Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Vegetarian....What's your Fancy?

Guten Tag once again! It's the evening of Day 9 in Singapore and I've decided to procrastinate my homework a wee bit more. All is still going well! Yesterday we went out to a university bar with our professors (yes, odd, i know, but they invited us) and today we toured a series of asian art galleries. Tomorrow we're going to visit a few temples in the area and will end the day in Little India, the other major cultural district in Singapore (more touristy than functional now).

But to jazz things up this time, I figured I'd dedicate an entire blog to food in Singapore. Most of our meals are in hawkers: outdoor food stands serving Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Muslim, Indian, Vegetarian, faux "Western," and any other type of Asian food you can imagine. So journey with me into my random photography of occaisonal meals in Singapore....

Phase One: My first Singaporen meal, unfortunately aboard Singapore Airlines. In two words: pretty disgusting. On the upside, dessert was Ben and Jerry's!
Phase Two: I step out a little more and am introduced to what I term "mystery meat." Most meals contain this. In Singapore, most hawker stands have pictures of food instead of names on their menus. So you point often without knowing what you're ordering. In this case, it was shrimp, and God knows what else....delicious though.

Phase Three: I discover dumpings. These too, often contain mystery ingredients. Sometimes vegetarian, sometimes pork/chicken, sometimes tofu, but most of the time unknown. Regardless, always delicious. Usually handmade, these are probably my favorite dish here.


Phase Four: I discover Singaporeans don't know the meaning of dessert. These two little things below were both sooo good, but I think I could've eaten 15 or 20 of them. I think they were meant to cleanse the palet more than to satisfy your sweet tooth. Ice cream can be found some places and chocolate is sold in the supermarkets, but other than that, sweets are very hard to come by.

This was also a pretty good dessert. But don't be fooled, it's not what it looks like. It weighs about as much as a feather and has the consistency of a spongy bread. Pretty good and really attractive, but not quite what it looks like.

Phase Five: Full bodied fish. No nice restaurant meal is complete without one of these. In many cases, you see them swimming around in tanks as you walk in, only to discover their fate a few moments later.... However, they do know how to dress a fish. I'm usually not a fish fan, but with all this stuff on top, it's quite good.



Let's revisit phase two again. This was beef, an egg (though the flash kind of blocked that out), and who knows what else. Pretty good, but get a large drink to go with it. It'll set your mouth on fire.

Phase Six: Enlightenment. I know Buddha took seven steps at birth and everything, but I'm adding this in at six. Shu, one of the Singaporean NUS students, introduced us to Prata. An indian dish, it's like a flat pancake, but can be filled with anything you want from cheese to sausage to fruit to chocolate. I had one with banana and one with egg and cheese. A golden sweet sauce is drizzled on top and the whole thing is dipped in a curry sauce seen on the left.

Phase Seven: I meet a wet market. Live fish/seafood things swim around in tanks and you pick the ones you want. Here, fresh seafood including fish, squid, crab and huge shrimp have just been laid our so that customers can serve themselves. And when they say it's fresh, I mean it's fresh. Some of that stuff was still flappin' around on the shelf.


Phase Seven (Part Deux): WARNING: Sara, this will gross you out. My apologies. I know you're vegetarian and all, but I just couldn't leave this off. My most surprising part of the wet bar....

....Singaporeans like fresh frog. A lot of fresh frog....

.....whose lives don't tend to end well...

These two containers were side by side. A Before and After of sorts. Enough to make me never want to eat seafood again (or at least not for the rest of the night...).

Well I'm glad you joined me on this exploration of food! It's really diverse and not all bizarre. Some things have been crazier and I missed getting their pictures, but most of it's pretty normal. Rice and/or noodle based meals with some kind of meat, vegetables and spices. Menus with pictures instead of names are life savers for foreigners.

I'll get back to a normal blog next time! Hope everyone's doing well. I do miss you all so much--can't wait to see you again!!

Love,

Lizzie