Okay. Now that I’ve settled down a bit, I’m going to do my best to recount my Singapore, Japan and Sydney adventures.

This will be a very long post I think, considering it’s the first time I’ve been, and because there’s 72 pictures without coffee and stuff. Here goes nothing!

I’ve wanted to go to Singapore for a while, and what better reason to go than a stopover while on the way to Japan. I wasn’t sure exactly how many days I’d need there – all I knew was that I wanted more than an 8 hour overnight stopover. It turns out 4 days is about right, one more day would have been good too. The main reason being, there’s only so much you can eat in a single day!

The first thing I noticed as soon as I entered the airport was that it was green. There were plants in the airport! And it turns out there are plants outside the airport too! It’s such a green place! The humidity wasn’t too much of a shock to the system considering Sydney was stupidly humid earlier. In fact, I ended up really liking how the humidity changed throughout the day because it made the rain predictable. I think that was one of my favourite things about Singapore! Does that make me weird?

For day one, I’d already marked a cafe to go to – Common Man Coffee. What I hadn’t realised was that cafes here open late. By late, I mean that Common Man opened at 7:30am. I’m so used to cafes in Sydney opening anytime between 5am – 6:30am that this actually made me deliberately shift my waking hours. The coffee stuff will be in a separate post, so I won’t elaborate too much more on it here.

Instead, let’s talk about the streets!

Isn’t this a great chicken? It was on my way towards Chinatown, and it looked absolutely fantastic. Loved it so much!

There are so many temples and mosques here! They’re all awesome looking!

Need to know how to use chopsticks? Don’t worry, there’s a mural in the Chinatown Complex that shows you how! It was time to start looking at the different hawker markets here. Since I’ve never really walked through these kinds of places by myself, it was kind of overwhelming to see so many stalls selling similar things! I had no idea what half the stuff was!

Yeah, that’s some Mi Goreng just hanging in bags.

These bananas look awesome for cooking with!

Alright, time to actually figure out how to eat at these hawker centres. I ended up in Little India after first exploring Chinatown. I also wasn’t sure what I wanted, but the places that sold prata looked pretty good. I wanted some tasty roti, so I went to one of them and asked for whatever tasted the best. They recommended the banana prata. Me being me, I have no idea if they just said that cause it was the most expensive prata (at $3 lol), or if it was because it’s actually popular. Turns out it didn’t matter. This was delicious! And with that curry sauce thing too! Oh man I didn’t realise that banana and curry works! Delicious stuff! But it turns out the coconuts are expensive though, I think the one here cost $3.50, so I stopped buying coconuts and just tried random things like cendol, soursop juice (which is like sour custard apple to me) and good old sugar cane juice.

The prata by itself wasn’t enough, so I decided I should try something else that I was curious about – fish curry. You can’t imagine how unbelievably happy I was to see this served as a mess on paper. It was awesome!!! I haven’t had food served like this before (not even in Cape Town except maybe the braai I had there), and it was incredibly fun. The curry was borderline too spicy for me, but I kept eating as much as I could. I wasn’t surprised that I couldn’t handle the heat though – but it’s just so good to have things that I usually wouldn’t eat at all!

There was a guy sitting near me who ate something similar with just his hands. I was impressed! I wish I had been game enough to do the same, I felt like I was being too tidy by eating with a fork.

Look at the pretty peacock!

Next up, Clark Quay, where it felt very touristy with its shiny shopping complex. That being said, there were some cute things like this love heart of padlocks. Someone must really love Milo. Well, Singapore loves Milo. And Horlicks. The drinks of “Milo dinosaur” and “Horlicks dinosaur” were everywhere! I’m not quite sure what they are exactly, but I was very amused by it. I didn’t feel the need to try it since I know what Milo tastes like.

Yeah, I decided it would be fun to get my palm “read” by this novelty machine. Especially because it was an Egyptian theme. Was it accurate? I don’t know, except that I always carry my passions to excess, because that’s how I am!

I had originally planned to visit the Skypark on day three, but since the weather was good and I didn’t really have anything else to do, I figured I may as well tick this on my list in case something came up later.

Turns out my sensor was already pretty dirty, hence you can see weird things in the above skyline. Whoops! I think I managed to clean it out after I noticed.

That’s the infinity pool. The thing I agonised over because I figured it’d be nice to watch the sunset from the pool. But looking at it from the normal observation deck, I’m really, really glad I didn’t fork out insensible amounts of money to be able to use it, because it actually didn’t look enticing at all. And far too many touristy looking people.

You can see the super trees from here!

Sometimes I wonder if I’m the only person who takes pictures of random stuff on the deck itself instead of the skyline. I also took pictures of the plants on the bins.

I had a bit of a giggle out of this since I’d just discovered phoneception. Does this really go on forever????

Sunset!! I zoomed for the clouds because these ones actually look really cool. I see a puppy and his dragon friend riding off into the sunset.

