Week 2 – Food!
Quality food is dirt cheap over in Singapore. I can get a solid meal and a drink for less than $6. The only caveat is that the place isn’t in a fancy restaurant and everything is structured as a food court. There are sit-down restaurants, but those cost a fortune (in the Singaporean sense) and you would have to pay additional surcharges. Western fast-food chains are still available around here with McDonalds being the most prominent one. The burgers are priced the same as the US. Technically, it is cheaper here than there due to exchange rates, but that still doesn’t convince me to go there (often). I didn’t fly hundreds of miles just to eat American food.
Most dishes were either rice dishes or noodle dishes with some combination of meat and/or vegetables. Some dishes were made with “hor fun,” which is a type of wide, thin rice noodles. I was already accustomed to eating these back at home, so I was glad that these were better than the greasy mess I would sometimes get when ordering Chinese takeout back in the states.
The most interesting dish I had there was “laksa.” It’s a type of bowl noodle, but the soup base is a spicy, coconut flavor with tofu and other ingredients (like chicken) on top. I’ve had it several times, and each time was not a disappointment. What we deem “tropical fruits” back in Boston are the norm here, so there are many more interesting flavor combinations like kaya toast and soursop drinks.
