Fish Heads with a Side of Pig Organs Please
Singapore, 19th March 2002
Yep, this bed was still as uncomfortable last night as it was the
night before. I pity the guy in the bunk below me because I kept
moving around all night! Sorry!
Anyhow, today was a pretty quiet day. As you know, I've had to
change my travelling route because of the troubles in India. I'd
managed to sort all my changed route via e-mail thanks to Serene Sim
at the Singapore STA.
I collected the updated tickets this morning (I'd actually sorted it
yesterday, but they couldn't print the tickets until this morning).
I also incorporated a few smaller flights into my itinerary around
SE Asia. I booked one of them, between Chiang Mai (Thailand) and
Luang Prabang (Laos), but the other one between Hanoi (Vietnam) and
Bangkok (Thailand) was a bit expensive, so I decided to wait and see
if there was another way to do it. The fun thing is, is that the
flight I did book, is with Lao Aviation, a basic and, um,
'inconsistent' airline. But hey ho, it should be good fun!
For the rest of the day I just wandered around some of the other
malls in Singapore. One particularly amazing one was the Funan IT
mall, which as the name suggests, is packed with IT and electronic
gadget shops. As there were 5 huge floors, it was pretty
overwhelming!
I think now would be a good time to mention the food here. You might
be wondering what I've been eating. Well, one big passion of the
people of Singapore is dining! There are so many different cultures
living here that are countless types of food available! Whatever you
like, there's something here for you. One main thing to note, is
that Chinese food, or Indian food or whatever, is the REAL thing.
Not some English/American/European version designed to appeal to the
western palette! There are some weird and wonderful things here,
like Fish Head salad (yep, a huge fish head in the middle of the
plate); Pig Organ Soup (I'm sure it's yummy); and whole fried duck
(yes, that does include it's head & beak). Luckily there are milder
dishes available to get you started!
It actually took me a few meals before I was ready to try a local
dish. I started with McDonalds & Burger King (which, incidentally, I
hardly ever eat at home!) then after about a day & a half, I gave it
a go. I think one of the main problems is the huge range of choices.
I'd step into a food court and be surrounded by at least 2 dozen
different stalls doing every variety of Asian food, most of which
I'd never seen before! At least it's easy to choose in the fast food
places. I'm really bad at choosing what I want to eat, but once I
started the local stuff, I pretty much stuck to it, there's so much
variety here and I really do like the stuff I've tried. Most of what
I've had isn't too weird, just things like pork fried rice, noodles
etc.
I guess that's a good thing about starting Asia from Singapore.
Singapore contains Western & Asian food, so it can act as a
'culinary gateway' to Asia. I can slowly transfer to mild local
dishes, so by the time I reach the darkest depths of Laos and only
really weird local things are available and the nearest McDonalds is
1000 miles away, I'll be completely prepared. Hopefully this'll also
reduce the chances of 'traveller's tummy' (i.e. being sick because
I've changed diets too suddenly)
Moving back to today's events, in the evening I watched a film at
the cinema. I really like going to the movies, and I haven't been in
ages. Plus it's really cheap compared to England. I watched
'Beautiful Mind' with Russell Crowe. It's a pretty good film, very
moving with some strong messages. Sitting in the cinema, it's easy
to forget where you are, I could easily have been sitting in my
local cinema at Gunwharf in Portsmouth! The only difference was that
there were Chinese(?) translations at the bottom throughout the
whole film! Luckily they're easy to ignore.
After the film I spent a couple of hours on the net sorting out my
diary entries then it was off to bed. I'm taking the train to Kuala
Lumpur tomorrow! It leaves at 8:10am, but I have to be there by
7:30am! I hope I can get some sleep on my board tonight! Night
night!
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