What did I do on the next Wednesday? Oh yeah, I caught a bus to Commonwealth MRT station, then the MRT to Paya Lebar. In this instance, it would have been faster to go to Holland Village and catch the Circle line to Paya Lebar. But oh well, bad experiences on the Circle line...
I decided that the best way to get the most out of this trip to Joo Chiat would be to follow this website's instructions for a food journey stopping at every second cafe, which seemed comprehensive by telling me 'turn here, turn there'.
After getting out of the station, I followed the instructions, but it was quite stressful because I still didn't know if I was going in the right direction. I was meant to pass the landmark of a fake Malay kampong, which the website said was not worth going to even if the admission fee were to be scrapped. The thing was, I couldn't see this landmark nor the HDB block I was headed to. It appeared the kampong museum had been scrapped and it's block of land had big metal walls around it.
Then the printout of the webpage said I should get to Geylang Serai Block Three, walk through a tiny passage and ta-da, I should enter a market selling spices and cloth, and I should walk through the wet market behind this to the hawker centre. I think the place had been renovated since that page had been written, because the market was two storey and next to a main road (though still at block three, luckily). Downstairs was the wet market - omg, you could buy a plastic bag of CRACKED EGGS! So weird, right? - and upstairs the hawker and clothing market. Speaking of clothing, I was feeling very hot, as this was a very sunny day. But walking around the hawker centre, I felt like I ought not to feel tired from the heat when I am obviously not dressed as warmly as the Muslim women eating there. Pretty much, I felt like I should stop being so whingey, even though I wasn't complaining, though maybe I was just a bit in my head.
The thing I always do when I want a good meal, is pick the stall with a long line. I did that the day before at the Maxwell Food Centre. The stupid thing I did that day when I found a chicken rice stall with all these pictures of the owners receiving awards and this picture of Anthony Bourdain saying something like "chicken rice is so fragrant, it can be eaten on it's own", which made me laugh because he might not have been referring to the chicken rice from that stall, was queue up then when I was almost at the front, I realised that this stall took up two spaces and I had to go bak to the other one to place my order! But it was a really good chicken rice! The chicken was tender but ACTUALLY COOKED.
Yeah, but back to the point, this time I was with my father so we got this MASSIVE BRIYANI AYAM and shared it. Then I also got these goreng pisang which were so yummy because each piece was a small banana. It also seems the bananas were green. And the coating for the deep-frying was perfect, not like at some "commercial" places, i.e. chain stalls in malls where the coating is sometimes too salty. Now I shall tell you a mini-story about how I was buying the fried bananas, which are not like the ones in Chinese restaurants in Australia, and the woman making and selling them was speaking to me in Malay and I was saying I didn't understand. But she continued and finally she yelled repeatedly in my face "Four, Two Dollars!", but it wasn't really in my face because she was shorter than I.
I was going to do one of those blurred faces for my dad in that photo, but then I realised that a) it's too hard for me to do that and b) he looks cool and his pose looks really good.
It was a good idea to bring my dad along on this trip because he could take pictures both of me and for me. Thanks for the photos Dad, even though you haven't even seen them since you took them on my camera. But some of these are my photos.
The instructions on the webpage told us to walk down Joo Chiat Place until we reach where it joins Joo Chiat Road again. But neither of us found this intersection. Sad. We kept walking and then tried to find a main road. We nearly got to one, but we really were getting into area that was more and more residential. So we decided to catch a bus to the nearest MRT station. I tell you, the bus frequency in Singapore! I think SMRT and SBS have something against me. I always see buses until I get to the bus stop. And then when I'm at the bus stop, the other side of the road gets the buses and I don't. Seriously. We waited twenty-five minutes for a bus, and in that time, only one other bus came past the stop.
We got to Eunos station and had a drink. I had run out of water pretty quickly. There was no fruit juice, so I had to get a grass jelly drink because they are cooling. My dad had a soy bean drink and I spent the whole time we were sitting there repeating the story to him about this time when my mother bought both a soy bean and grass jelly drink at Holland Village where they advertised this mix of the two, calling it the Michael Jackson. She thought that my brother and I would be drinking some of the drinks she bought, but neither of us liked them. So she decided that she could have her own Michael Jackson for less money by drinking from two bags of drink at once. You see, in Singapore, when you have those two drinks as take-away, they put it in a bag. And then my mum was feeling sick on the bus.
Then we caught the MRT to Bugis and then walked to Haji Lane where now there are many more shops, including Muslim fashion shops, and the trend for ruining Japanese vintage fabrics by turning them into ugly frocks is gone. I don't think I have ever seen anyone in Singapore actually wearing one of those dresses. I was too tired to take pictures as the result of walking long distances in new shoes. Good work, Billie. Why did you still get massive blisters? I thought you were super accustomed to walking long distances in new shoes or shoes which are so old they hurt?
Here are the few pictures I took.
Perhaps you cannot see the girl with the guitar being filmed.
The following picture is of my late-night dessert snack. I'm not actually sure whether I got it on this day or not. Oh well.
Oh my, I thought this blog post was going to be very short! Oh dear, the next one will be far longer...
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