17/11/18 Singapore Food Tour

Today we had booked a small group food tour by Hello Singapore.
We found our way to the location for the start of the tour by catching a bus out towards the Airport and then walking a short way along East Coast Rd. We had been instructed not to eat breakfast.

We met our guide Daryl inside the first place to try the famous Kaya toast. Our small group was a mix of young people (us the oldest by a mile) . We had partners Stanislava and Andrej.  Stanislava is Lukas's sister and the couple were meeting him in Singapore, as they live in Perth (Originally from Bulgaria/ Slovenia)  and he is working in Paris, but was close by for a wedding of a friend. Maria and Daniel were a young couple from Phillipines - possibly on their honeymoon,  and Samantha was here on her own. She was an American, currently working in Malaysia and very pleased to be somewhere where she could walk around without being looked at all the time. All were very pleasant.

Kaya toast is a soft white bread roll, still warm, with a paste of pandan leaf, sugar and egg white spread in it and a large dob of butter added, which slowly melts. A soft cooked egg is broken and served in a plate with soy sauce and white pepper.  You dip the roll into the egg and eat it. A very popular singapore food.

This was chased down by a cup of milky sweet tea (made with condensed milk)

Next were yummy rice dumplings just a little down the street. As we walked to Kim Choo, to have our rice dumplings we passed a street containing some of the traditional Malay houses.

 Very pretty places. The rice dumplings are little tetrahedrons of rice formed around tasty mince, with banana skin wrapping the outside of them to impart its flavour and hold them together as they steam.
Kim Choo sells many different confectionaries, but also has rooms upstairs which are a mix of museum and shop, selling malay costume, memorabilia etc.

Then on to try some excellent Laksa  - possibly the best we have ever tasted.  It didn't look great, but boy was it magnificent.  At this stage we were already stuffed full, and only part way through the tour - which was a bit of a worry. Out tour guide loved taking selfies and made a lot of opportunities for photos- which he thought was great fun. At each place he tried to get the owner/cook to come out and have a shot with us, and also to say thankyou to them for their efforts.

Then it was on to the bus

 and off to the Old Airport Road Food Centre

where there were so many hawker stands that you could have anything pretty much.  Our guide took us around and told us lots about the available foods and then we had a choice of one to try each.

Erica chose a porridge and Trevor chose Wonton Noodle.  We all had sugar Cane juice. The sugar Cane juice was quite refreshing, but (not surprisingly) quite sweet too.

How they make the sugar cane juice.

Then it was back on the bus again.

We hopped off and walked to the Malay Heritage centre.  There we were able to see many of the malay spices growing - including Ginger.  We also heard about how the British bought Singapore for a bargain price (the home of the Sultan was here)

ginger growing

Then it was on to the Turkish area.

A little further on we had Teh (poured from very high up to make it froth a lot) - still very sweet with Condensed milk-

note picture on pillar of old man pouring Teh in the traditional way.( see large version below)

We had a walk in what Daryl called the Hipster Streets before our next stop  - Here there were many hip , retro, brightly painted, groovy shops and murals.  \

Here we saw a cat cafe - very expensive- and a selfie coffee shop, where Sam ordered coffee with her picture on top.

Trying to look Hip

and then walked on into the Indian quarter where we ate Murtabak.  Murtabak is sort of like very large flat pancakes with meat on top and is served with a curry type dish to dip it in to.  It is a traditional Indian dish.

cooking the murtabak

As we entered the Indian district we noticed many coloured decorations (especially on the roads) - It was currently Deepavali (the Hindu festival of lights) and the local shop owners had gone all out promoting the festival to bring people to the area. Even escalators in the subway and the trains themselves had advertising for the festival

A little further on we had Dosa (a pancake dipped in to different Chutney) and more tea- This time a Masala Chai tea which had a lot of sediment, but Erica quite enjoyed the strong cardamon taste. Tea was still sweetened with condensed milk.

