at night when the food courts and the road side trinket shops open.

A walk down the City centre, Raffles Square, is nice for its manicured roads and interplay of colonial buildings and modern towers. It looks almost like a lego set or a doll house as do most of the tourist portions of Singapore. Very unreal. At least if you live in India.

Little India, Chinatown, Arab Quarter, Raffles Square... the way Singapore celebrates and packages its multi ethnicity is reallly admirable.

Would I specifically plan a holiday to Singapore? No I wouldn’t. It’s not the cheapest of Far Eastern destinations. Nor does it really have any exotica. Bangkok scores on both (is the Thai tourism board listening). But Singapore is definitely a place where I wouldn’t find it difficult to spend a few days without getting bored.

Traveller's Notes

- The Singapore public transport, especially the subway, is pretty good. You can go to most places such as Chinatown and Little India from the city centre using this
- They have night clubs called K TV or karaoke bars. I think they are pick up joints too. Now who will tell Mr Patil that our dance bars could have been tourist attractions

- Singapore has double decker buses, Duck tours, which are nice ways of getting acclimatized with the city. The actual ‘Duck tour’ is an amphibian vehicle which goes into the river

The Chilly Crab Trail : The world on a platter at Singapore, April 2008

Have you ever seen a stuffed toy which comes with its own recipe?

The hospitality kit at my hotel at Singapore had just that. A tiny red stuffed toy in the shape of a crab. It had a ‘Uniquely Singapore’ label attached to it. The label read ‘Chilli (sic) crab – one of the most famous dishes you can savour in Singapore, where the world comes to feast’. It also had a recipe of a dish called ‘chilly crab’. This was apparently the national dish of Singapore.

Just the welcome gift to make a foodie feel at home.

I set off on my quest for chilly crab. My first night was with some Indian friends who took me to an Indian restaurant at Clark Quay. Clark Quay is the redeveloped river front in Singapore which is its food Ibiza. You will find many restaurants from all over the world. The food ranges from Mongolian to Thai to Italian and of course good old desi curry. The architecture is quite hip with glass, chrome and laser lights. It is quite an awesome and glitzy place.

Now here’s the thing. I never have Indian food when I am abroad so good bye to the telecaller Mr 22 nights/ 23 days Europe Darshan with Indian Maharaj. I must admit that the channa masala, naans and tikkas in the restaurant were fairly good. But the fact that I don’t even remember the name of the restaurant reflects what I thought of it.

So night one was Indian with no sign of chilly crab. The next afternoon I disassociated from my friends who wanted to go malling and as I went to Museum Of Asian Civilisation (that’s the part of me which we Bengalis call aatel or intellectual). The museum was right in front of Boat Quay. Boat Quay was another reclaimed river front at Singapore. It is far more like the simple sister of Clark Quay. It has an array of open air restaurants facing the river front but doesn’t have the glamour and scale of Clark Quay.

I came fairly close to chilly crab here. I ordered the national dish here only to be told that there were no small crabs and the larger ones would be too big for not so little me. I left the place after having the most amazing prawn sambal there. They had done this dried red chilly based Indonesian dish to perfection with a few cubes of raw tomato giving just the right balance of tanginess. I had this with a fried rice which was not very different from what you get in Mumbai. So much for those who run down ‘Indian’ Chinese.

After Indian and Indonesian my next meal was Persian. I went with some folks I met at Singapore to Clark Quay one night where we went to a Persian restaurant called Shiraz. We had the most amazing feta cheese salad, the world’s best kebab platter which had a mix of venison, quail, fish, lamb and the most tender chicken ever. There was belly dancer there who through the haze of smoke and fumes of wine seemed to smack of Mebooba Mehbooba and Sholay.

The Singaporean national dish eluded me in my next meal too which was in a ‘hawker centre’ – Lau Pa Sat. The hawker centres in Singapore are food courtyards with an array of food stalls where you place your order and then eat in a central area. The dishes are fairly cheap and are popular with office folks, tourists and locals. Here I had an amazing Pilipino pork dish which had delectable chunks of pork in a creamy coconut sauce alone with some sticky rice. I also tried their pork satays which had a slightly tandoori’ish taste in comparison to the Malay version which is flavoured with crushed peanuts.

Our next dinner was hosted by a local Singaporean which was at the BIcentre. So would the revered chilly crab give us an audience? Missed again! We had some deceptively spicy clams, a stingray which was cooked partly in a lime marinade and partly in a red sambal paste, spicy prawn noodles. But no chilly crab!

It all came together in the banquet of the conference which I was attending. This was at a quaint restaurant called ‘No Signboard Restaurant’. The nine course dinner promised chilly crab at the end. I soldiered through the very soft and tantalising goose entrails, clams, prawns, venison cooked in a Chinese sauce and countless glasses of wine which the waitresses were refilling the way attendants replenish your glass of water in an Udipi.

Most at my table gave in by the time the chilly crabs appeared. I was the last man standing. Not for long though.

The chilly crab was a bit disappointing. The meat was a bit too ‘fish like’ for my taste. I did like the red sweetish gravy and dunked the sweet Chinese buns which come with in the gravy and quite enjoyed it. But overall, I think I would clearly prefer the butter pepper garlic crab at Mahesh in Bombay any day.

As my Singaporean sojourn came to an end it was clear that THIS was the food capital of the world. You get just about every cuisine there.

The national dish, chilly crab? Not hot and spicy enough for Indians I guess. I preferred the chilly crab that welcomed me to Singapore to the cooked version.