Howdy folks, here’s another update – This time from Singapore.

The 17. july marks the end of the 9th month of the Islamic Calendar also known of Ramadan where muslims across the world have been fasting from sunup to sundown. This leads to a festival called eid al-fitr which celebrates breaking fast. At my factory this leads to 3 days off (thursday, friday, monday) which gave me the chance to go on an extended weekendtrip and I chose Singapore since my friend Marilyn lives there and I haven’t seen her since San Francisco 2011.

I touched down in Changi Airport, Singapore in the evening around 5pm where Marilyn picked me up in the airport and we went straight to a market at Paya Lebar where I had a delicious Ramly Chicken burger and some thai coconut icecream. We walked around for a while in the extremely crowded market and I bought a white traditional malaysian shirt. Marilyn bought some dresses for her friends in Switzerland.

                          

 

We then went home to Marilyns place where I was going to sleep for the next couple of nights. I took a shower and then we had to get moving. We were meeting some of her friends for “supper” around midnight. Supper is something practiced in both Malaysia and Singapore (and probably more places) and is basically just eating late at night. I’ve found where Danes meet for a casual beer, Singaporeans meet for some casual food. Food is cheap, beer is not. In Denmark it’s the other way around. The Ramly chicken burger and the coconut ice cream I hadn’t tried before but it was fairly close to “western” food – what they ordered for me here though; Not what my tastebuds are used to! 🙂

Chili sting ray served on a banana leaf, mixed vegetables in oyster sauce, frog legs in porridge and with a brown sauce i couldnt put my finger on and oyster omelet. With that I had jelly lemon ice tea and chinese ice tea. Needless to say, all of it, ALL of it was new to me. So yeah… welcome to Singapore! 🙂

The chili stingray was good and spicy. I could eat that again. Fish and chili spices, why not? The mixed vegetables in oyster sauce was good – very garlicky. The frog legs in porridge… hmmm, well… Frog legs taste like a mix between fish and chicken… add that to porridge and you definitely have a weird combination i’ve never had before (let alone porridge with any type of meat). Add the brown sauce and you have giant mindf*** of a foodexplosion that I was NOT prepared for. I ate a couple of legs and most of the soup/sauce/porridge but then had to give up. The oyster omelet gave me a weird sensation in my mouth and it only took the first mouthful of oyster to leave that dish alone 🙂

So. We went home to sleep around 2am and that was the first evening in Singapore.

Friday we woke up late and decided to do traditional Singapore sightseeing. But first we tried the fabled Durians that everyone talk about. This was the Pahang type as they are apparently quite different. Now, Durians are a chapter by themselves and I won’t go into too much details but they are a pineapple sized fruit with a very hard and pointy exterior and they have a very strong smell. Put this together with a very strong taste it leaves you with a fruit that you either love or hate. If you hate it, you can’t avoid the smelll anywhere so you get to really hate it 🙂 On the other, if you love it – it’s a great fruit to have readily available. Me? I like the smell but the taste is… not acquired yet. I think I can learn to like them and its not like the taste is that bad but I just need to try them a few more times before I’m ready to fully indulge.

 

The sightseeing involved seeing the Merlion:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlion

It’s called so because it’s a mix between a mermaid buddy with a lions head. Very pretty 🙂 Since it started raining everybody left and we got some good pictures.

In the evening we went up the Marina Bay Sands hotel that you can see in the pictures on 57th floor. Up there I met up with 2 other long lost friends, David and Grace whom I both met back in Karlsruhe, Germany back in 08. Crazy to meet in Singapore of all places. Grace is indonesian living in Singapore and David is an aussie visiting Singapore for a unicycle hockey tournament.

 

Saturday we woke up and got even more food, and we went to the mall to get me some swimshorts and walked around for a bit. Saw Arab street in Singapore and just did some walking around.

Later we met up with a bunch of Marilyns friends and Grace at a birthday party which involved many good things such as poledancing and auctions (of men unfortunately) for charity. I also went up into the even higher rooftop bar called Altitude which is on 67th floor making it the worlds highest al fresco bar (open air rooftop bar). Marilyn got us on the guestlist, so we skipped the line and the entrance fee. It felt good 🙂

I could proably write another 10 pages just about Singapore, involving things as duckrice, starbucks and Singapore in general but I’ll just sum it up with this

 

Sunday I left Singapore after a very long weekend with so many new things tried 🙂