I gotta say, I actually hate the time between 30 minutes before official sunset, to the time it takes for all the lights to come on. It’s the most painstaking wait ever! It looks nice though, but I was getting hungry.

Still not too used to all the hawker food stuff, I instead visited a place that had the same vibe, but not in a centre. This was a porridge place that looked really popular with the locals, so I figured I’d give it a go. Immediately the frog caught my eye, and I knew I wanted it. It’s been a very long time since I’ve eaten frog, so this was the perfect opportunity! A small clay pot was $8 (and I thought that was expensive!), with a side of porridge being 60c extra. Oh. Wow. I loved that frog. And what was more surprising, I loved that porridge! I didn’t know it could taste so good! I wanted this every night afterwards! But when on a short trip, I didn’t really want to have the same thing twice. But this was so good! I would go back to Singapore just for this!

Day two. Apparently, this is one of the best Hainanese chicken rice. I’d scoped out this place on day one and didn’t realise it was closed. Yep, there’s still a queue for this. I got the small serving (I got small servings of everything everywhere so that I wouldn’t get full and not be able to eat more), and it looked pretty decent sized to me! But since I’ve never really had this kind of chicken rice before, I had no idea if it was supposed to be good or not. I didn’t like the chicken because it was overcooked for me. The rice, on the other hand, was pretty delicious since it had so much flavour. The chilli sauce was far too spicy for me. I know that sometimes I can just tell if something’s really good even if I don’t really have a baseline, but it’s not the case for chicken rice. No idea why.

Yeah! Wet markets! I love them! Look at these frogs!!! Aren’t they so tasty looking???

I love action shots. But they’re so hard to get just right!

Yep, you can buy stingray out of the tank too.

I kind of wish that I had money and a kitchen when I went travelling. Not just a simple hotel kitchen either – one where I actually have space to be able to prep stuff and with proper equipment. I’d love to buy these things and just experiment!

Since I had a restaurant booking that night, I decided to do a sweep of Marina Bay sands. It’s just… so big and fancy! A lot like Dubai. You can even get a rowboat for inside the complex? And there’s an ice rink!

However I think the prettiest things are actually outside the complex.

After my little exploration, it was time to head off to one of the most expensive restaurant experiences I’ve had so far at Waku Ghin.

And the Helix Bridge at night. This was me playing with angles and long exposure. What’s really cool about this bridge is that it’s actually a double helix? Because the floor has lights that say A T G C – so I nerded out for a bit there.

Day three, and the pains of late opening cafes hit again. I thought Candour opened at 8AM, but as I walked past, I saw the sign saying they opened at 9AM. So I had an hour to kill. I randomly decided to visit a shop and try a traditional Singaporean breakfast, since that was on my to do list. This was the most confusing thing ever. I received a tacky plastic blue mug, two plates, a spoon, toast, and coffee. I was lucky that I had a rough idea of what the breakfast was supposed to look like, since there’s a place in Perth that sells the same thing (minus the coffee), but it costs $13! No thanks. I’ll pay $3.50 instead. Just not at a random place like here though. My eggs weren’t fully cooked; half the white was still clear. The kaya toast was ordinary. The coffee was like what I used to make as a kid. Instant coffee with milk and two sugars.

I was terribly confused and disappointed by this breakfast.

Later in the day though, I was in Bugis and my day was made much better by way of radish cake! Finally, a place where there was a line for radish cake! I had no idea what the difference between black and white were, I thought black meant that the actual radish cake was black. It also said sweet and I wasn’t interpreting that correctly; I thought it was dessert type sweet rather than just a sweet and savoury thing.

This was the white one. Again, small size and it was a decent serving for me.

Yay more street art! This was the city of Newton, hence there’s a… Newtown’s cat? Instead of Schrodinger? Who knows. I was here to check out the hawker centre here, but it didn’t seem too impressive compared to the ones in the city?

Well, since I was here, I didn’t want to waste the trip. So off to the botanic gardens I went! And the first thing I see? A black swan. Am I back in Australia??

Those squirrels are fast. And impossible to shoot because it’s so dark in those trees!

This fellow, on the other hand, was absolutely gentlemanly (or gentlewomanly?) and wasn’t camera shy at all.

Alright. I had a dilemma. I had no idea what to eat for dinner. I’m simply not used to the cuisine here so I had the problem of not knowing what I wanted/liked that was available. I ended up at People’s Place complex or something, and after doing two sweeps, I just joined the place with the longest line. Which happened to also be a line of old people. The most interesting thing about exploring the hawker markets is the age demographic. It’s all old people! No young people and only a few tourists. I wasn’t even sure if this stall was selling anything that was on the signs, because everyone in the line was just ordering what was in the bain maries. I could figure out what some of the stuff was, but no one was ordering some of what I liked. So by the time it was my turn to order I simply pointed at things that other people had ordered before me that I recognised! So I ended up paying $2.50 for this green veg, cabbage, and sardines in tomato sauce on rice. Not bad, I was very impressed with myself for being so thrifty! As out of depth as I was with this whole hawker food thing, I was genuinely happy with eating delicious things for so cheap. In fact, I didn’t want to go to another expensive restaurant or even fork out money for food at the cafes here anymore! Anything that was even the tiniest bit hipster or classy just seemed needlessly expensive.

