Singapore, Day 2

Saturday, May 8

Yesterday morning Ken's friend Kehlye picked us up at our hotel and gave us a wonderful experience by showing us more of Singapore.

First he drove us to a hawkers' market and wet market. The hawkers' market sells everything imaginable: clothing, hardware, "Wee-wee Drypers," jewelry....The wet market sells seafood.

I made the mistake of pointing out to Ken a sign over one of the stalls: Kampong Carrot Cake. If there's one thing Ken loves, maybe even better than lasagna, it's carrot cake, especially carrot cake with cream cheese frosting.

Kehlye heard us discussing the prospect of carrot cake, and he immediately urged us to try some. In fact, he dashed to the Kampong Carrot Cake stall and order one for us.

We should have been suspicious by the twinkle in Kehlye's eye that something was up.

Something, indeed, was up. When the "carrot cake" was served just minutes later, we found ourselves holding chopsticks and looking down into a plate of...something. I'm still not sure what it was, but we did see the carrot cake maker fry this concoction, and we saw him add an egg to it. Maybe it contained some carrot, but if it did, we never did find it. Actually the "carrot cake" wasn't all that bad, and the three of us ate a good portion of it. Carrot cake as we know it, though, this definitely wasn't.

Kehlye said that once when he was in the US, he saw a carrot cake sign and immediately bought some, thinking he was going to enjoy a dish so familiar to him in Singapore. What he got, instead, was a piece of American carrot cake, with cream cheese frosting. The three of us had a good laugh.
After visiting the markets, Kehlye drove us to a park. Here Kehlye insisted I use his wife's umbrella because the Singapore sun is very intense. Add to that the humidity, and you've got yourself an uncomfortable situation. Kehlye said he dislikes the humidity, too, but strangely he doesn't even notice it when he's out golfing. Tan had told Ken the same thing the day before. Singaporeans love their golf, regardless of the temperature and humidity index.

Next we visited the Haw Par Villa. This is a theme park of sorts, built in 1937 by the family in Singapore who developed Tiger Balm and made millions, probably billions, from its sales. They built the park as a thank you for their success. The park contains numerous highly detailed and colorful scenes telling stories of Chinese mythology. Many of the stories are quite gory. Kehlye said when he was a child his family had little in the way of luxuries, so coming to Haw Par Villa on the Chinese New Year was always a big treat for him. In the photo here you see a worker at the Villa touching up the paint on one of the scenes. I was intrigues by his bucket of paints, poured into what looked to be tomato soup cans. Working with only these basic colors, he's able to recreate all the colors in the scenes. In other words, his bucket of paints in tomato soup cans is his palette.

Next Kehlye said would would "stop for coffee or tea at Starbucks." I thought, that's neat. I don't particularly care for Starbucks and their price gouging, but it would be fun to visit a Starbucks in Singapore.

As it turned out, and we should have known this by now, Kehlye was actually taking us to a coffee/tea shop at another hawkers' market. Ken and I both ordered tea without milk; Kehlye ordered his tea with milk and tried to convince us we'd like it that way even better. Finally he got another cup, poured half of his tea into each, and insisted we try it. I loved it. It was much better than plain tea. I inquired about the coconuts piled into a corner of one market stall. Kehlye explained that the juice from a green coconut is delicious and before we knew it, we were drinking with straws from a coconut. Ken asked what was being extracted from "those shoots over there." Kehlye took Ken to that stall to watch the process of squeezing juice from sugar cane, and of course he returned to our table with a glass of sugar cane juice. My favorite was still the tea with milk, though.

At 1:00 Kehlye dropped us off at the Swissotel to meet Pam and Tan for our lunch date.

We zoomed to the 70th floor of this skyscraper to the Equinox Restaurant. Very pricey, but oh, my, the elegance, not to mention the amazing view of Singapore below us.

We had elegant appetizers, elegant main dishes (Tan and I had a fish fillet, Pam had lamb, and Ken had New Zealand steak), and...out-of-this-world desserts. If I die today, I'll die a happy woman after having experienced the creme brulée in particular. That was the very best creme brulée I've ever tasted.

From the Equinox Pam and Tan took us to a shopping mall across from our hotel. Soon we said our goodbyes, for Pam and Tan leave for Chengdu, China, tomorrow, where Tan works. However, we'll be joining them there on Sunday.

This evening Kehlye is picking us up to take us to dinner with his family. I'm eager to meet them. Kehlye is a very proud grandfather.

I think we'll take a boat cruise today. As you can see, our first two full days in Singapore were packed with about five days' worth of activities, so our pace might be slower today.

Oops. Just realized there's one final photo here. It's the view of the new casino at Singapore's waterfront, taken from the Equinox. This casino, the Marina Bay Sands, is an intriguing structure, with what looks to be a ship sitting on the top of the three towers.