The next installment in our meals around the world includes: Bali, Singapore, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand. We had some amazing meals, in Hong Kong and Vietnam in particular. We were no strangers to Asian cuisine, but were surprised by the difference that local ingredients and regional variations made. We were also surprised by the variety of delicious, cheap fruit smoothies, and you'll see we had them with most meals. That may be what we miss most!
**This post is going to be a bit more on the personal side, so if you come here for the pretty photos of places we’ve visited, you can skip on. We’ll have something for you soon. Also if you're my mother, you might want to skip this one.** So yeah, I got my nose pierced in Singapore. I guess the traditional thing to do is get a tattoo, if you’re a sailor. But since I’m not a sailor, I went a different direction.
One of the things we loved most about Singapore was kopi and kaya toast. We’ve been told we travel on our stomachs, and we won’t deny it. Regional foods have consistently been one of our favorite travel experiences. Kopi is made from beans which have been roasted with fat and sugar, then finely ground, brewed into a stiff, concentrated form, and finally mixed with sugar, hot water, condensed milk and evaporated milk. There are a number of other variations, without one or both canned milks, no sugar, less water, etc., and we tried a few of those, but plain kopi was our clear favorite. It is intense, a little thick, slightly sweet, and has a well mixed, complex flavor.
Often kopi is served with kaya toast, as above, at Ya Kun Kaya Toast. Kaya is a coconut egg custard, flavored with pandan, and it’s delicious. In the ‘everything’s better with butter’ school of thought, the kaya spread is supplemented with a healthy—ok, bad choice of word—slab of butter.
It was fascinating to watch kopi being brewed and served. The video below only shows it being served, but the brewing involved pouring hot water from one of those metal pitchers through a long cloth bag full of grounds, fitted in another identical pitcher, then pouring that coffee back into the original pitcher, and back through the filter again several times, all with the pouring pitcher raised well above the receiving pitcher. Once brewed, it's ready to be diluted based on the orders that come in.
There are variations on kopi throughout Malaysia, and even Vietnamese coffee is similar, in some ways (it is also roasted in fat and sugar), but the kopi we fell in love with seems to be unique to Singapore, more’s the shame. One other thing we first noticed in Singapore, and found elsewhere in South East Asia, is this handy little sling for carrying your hot beverage. You get one of these when you order your kopi "to take away."
We had kopi at several different places, including lots of places that you couldn't get kaya toast, but our favorites were the ones with a more traditional, straightforward menu: Ya Kun Kaya and Toast Box. And judging by how busy they each were, at all hours of the day and night, they were everyone else's favorites too.
We’ve been to a lot of zoos in our time, and often they just make us sad. I don’t want to sound smug, but when you’ve seen animals in the wild, in their natural habitats, it’s harder to see them in zoos without just feeling bad for the animal, about the zoo, and a little bit bad about yourself for paying for it. There are exceptions, of course, and we’ve seen wonderful zoos in San Diego, Auckland (and others I’m forgetting). We almost didn’t go to the Singapore zoo, mostly because it involved what seemed like a complicated bus trip, but we’re so glad we did. It’s definitely a zoo that you’ll leave feeling glad that you went.
Lunar new year in Chinatown, Singapore. Taken in the Anne Siang Hill area, from the pedestrian alley at the corner of McCallum and Amoy, facing down McCallum.
While Singapore appears to have plumeria too, we’ll miss finding blossoms on the sidewalk everywhere as we walk. We’ll miss the beautiful, friendly locals, and the ornate and ancient feeling buildings on every street. But we’re excited to explore Singapore now. It’s just waking up.