By the time Daryl left us here we were very very full up.  We managed to figure out how to find a tube station (buying a couple of light weight shirts for Erica on the way) , and caught a train home to our hotel, where we had a cuppa and a bit of a lie down for a while.
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So to sum it up these were the places and food we had:

Kaya toast, eggs and kopi - Chin Mee Chin Coffeeshop: 204 East Coast Road.

Nonya Bak Chang (rice dumpling) and Nonya Kuehs - Kim Choo: 109 East Coast Road.

Laksa - Marine Parade Laksa: Roxy Square, 50 East Coast Road.

By bus to the Old Airport Road Food Centre

To the hawker stalls for Chicken Rice, Frog Leg Rice, Duck Rice, Port Rice, Wanton Noodle, Prawn Noodle, Porridge and Sugar Cane Juice.

By bus to Kampong Glam

Teh Tarik : 17 Baghdad Street.

Chicken Murtabak - Zam Zam: 699 North Bridge Road.

On foot to Little India

Dosa and Drinks - RW Selmor: 31 Campbell Ln, Singapore 209903.
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The link for the food tour is https://hellosingaporetours.com/food-tour/
The cost was about $300 for the two of us for 5.5 hours. Not cheap, but a good treat.

15/11 and 16/11/18 London to Singapore

We arrive in Singapore at 7.30am 16/11/18  after leaving London at 1055am 15/11/18 the previous morning!! (losing 7 hours in the process… very careless of us).

Breakfast at Heathrow was at Heston Bloomenthal's restaurant. Very pleasant to eat good English food prior to the expected assault of days of Asian food.

the knife over the counter at Heston's Restaurant.

Neither of us had slept on the flight, so by the time we arrived in Singapore we already felt as thought we were pulling an all-nighter and not really in a fit state to be trying to make the most of time in Singapore.  This was not helped by the fact that our planning for this leg of the journey was almost non- existent, so we were pretty much starting from scratch.

At the airport we purchased a 2 day tourist pass which allowed us to use the bus and train services around Singapore for unlimited uses for 2 days. This was a bit of a leap of faith.  We had been told that it was easy to use the public transport in Singapore – but we were not really sure how well we were going to do with this.   It actually worked out pretty well for us.  Travel on trains and buses in Singapore is pretty cheap (between $1.40 and $2.50 for most trips, depending on the length of the trip).  You load up your card, or buy a single trip ticket at the automatic ticket machines at the stations. Then you swipe your ticket as you enter the platform and as you leave the last platform. The cost of your trip is deducted from your card.  It may have been slightly cheaper to take the “load your ticket yourself” option, but certainly not as easy, so we were pretty happy to pay $26 (which included a $10 refundable deposit) for 2 days. Looking back, a 3 days pass for $4 more would have been better, but we were a bit confused about when we were leaving at the time that we purchased the tickets.

We left our baggage at the hotel and went out on foot.  We were still a bit unsure of how to do this next bit, so made what was probably a bad decision.  We decided to take a hop on hop off bus, but to take the orange "Fun Z" bus instead of the normal red hop on-hop off one.  This is half the price, but we suspect there is a reason too. The bus came along and we caught it (paying the driver our $50 for the day) and headed upstairs.  Out on the upper level the closed front half was reasonably pleasant, but when we opened the door to go out to the open air section we were hit by a blast of hot and humid air that had us reeling, and quickly changed our minds. 

There were no headphones and very limited commentary, with little additional information.  Not really the educational orientation to Singapore that we were hoping for. We did one loop and got off.

At some stage we admired a building with lots of greenery spilling from it , just near our hotel, and also a robotic lawnmower.

It still wasn't late enough to head back to the hotel, so we walked towards Clarke Quay and sat down by the river to eat lunch (more expensive than expected as there is a service charge and a GST charge which are both around 7-10%). Drinks were also very expensive  (on a very hot day) and moist towels were provided and charged for, whether or not you used them.  We walked around towards the business district along the edge of the water, admiring the bronze sculptures of historical figures from the past of Singapore, and trying to avoid the smoke from many smokers.

We watched many tourist boats which probably carry about 40 people.  Most had a few only.

