7NNT25: Day 34 – Singapore

Soundtrack: “Hotel Womb”, The Church

While my last few days in Singapore were still fairly active, they weren’t nearly as exciting individually as the rest of the trip for at least a couple of reasons: it’s my 5th time here, so there’s less of the novel experiences to be had; and after close to 35 days living out of the same suitcase, the same 5 or 6 days’ worth of clothes, I was feeling a bit fatigued. I’m beginning to think there’s a pattern, where once my mind knows I’m in the last place before home, all of the energy reserves that I’ve been running on start to deplete, and my overall resilience starts to weaken, so things that wouldn’t normally be too bothersome take longer to shrug off.

Saturday started fine, the plan for the day was food, some shopping, catching up with old pal N and her family, and hopefully catching a show. I headed out to the Maxwell Centre to get my chicken rice fix and, if possible, try the trick I’d been told about last night by some locals at Swan Song. Maxwell Hawker Centre is home to the famous and lauded Tian Tian, as seen on teevee with Anthony Bourdain. I’ve had their chicken rice, back in 2020, and it’s good. At some point, the cook from Tian Tian left and started his own stall, just a few doors down, called Ah Tai. The word I was given was that the chicken at Ah Tai is better than Tian Tian, while Tian Tian rice is better. So what I should do is get the small chicken and normal rice from Tian Tian, and the large chicken and as little rice as possible from Ah Tai, then eat the best from both, before possibly exploding from consuming a critical mass of Hainanese chicken rice. I wasn’t going to do exactly that, but thought I could try a small serve from each and then do a comparison. When I got there, the queue for Tian Tian was massive, while Ah Tai shorter, so I just got a serve from Ah Tai. I sat at a table and was joined by a couple of locals, so we talked food, and they looked at my plate and got a craving for chicken rice. Ah Tai chicken is at least as good as how I remember Tian Tian, the wonderfully subtle flavour, glorious texture, and given I likely saved myself 20 minutes of queueing, I was very happy. I can understand the rice thing, it was a little dry, but only a little. When my local companions got theirs, they immediately stopped talking and got right into the eating, and that’s as good as any local recommendation. I spied a nearby stand selling chendol, the wonderful Singaporean dessert. Leaving my little refresher towel pack at my spot, and not clearing my tray (two things which should have hopefully signified that I was coming back) I got up and got a serve of the wonderful green dessert. Unfortunately my getting up was interpreted as me leaving, so I returned to find my tray cleared, my refresher towel gone, and the half a sugarcane juice I hadn’t yet consumed gone too, while a couple of others sat in my spot. All were apologetic, and while kind of understandable, I still was a little unhappy as it implied that I was an ignorant tourist, at least in my mind (I’m fully aware of the requirement brought in a few years ago for diners to take their finished trays to the designated areas and not just leave them at the table). The chendol was good, sweet and icy.

I wandered around Chinatown, buying some bits and pieces including stocking up on red pockets (hong bau). This provided a bit of amusement as I ran the writing through the translator app and got wonderful results such as “get rich”. It probably shows my ignorance that I didn’t realise there were hong bau individualised for any number of special occasions, including for children who get good grades at school. Hopefully the ones I picked were of a more generic nature.

Spent an hour or so browsing a second hand bookshop near the hotel, the sort of place at the start of my trip I could have easily spent many hours as it was a real rabbit warren, boxes stacked on boxes, all manner of books, but as I feared for my lower back, my budget, and my luggage space, I didn’t go digging more than a layer or two in. I came away with some early editions of Raymond E. Feist, light paperbacks that I read many years ago and think I no longer own.

Headed back to the hotel for some refreshing airconditioning, and to try some random potato chips I’d found in my wanderings. I don’t know what a Mala Hot Pot tastes like, but the chips tasted like a tangy asian take on bbq. I think that’s probably the challenge as a solo traveller, being able to find a group of folks for dishes like hot pot that really aren’t designed for one. Maybe I need to work out a hot pot tour of south east asia. Watch this space.

Spent a wonderful evening catching up with expat N, who’s spent a bunch of years in Singapore with husband and two intelligent and energetic children (I get that the school system in Singapore is tough, but the number of facts that these young folk were able to rattle off about history and geography were impressive). N’s also spent a lot of time in Hong Kong, recommending my hotel and some things to check out while I was there. It was a like a foreigner convention, as a friend of N’s husband from Queensland was also in town. We went for a wonderful nearby Indian meal, where I had a mutton and spinach curry with biryani, before stopping in for an icecream where I went for rose lychee as I do love all things lychee.

After saying goodbyes I summoned a Grab, but didn’t notice that the app had got my pickup point incorrect, so the car actually drove past me as I tried waving my phone at it. What followed was me running back to the pickup point, messaging the car that I was running back, the driver messaging where was I, before the car drove off literally as I caught up (I was able to touch the car as it moved). The driver cancelled the ride so I then had a 10 minute wait for another car.

As Singapore was in the throes of Gaga madness, there weren’t any drag shows as such to see, but there were two LGBTQIA+ events featuring drag performers happening. I made the dumb assumption that I’d be able to just rock up and get in, but when I got to the first there were bigger queues than for Tian Tian. I sat around pondering my next move, if I should try to get in (their socials were saying very limited door sales and I didn’t rate my chances — though to at least cut myself some slack I’d checked ticketing the day before and noticing it was sold out, had at least queried if there would be door sales, they didn’t get back to me but posted there would). I checked the other venue and it was also saying some limited door sales, so got a car and headed over there. Again, it was like a substantial proportion of the south east asian LGBTQIA+ community had descended on Singapore, and there were lines, not quite as long. I managed to find someone in the queue who had a ticket but wanted to sell it, so I paid him $60 SGD and got into the shorter queue. I don’t know if he had the good goss, or was just lucky, but after a while of no movement it turned out the venue had a power issue they were trying to fix, so they weren’t letting anyone in. After over an hour of this, the word came down that it might not get fixed tonight, so folks with tickets would get refunds (not me, having not bought through the promoters, but sometimes these things happen). I cut my losses and headed back to the hotel.