F&G: November 2012

Thursday, November 29, 2012

Singaporean Food

Fritz's friend, Hui, just sent us this article that offers up a better explanation of our food ventures in Singapore.

http://mobile.seriouseats.com/2012/07/an-introduction-to-singaporean-food-cuisine.html

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

We just got back from a whirlwind tour of Singapore. After our exhausting Hong Kong trip we were in Manila for about 36 hours before heading off to Singapore. We were quite tired the whole time in Singapore and had some nice naps on the plane and in the afternoons.

We arrived on Sunday afternoon and my old college roommate Hui picked us up at the airport. We went over to house, about a 15-minute drive from the airport, and then she took us out for a quick bite to eat at one of the many amazing mall food courts in the city. These look like food courts in U.S. but the food quality is actually really, really good. Singapore is known for having a great mix of food from all the different people who live there (Chinese, Malay, and Indian are the main groups).

After our quick lunch we went back to Hui’s house, where we staying, and had a short nap. Slightly refreshed, we got up to help Hui with the huge Thanksgiving feast she was preparing for us. We had hand carried a chocolate carrot cake that we bought in Manila as our contribution. It was a delicious meal and we both really enjoyed having familiar foods and spices again.

On Monday I had a conference to attend in the afternoon (the whole reason for the trip) that was in the old colonial downtown. We took the train to downtown and explored a little bit, stopping at the Raffles Hotel to check out the museum there. The Raffles is a grand old hotel that was around during the 1920s and featured a bunch of music. It’s one of the few venues I know of that features prominently in my research and is still around and in great shape. Their museum has lots of great photographs and things so I wanted to scope it out in advance of our longer stay in May.

Next, we grabbed a delicious Indian meal and I went off to the conference at the Museum of Asian Civilizations and Grace explored some of the colonial downtown area. The conference was interesting, especially because it featured the Indian writer Amitav Ghosh. I wasn’t familiar with his work but he was mobbed at the conference; everyone wanted to have their photo taken with him.

Tuesday, we walked to a German bakery near Hui’s house and had some hearty rolls with peanut butter. This was also a nice change from the soft white bread that’s all over Manila. Next we took the train over to the smaller campus of National University of Singapore, which has the offices of the Asian Research Institute. I’ll be affiliated with them in May so we wanted to meet some of the folks there. The walk from the train stop to campus went through the Singapore Botanical Gardens but we didn’t have time to explore them too much. The facilities at NUS are top notch and I really look forward to spending time there.

After our meeting there, we walked about 40 minutes past some enormous homes to meet up with Hui for lunch at another food court. Again, it was quite delicious. We went back to her house for a LONG nap and went out with her again in the evening for dinner at an open-air food court in a park near her home. We had some really tasty dishes, including an out-of-this-world stingray entrée.

For our last day there we went to scope out some possible housing options on the main NUS campus. It was on the complete other side of the country and took about an hour to get there by train. When we got off the train we accidently wandered into the National University Hospital and it took over 30 minutes before we could find our way to where we wanted to go. We swung by the graduate student housing (looks really nice but probably won’t be anything open for us), grabbed a quick bite, and raced back to Hui’s house to grab our bags and head off to the airport.

We finally got back to our apartment around 10:45 last night and are spending the day recovering. It will probably take us a few days to catch up on sleep and we’re glad that we have no more real traveling until January.

Thanksgiving dinner!

Chocolate Carrot cake we brought from Manila and apple pie

mynahs everywhere

old arcade on Purvis St

in front of Raffles Hotel

Raffles Hotel

Raffles Hotel lobby

St. Andrew's Cathedral

Singapore Cricket Club

Marina Bay Sands floating over Singapore skyline

Fullerton Hotel, old colonial Post Office

Museum of Asian Civilization - old town hall

Boat Quays on Singapore River

no durians on subway

walking around East Coast

Werner's Oven - good bread on East Coast

big homes on East Coast

incredibly lush streets

walking to old National University of Singapore campus through Botanic Gardens

huge trees with ferns and plants all over it

walking towards Orchard Road

a Singapore scene: Ferrari and Rolls Royce in front of St. Regis Hotel

lunch at Wimsa Atria food court

Egg Prata on left

Prawn Noodle Soup

Laksa: slightly spicy coconut soup with prawns

Ice Kachang store

Ice Kachang

another big house

East Coast Park Lagoon food court

Rojak

Bamboo Clams

Fried Hokkien Mee

Singapore Carrot Cake - no carrots, but delicious!

Sting Ray with Sambal sauce - another delicious serving

seating

entrance to East Coast Lagoon Food Village

hundreds of ships anchored alongside Singapore: busiest port in the world

walking along jetty back towards shore

Olive-backed Sunbird

Saturday, November 24, 2012

Last Videos from Hong Kong

25 November 2012

Here are some videos we took:

Evening promenade

Public Library view

Aldrich bay promenade view

Museum of Coastal Defense view

Tug boat in front of Yau Tong

Hong Kong 3 and 4

Hong Kong 3

We started off our third day in Hong Kong by taking the train up to Mong Kok. This felt like more of a real neighborhood, where actual people lived and worked, as opposed to the glitter of Causeway Bay and Central Hong Kong. We roughly followed a walking tour from one of the pamphlets we picked up from the HK Tourism Board at the airport. We passed by a flower market blooming with orchids and through a depressing bird garden with hundreds of small cages of birds. Many birds barely had enough room to open their wings. We continued through Ladies’ Market, which was just setting up, stopped by a small bakery, and wandered through a four story prepared foods market packed with retired locals reading the newspaper and eating dumplings.
We continued down Nathan Road, the main north-south thoroughfare on Kowloon Island. Our destination was the HK Museum of History, but we arrived after one too many school trips and didn’t feel like waiting in the queue for an afternoon ticket. By this point we were back down in Tsim Tsa Tsui, the neighborhood we explored our first afternoon. We poked around a recommended bookstore and finally stopped in the first floor of Chungking Mansions to share a garbanzo dish and a flatbread stuffed with cilantro and parsley from a Turkish stall—very tasty.
As had been our routine on Tuesday and Wednesday, we took a midday nap back in our guest house before exploring the other food stops recommended by our foodie tour in Sheun Wan. We sampled chicken congee, a savory porridge, at our first stop, a few dim sum dishes at the second, and mango soup with mango cake at the final stop. The bakery recommended for mango soup was located in the first floor of Western Market, a three story market dedicated to food, fabric, and private parties. We picked through some beautiful fabric and bought a few strips of Chinese silk for some future souvenir project. We had passed by a French market as we entered Western Market and we picked up a few more treats (most deliciously the two inch thick wooden milk bread –think high quality French toast) to enjoy over on the promenade as the sun was setting. We watched the boat traffic on the harbor for an hour or so and headed back to our Causeway Bay home.

Hong Kong 4

Our last day was greeted with heavy rains. We had planned to check out Victoria Park but got too soaked too soon into our walk and quickly found a little diner to get out of the rain. Eventually the weather cleared and we walked past HK’s impressive public library.
We checked out of the guest house around noon and hopped on the MTR to explore the neighborhood of Shau Kei Wan, east of Causeway Bay. After our tasty Turkish lunch the day before, we were drawn into a modern Indian restaurant with lots of positive press posted in the windows. We think it might be the most delicious meal we’ve had since leaving the United States: Tandoori tenderloin, chickpeas-veggie mix, and naan stuffed with lamb. Satiated, we headed over to the shore to see the views from the HK Museum of Coastal Defense.
We made it back to the airport and arrived back to our apartment in Manila a little before midnight last night. We’ve been repacking today and leave for Singapore tomorrow morning.