View of the Iconic Marina Bay Sands hotel which controls the skyline of Singapore in this area.

At one stage we caught a free bus (seemed to be doing a loop just for lunchtime) and then we got quite lost for a while, eventually finding our way back to the hotel, after walking quite a way. 

We were very pleased to find milk for a cup of tea in the 711 on the street, and get into our room, with its tiny bathroom and be able to lie down and have a sleep.

After a few hours of sleep we wandered out and down towards Chinatown and found a multi storey shopping mall with lots of food places.  Here we eventually settled on  a meal for dinner, and ate as the store operators cleaned up for the evening around us.

14/11/18 Oxford to London (on the way home)

We checked out of the Lakeview Guest House for the last time, and braved the crazy Oxford traffic to get once more to our little hidden car park supplied by Brasenose College for a brief time.  

Thom was waiting for us at the end of the street as we turned in, and used his magic clicker to open the ancient gate in the arch for us again.

We walked in to Brasenose College with Thom and Laura to have breakfast in the huge dining hall once again (after helping ourselves, cafeteria style, to our cooked breakfast selections). 

The nose on the gate at Frewin Annexe- just like the one on the Brasenose door.

Since we had a couple of hours up our sleeve before we absolutely had to be out of Oxford and on our way, Thom and Laura considered the options and decided on a last walk experience. 

We started out by following the way that Laura would often start to ride when she goes to her lab in the Hospital area of Oxford (Headington), and then turned in the opposite direction to the one she would take, to access a narrow lane, which leads to the running and bike path which travels alongside the Cherwell River. This was a really lovely path on a still and mild day, with a bit of blue sky and the autumn colours all around.  As a mild breeze wafted the leaves were “snowing” to the ground.  What a lovely way to finish our holiday together.

Cricket pavilion just like the one at Lords- even the same distance to the pitch.

They showed us the ugly engineering building “it has the best view in Oxford because you can’t see the engineering building from  it”, the amazing multi-coloured brick Keeble college buildings (it used to be a rite of passage to steal a Keeble brick during your student years- even better if it was a blue brick) 

Keeble College

and the incredible Museum of natural history, with cathedral-like structure, and glass roof instead of dark one. 

The one last cuppa, a bit of a cry, big big hugs and another drive with just the two of us again.  Since we were flying out the next morning we had booked a hotel very close to Heathrow hoping to get some sleep in a real bed before the “overnight” trip to Singapore, where we knew we would not sleep and we would arrive effectively the next morning. We would need to survive till at least 3pm, when we would be able to check in at our hotel in Singapore.

Once more the car GPS was a great asset and brought us effectively to the hotel (where we dropped off our bags for holding) and then to the hire car office (where we dropped off the car).  

Since we were staying so close to Heathrow we had figured we could probably just walk back to the hotel.  The girl at the hire care place suggested that we take their free bus to terminal 5 and have a look around. We did this, and had a cup of tea and bought sandwiches there, while Trevor accessed the free wifi and we tried to figure out how to get back to the other terminals. After a bit of consideration we found the correct bus stop to catch a free  bus to take us to the main bus station (which services terminals 1, 2 and 3). 

Tomorrow we needed to leave from terminal 2, so it might be useful to be familiar with that area tomorrow morning when we were trying to get checked in and catch a plane.   Signage was not overly helpful here, but we managed to find somewhere to get a refund on our Oyster cards (public transport swipe cards used on metro and buses) and also to find the Singapore Airlines check in counter.  Now all we had to do was get home.  

Easier said than done.  After a false start or two we eventually resorted to asking the information people.  Apparently Terminal 2 is a “pedestrian free terminal”- which meant we could not walk home from here!!.  We caught yet another free bus back to our hotel after some frustration, reclaimed our bags from the crowded bag room and checked in.

We stayed in the hotel that night, availing ourselves of a glass of Aussie red (a bit hard to say any more than that) and a meal, before crashing into bed, knowing that we would have to be up early to get to the free bus stop in plenty of time in the morning.