Singapore - Merlions, Snails, and Chili-Crabs, oh my!
Trip dates: November 24, 2016 - November 27, 2016
Singapore gets a combined food and travel post :)
We stopped in Singapore for a day before heading to Malaysia/Kuala Lumpur, and then we came back for a few more days for a total of around 4 days.
We stayed in the Little Arab part of town the first night. We pretty much just wandered around to the waterfront and saw some markets the first night and didn't do too much. There were lots of snails in the undergrowth! (hence the title)
For the second part of our stay, we were in the heart of Chinatown. This was right next to an MRT stop but also very close to a bunch of restaurants and hawker centers for cheap, delicious food!
The day after we got back, we walked around the Gardens at the Bay, which has lots of different outdoors exhibits about different... gardens... and... flowers... and had a lot of cool information about conservation but importantly, has two additional air conditioned domes that you can buy tickets for to visit! It was so hot that I was in full shutdown mode, but the A/C helped revive me. After that, we checked out the Merlion by the Marina Sands right before a big storm moved through.
For dinner, we met up with some of Lishan's college friends at a local place known for its Chili Crab called New Ubin Seafood. We stuffed ourselves and had a great adventure just finding the place - it was in an industrial building, up an elevator to a car park, then located in a corner of the building with almost no signs. A hidden gem that was pretty much impossible to find, but a delicious feast awaits if you do. As always, it was good to see familiar faces while we travelled.
On our last day, we did some more sightseeing at the Buddha Tooth Relic museum which was in Chinatown. Basically, there are a very small number of Buddhist temples around the world that have actual relics from Buddha and this is one of them. The temple is pretty new and contained lots of interesting information about Buddhism, the history of the temple and important monks from the region. Not to mention, it was free! I think we saw Buddha's tooth in there? But it was really far away and small so we're not completely certain.
We also went to a local escape room in between our sightseeing. It was fun, though we ended up needing a lot of hints to get through it at the end. The escape rooms in Asia definitely have a different feel than some of the latest ones we've been doing in Seattle so we've needed to adjust a bit, but it's still good to see how some of these "original" rooms are set up.
For our last lunch, we decided to actually wait in line to try the 1 Michelin star eatery in the Chinatown Complex, Liao Fan Hong Kong Soya Sauce Chicken Rice. The line wasn't too long compared to what we've read (only about 1 hour). Lishan decided to try another stall that had a smaller line but had good comments online, Ma Li Ya Virgin Chicken. They were both good in different ways! If anything, Lishan preferred the soft tofu from Ma Li Ya Virgin Chicken the best!
For dinner, we figured that since we were in Singapore, we should double-down on our crab since we haven't seen Chili Crab anywhere else we've traveled. Luckily, a place right next to our hotel was highly rated on TripAdvisor and we were lucky enough to score a table without a reservation. At Momma Kong's, we went all out and ordered a crab feast! We ended up ordering three crabs so we could sample all the specialties - this took a long time for us to polish off and we ended up closing the place down. The crab that we had here tasted better and fresher than the previous night, but the flavor of New Ubin's chili crab was our favorite by far! The Bee Hoon soup was a nice break from the richness of the other crabs, and the broth was so creamy and flavorful - it was a surprise winner!
And finally, here are some assorted other food photos :)
