Food and Singapore

calimari

On Wednesdays for dinner we typically go to this place known as The Food Court with other Bechtel people staying in the hotel.  It's a large open-air square lined with counter-service eating places.  Tables are in the middle and many have lazy susans so everyone sitting at the table can share the dishes.   Last week we ordered the "wrong" calimari and ended up with tiny squid fried whole, or as I called them, "ewwwwwwwww".  Jack tried them, as he's a fan of the calamari that looks like pieces of fried chicken.  

The kids and I are doing okay with Asian food.  It is a lot of fish and rice, and the noodles are even made from rice, and most things are at least a little spicy.  I've had tummy and headache issues for years, and laying off the bread and wheat is doing wonders for how I feel.   One of the kids' junk food treats is a weekly trip to KFC and they are both now used to eating the chicken "spicy" as our local KFC almost never has any "original recipe" available.  




We also checked out this place Mike loves, right on the beach.  Mike, who is one of those people who can do most things easily, has adjusted to Indonesian cuisine and life seamlessly, except for tobacco, but more on this later.  This place doesn't even have a sign, I think it's name is the location of the beach.  Anyway its' s large and usually busy.  What is unique is that you pick out your fish and crabs from tanks where they are just swimming or snapping around.  Here's our Mr. Grouper before and then sweet-and-soured. 
 I complained about the heads always served on the fish but was informed that many Asians pick at the head meat and eyes.  Suffice it to say I'm not there yet. 

Singapore

Jack at Jurong

Orchids!  So beautiful!

Hey gorgeous! 

I didn't love this bridge.  It was pretty high.

This past weekend marked the end of Ramadan, which is the biggest holiday of the year for the Muslim calendar.  Mike had a long weekend so we spent it in Singapore, a pretty impressive city!  We stayed at an amazing hotel, please stay at The Mandarin Oriental if you ever get the chance!  They are all over Asia, but also Europe and the States.  We took a city tour and it is true that everything is available in Singapore.  We were most excited to find Quaker Granola Bars and Goldfish!  We visited the zoo, which had an amazing rain forest setting.  Also most of the primates were loose, something you would never find in the lawsuit-y states.  The zoo had this great Night Safari where you could see shows and take a ride through the nocturnal animals.  Very crowded, but very very cool!  Finally got to see the large cats up and about!  The most impressive place, however, was the Jurong Bird Park.  You know that opening scene in the movie Rio when all those exotic birds are everywhere?  The whole place was a lot like that.  The trees and other fauna were incredible, and there were so many opportunities to interact with the birds, not just see them in cages.

Singapore is a very clean, very beautiful city that is also its own country.  They are very interested in unity, and have four official languages: English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil, with English being the main language.  It's REALLY easy to be a westerner there.  It's a crowded place so most people live in flats, and it is a very expensive city.  A four-room (not bedroom, room) flat is $250,000.  Sorry to the gents for the following image, it's even MORE expensive to "be a woman" in Singapore than the states!

Here are some reasons it's such a clean and well-mannered place...Littering is illegal, gum is illegal, not flushing a public toilet is illegal. You cannot call a woman a bad word, you cannot say the word "bomb", even jokingly, you cannot say disparaging things about any religion, and you cannot hug someone without permission.  These offenses are punishable by fines, caning and sometimes jail.  As for Mike's snuff, needless to say they did NOT sell it in Singapore (that pesky spitting thing).  It is also unavailable in Indonesia so...he bought some cigars and hoped for care packages from Texas.  

I love love love this beautiful waterfall!  I also loved how the park described it, "come see the largest man-made waterfall inside a rainforest aviary park in the world!"   I mean they were DETERMINED to have it come off as impressive.  There was no need to bother.
I could have stayed for hours.