Gluttony, Hiking, and How to Eat Chili Crab in Singapore

This is an actual sign right outside a hawker center in Marina Bay. Singapore takes its food seriously.

I think last we left off, I was about to go to lunch at Corner House in the Botanic Gardens, which was an absolute treat. Four courses with a light wine pairing (in air conditioning) was just the thing after my almost-debacle of a morning. As you might imagine, the sight of this cheered my hot and wilted soul immediately:

Corner House was not the amazing experience that Odette was, but it was delicious and lovely, and I’d recommend it to anyone as a really terrific addition to your list of restaurants to go to in Singapore. The setting in the gardens is hard to beat.

Thus revived, I headed back to the hotel to sit by the pool for a bit, having finally acquiesced to the heat. You simply can’t tour Singapore the way you would another city… at 95 degrees and 98% humidity (which I’m told is unusual for this time of year) in the mid-afternoon, you are best served to just hide for an hour or two and come back out around 5 or 6.

So that I did, emerging early evening to head back to the National Gallery to wander around – it is fabulous and would take two days to see it all, but I got a lovely overview – and have a drink at Smoke and Mirrors, one of the bars on the rooftop. The bar overlooks some cricket fields and Marina Bay, and is a marvelous place to watch the lights of the city come up as the sun sets (behind you, incidentally, but the lights are super cool to see).

I wasn’t terribly hungry for dinner after my long and lovely lunch, but I hadn’t had chili crab yet, so…. off I went. My friends that have been to or lived in Singapore may cringe at this, but I wasn’t up for going far, so I settled on a seafood spot in Marina Bay called Boiler. Quite possible is was a tourist trap, given its location right in Marina Bay, but if it was, at least it was a damn good one.

Chili crab is basically just a huge, and in this case very fresh and VERY good, crab, steamed and covered in a tomato and chili sauce thickened with egg. When you order, you are handed a bib and plastic gloves. Do not resist. This seems like a ridiculous indignity, but trust me that you will need both. Then comes a shell cracker and a tiny fork (or in some places chopsticks) to get the small bits of meat out of the narrower parts.

When you start it looks like this:

When you finish, more like this:

Which is why all the tables are covered in plastic. And thank heavens I know my way around a crab from having grown up on the east coast, or this whole activity might have taken two hours. It’s a lot of work for dinner, but worth it.

The next morning, having finally figured out how to manage my trip around the heat, I woke up early and took a taxi down to Southern Ridges Park for a hike. This was a recommendation of my friend who lives there, and a great one. If you go, take the “forest hike” not the “canopy hike”. The latter sounds like what you want, but it isn’t. Go over the (very cool) bridge over the road and take the elevated walkway up.

Keep going for about thirty minutes and you’ll be rewarded with this view:

Terrific way to start the day, and it wasn’t quite as hot. I had time to go back to the hotel and shower so that I wasn’t as much of a wilted mess as I had been for every other lunch reservation on this trip so far.

Lunch was at Candlenut, the only Michelin-started Peranakan restaurant in Singapore. Peranakan refers to the group of people descended from mainland Chinese men who came to what is is now Singapore and married Malay women, so the cuisine is a really interesting and tasty fusion of Chinese and Malaysian flavors. I had chicken with a black nut sauce, and it was fabulous. Black nuts are actually native to Indonesia, and are poisonous unless treated properly – steamed or boiled or something – which they clearly were since I’m still here to write about it. 🙂

And now that I’d discovered the secret… I went back to the hotel after lunch and sat by the pool. Early evening I headed out to walk down the Quays on the other side of Marina Bay, only to find out that St Patrick’s Day is actually a thing here. Seriously. After getting trapped in a couple block festival of closed off streets, green hats, and drunk tourists, I gave up that idea and decided that for my last night in Singapore I’d just go back to that really honestly (as much as you don’t want to love an overpriced tourist bar) super cool bar on the roof of the Marina Bay Sands. Hey, the wine list is great, it’s a fun vibe, and you really can’t beat the view. A sushi roll and a great glass of wine there was perfect for dinner.

This morning I was determined to see the Singapore Zoo on the recommendation of quite a few people, so I got up early and was there when they opened at 8:30. I have to say, with all due respect to the friends that recommended it, unless you have kids (in which case FOR SURE go, it would be fab with kids) I’d say skip it. It’s a 30 minute taxi ride (longer on the MRT because there’s not a station nearby), and while it’s true that it is a very well done zoo, I just wouldn’t add it to your itinerary unless you have a ton of extra time or have kids with you. Maybe I’m just not a zoo person, but I couldn’t help regretting not staying out for another drink with the other solo traveler I struck up a conversation with at the bar last night instead of turning in early to make the zoo trip happen.

(A side note on the night safari: I had a ticket to this and ended up skipping it because I didn’t realize how far outside of town the zoo is. I hear it’s great, and if I’d had company, I would have gone. I just didn’t want to get stuck way outside of town and nowhere near a subway station at night, alone – as safe as Singapore is, that still didn’t seem like a great idea.)

And now here I sit in the Singapore Airlines lounge, waiting for my flight to Bali. All in all, I really enjoyed Singapore… the food is fabulous, the people are absolutely lovely, and it’s an interesting city. I was probably here one day too long – it’s a little bit like Vegas that way… expensive and a little overwhelming and probably best limited to three days so that you leave wishing you could stay instead of being totally ready to go.

The wine in the Singapore Airlines lounge, for the record, is quite good.

More from Bali!

Cheers,

Traveling Girl