But two veg, two sardines and rice didn’t fill me up too much. I’d found a tiny stall that only really spoke chinese and I ended up buying some duck giblets and tongues (which were absolutely delicious but too spicy for me!), but I wanted more. I was craving that frog porridge again. It was just so good! In fact, by now it was my favourite meal of my Singapore trip (Waku Ghin doesn’t count since it’s a different class entirely).

Thus I returned to the porridge place. But I put extra effort in myself to order something different, because I’m all about trying new things. I’d seen so many places sell “bee hoon” but I had absolutely no idea what it was, and couldn’t even figure it out with the pictures. So, I had to order it. A fish head white bee hoon. A what??? I didn’t even figure it out as I was eating it so I ended up googling it!

Turns out it’s just rice noodles in soup! So it wasn’t as interesting as I thought it’d be, but at least now I know!

Plus I really enjoyed the chicken feet since it’s been ages since I’ve had them!

Finally, my last day in Singapore. After my brother saw my confused post about the Singaporean breakfast, he recommended I go to a chain to have some again. But against his advice, I instead went to a stall I saw at the Chinatown Complex. And good thing I did! Wow. This was the complete opposite of my earlier experience. There was already a line before 8:30am, and although most people were only ordering coffee, I still had a good feeling about this place.

Oh yeah. The best. The best for only $3.50!!! Look at the toast. JUST LOOK AT IT. Do you see that even layer of butter? And that perfect coloured toast? That is how it’s done. Oh yeah. It tasted SO GOOD.

And those eggs? PERFECT. Ok so the one in the shot was like, 1% over but the other one was perfect. I can’t really fault that. It was so enjoyable!!!

And then the coffee. This was a real coffee. No, not specialty coffee. I’m talking what people in Singapore drink. I felt this tasted exactly like what Singapore is. That’s the difference. Specialty coffee tastes of hipster and privileged. This, this tastes real. It tastes of what life is like here. And that’s why I enjoyed it so much. I had originally ordered this as a black coffee, but received it with sweetened condensed milk, and I loved it – in fact I think I liked it better than if they’d actually given me black coffee!

If you’re in Singapore, you must come to this place for breakfast. And have the frog porridge too. Those two are the absolute highlights of the trip.

Lunch time came around, and I wanted to give chicken rice another go. I wanted the place with the Michelin star, but for some irrational reason I decided I would skip the humid conditions of the hawker centre and instead go to the Hawker Chan restaurant for its air conditioning and lack of crowds.

I shouldn’t have done it.

Hawker food gains flavour from ambience. Maybe I sound crazy when I say it like that, but I believe it. The food didn’t have the same charm. As soon as I picked up this tray and walked it to my table, I realised my error. This had to be eaten in a dark, humid place with all the aromas of the stall and its neighbours. It had to have all the people crowded around. Otherwise, the experience is lost.

Still, it wasn’t a bad dish. I liked the chicken here way better, it was cooked better. Still not the best chicken I’ve had, but ok. The rice on the other hand, I didn’t like. Tian Tian Hainanese Chicken Rice did it better. Oh well!

Yeah, I was stuffing myself at this point because it was my last day. So here’s more radish cake! This time, the black version. Oh yeah. This tasted so good! I enjoyed it so much more than the white version! I don’t even remember what the yum cha places in Australia do for radish cake, All I know is that this was delicious.

Finally, Gardens by the Bay. There was a dinosaur feature going on, so here’s me pretending an ankylosaurus is photobombing my picture of the supertrees. Also, it was raining, so the supertree walk thing was closed.

These cannonball trees are amazing.

On the grass I float, dreaming.

And some mochi taiyaki, because it was novelty. It was so-so.

Oh, I forgot to talk about durian. I forgot that Singapore has durians, so it amused me that there are “no durians allowed” signs on public transport! That was hilarious. I really wanted to eat some though, but hadn’t done any research to know where to get the good stuff. Instead, I found some durian ice cream from an artisan stall rather than a generic touristy looking shop in Chinatown. It stank like durian and tasted a bit like raw onion. I think I stank of it for the rest of the night! But it was a great experience!

And that marks the end of my Singapore trip. Shiny rooster apparently had the same schedule, as it was no longer there on the street on my last day, and later I found it deconstructed a little bit further along the road. Bye bye Singapore, bye bye shiny rooster!