Now because I was such a whingeing git who couldn’t handle eating at stuffy outdoor hawker centres all the time, EK took me to eat ‘steamboat’ at The Magic of Chongqing Hot Pot Restaurant in Tanglin Shopping Centre. For the steamboat virgins among you, all you need to know is that it consists of a big hot bowl sitting inside the centre of your table filled with soup (for me, i had half a bowl of chicken broth and another half chili soup), and then when it hots up, choose a selection of raw meat and veg, chuck it all in the soup, let it cook and then eat the whole thing up.
The most attractive thing about steamboat is that you ‘cook’ for yourself, much like Korean BBQ style. Really you’re picking up a leaf of pak choi, dumping it in the soup and poking it for a few seconds before plumping it in your mouth. They had a wide choice of meat and veg here, so we got some beef, pork, japanese mushrooms, pak choi, shrimp, fishballs and rice noodles amongst other things, several times over since it was a buffet. MAN was I full.
Sounds simple, and sure its yummy, but actually the way they do it here is taking a leaf out of the book of many a great French chefs, i.e. they actually pay attention to your palate. For example, they firstly bring out a rack of pastes and sauces, such as peanut paste and chilli sauce. Then they mix them all up in a little dish, but strictly in a particular order – and this little concuction makes for great dip but also a good refresher of the palate. Additionally, they give you small desserts like water chestnut cake to soothe the spiciness of the chilli soup, and also promote the wonder of some special green tea at the end of your experience to calm your stomach and help you digest.
Of course, I didnt know all this and read it off the back of the menu, so they could be talking bollucks.

1.) Aaah ze steamboat is ready! 2.) Hello Mr Shrimpy, nice to meet you.. 3.) Time for your chilli BATH!!

Though you wouldn’t believe me if i told you now, i did do much more than eat when I was in SG. Its

just the food pictures make for such good viewing. One of the other things I did was visit Clarke Quay and Boat Quay, posh-ish areas which are also known to be clubbers’ central in the evenings. Here I am on the left, not knowing exactly which quay I’m in. Clarke? Boat? How to tell.. But at least its quite picteresque, and I have an ice coffee in my hand, so all in all, i’m definitely content. Ooh! The pic on the right. Boats in the background! Dare I say thats Boat Quay?

Sorry to divert back to food, but with Singapore its hard to get away with. There’s a chain of fast food joints here called ‘Mos Burger’ – in true japanese style, its branded a ‘healthier’ type of fast food joint. I regret not taking a picture of the menu as it has some pretty cool stuff on there. And the BEST ice milk tea i’ve ever tasted. I just read up on good ole wiki that Mos stands for Mountain Ocean Sun, which disappoints me cos I thought it have been derived from hip hop rapper Mos Def, and instead reflected some bad-ass burgers fo’ shizzle. (Silence.) But really, the burgers they come up with are amazing. They have teriyaki burgers, seafood shrimp fritter rice burgers,limited edition wasabi flavoured burgers, as well as the classic Mos cheese burger or ‘mosu chiisu baagaa’ as the Japanese say. Behold.

Mos Cheese Burger. Posessing such magical powers, it deserves a big space in my blog unto itself.

So, enough of the foodstuff for now, and we turn our attention to consumption of the liquid variety. Being that Zouk is ‘the’ best to be in terms of Singaporean nightspots, my willing guide Ee Jin and I, accompanied by not so willing but still game-for-it accumplice Ee Kean, headed for the darn place on Wednesday, Ladies Night, but not before stocking up on our free drinks first. We went to a bar on Clarke Quay which in Ladies Night style, gave us girls free entry and free house drinks allll niiiight looong. Goody two shoes EK didnt get stuck into the alcohol, but hell, i’m on holiday, and I’m chinese
– which means, dammit, i’m getting all the free drinks i can lay my hands on. I also had a small bet with EJ about who could drink the most before calling it quits. We took six cocktails each, but I figure I won since she threw most of it back up when we got home.

I was most interested in how Singaporeans shall we say, ‘court’ each other in places like nightclubs. I asked EJ this, and she said that, predicatably guys don’t really approach girls in the same way Brits do, even though they still have the jokes of cheesiest chat up lines. They just hang with their mates, the girls hang with theirs. Course,you get the sarong girls, who’ll approach anything with a western accent. I would have loved to have seen one and snapped a picture. Anyway, left is me with EJ, with quite possibly my first or second cocktail. Vimto, with something. I didnt really ask questions, it was such a battle to get to the bar in the first place, and it tasted good anyway.

Picture on the right, well, you would have thought this was EJ and EK completely hammered, but I already mentioned EK didnt drink on the night, and EJ, well she just looks like this naturally..

So we had our drinks and moved onto Zouk, whereby the best and sweatiest of all Singaporeans can be seen dancing to choreographed macarena-esque moves, and get away with it. Now, i don’t know if they all heard I was in town, but the place was rammed full of people. No spaces left in the coatrooms, and don’t even think of trying to get to the bar. We literally had to take deathgrips on each other to move through the crowd, and there was no time to stop and say sorry. Suffice to say, we pushed our way through 100m of armpits, got a bit claustrophobic, and turned back. Finding breathing ground outside, we took a taxi home, and I collapsed on a heap on the bed. Oh and thats the bit where I realised I had lost
my phone.

…

Lets not dwell on that.

Next blog – Bangkok, and all the cheap t-shirts that come with it.