Singapore: Merlions and Durian-free Subways

by mo on 02/26/2012

Impression of Singapore after spending about five minutes in the country:
It’s shiny, modern, tropical, and everything is running swimmingly.

Singapore is run by a benevolent dictator who has spent the past couple of decades turning this country into a well-oiled socialist machine, that people seem legit happy with because it’s working out pretty well for everyone.

Yeah yeah don’t spit your gum, but loiter outside 7-11 and mix your cocktails.

One thing about traveling is that you learn your own countrymen’s stereotypes about the places you’re visiting. Just tell people, “Oh I’m about to travel to ______.” and let the stereotypes spout forth. For Singapore, the first thing any American tells you is that you can be thrown in jail for spitting out your gum on the sidewalk. I suppose this is meant to indicate they’re really strict in Singapore?

However, upon arrival, we immediately realized that this was the ONLY information we knew about Singapore, and that it was effectively useless. First of all, WHO SPITS THEIR GUM ON THE STREET, that’s just a jerk move. Alright, some people must, but I have never done this before and wasn’t about to start. Second of all, this is useless info because it doesn’t give you a sense of ANY OTHER LAWS in Singapore. We saw people jaywalking everywhere, which doesn’t seem to jive with the crazy-strict vibe of the no gum rule, so we were like, are all these people risking their lives jaywalking? Or is it just like any other place in the world? Hmmmm. (We jaywalked.)

Turns out, the gum rule was instated after they started construction of the MRT (subway system) and people vandalized it by putting gum in the doors, causing them to stick closed. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH GUYS, no more gum.

Here’s a more practical list of subway rules. Try really hard to remember not to bring durian, because it smells bad (though, there doesn’t seem to be any fine…?)


Okay, so don’t spit your gum, but you can drink and smoke in public (no open container laws, plenty of smokers), and you can apparently also loiter in front of 7-11 mixing cocktails. We wandered into a 7-11 around 12:30 AM one night and sitting outside on the curb was a group of three or four teenagers (definitely looked really young). They had an impressive array of supplies: plastic cups and bottles of liquor and mixers, and were actually sitting there making drinks.

KEEP IT CLASSY, SINGAPOREAN YOUTH.

Culture and Language Mishmash

There are four official languages in Singapore: English, Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil. So there’s a huge mix of different people and each minority group is really huge. According to my friend Yan, kids growing up are required to learn the language of their ethnic background — so Chinese kids study Mandarin, etc. It’s not clear to me how many of these people are speaking the language at home as well, but school is normally taught in English. According to Wikipedia, the second language taught is determined by the father’s ethnicity. Interesting.

It was pretty common to be surrounded by 3-4 different languages at a time, and signage could be really lengthy/complicated since everything had to be translated into the FOUR different languages.

There is some geographical segregation of the different ethnic groups — Little India, and Chinatown for example, but I felt like it could have been way more segregated than it was.

Staying in Chinatown

We stayed at Winkhostel, a brand new hostel in Chinatown and apparently the best hostel in Singapore. It was really nicely designed and well-located for foodie adventures. The security was better than any other hostel I’ve been to — you got swipe cards for the rooms and your own personal lockers, also with key cards. The beds were pod-style and had nice green lights.


Winkhostel was a little less social than other hostels I’ve been to. I think this is partially because the only air-conditioned rooms were the bedrooms, where people tend to avoid talking if there’s sleepers, and not everyone was as excited as I was to hang out in un-airconditioned sweat-inducing temperatures. Also as my travel buddies suggested, not everyone’s English was as good as travelers in say, European hostels. I did talk to a couple of people, who seemed cool, and ended up having a very bizarre relationship with the dude at the front desk, who would give me useful tips (like to check out the parade going on a block away) but also question my travel habits, e.g. why are you not napping before your 5:30 AM flight???? No seriously, your friends are napping, you should too!!

The answer to this (and all questions, of why I might not be doing something, ever) was of course: Dude, I’ll get to it MAYBE, I’m busy reading the internet.


Aforementioned parade, with master photobomber

Places to Go

Merlion – Singapore’s weird-ass mascot. “Singapura” means lion and fish is fish, so clearly. It’s out by the bay where you should be going anyway, for good views of the city and to check out the Marina Bay Sands.

Marina Bay Sands – Kind of the most amazing hotel ever. How’d they get a boat on it!?

The most important thing about this hotel is that there is an infinity pool on the ROOF. The problem is, only hotel guests are allowed to swim, so you’d best be booking a night there. We made the mistake of not doing that and were full of tears and regrets.

I mean, this hotel is cool enough to basically be the subject of an entire Martin Solveig video.

We did manage to spend an evening on the roof though (tragically outside the pool) by going to the Chocolate Bar on top of the Marina Bay Sands. At the very least, do this. Go forth and be decadent.

Stand on the balcony on the opposite side from the pool, cuz hey, boats! (I like boats!)

Okay I swear I’m shutting up about Marina Bay Sands now.

Orchard Road – Mall country. You cannot cross a street without being sucked into a 4-5 story underground mall.

This is how it works: “Oh hey, there’s a big road and no crosswalk, but looks like we just have to enter that glass bubble thing to cross the street…

…oops.

15 minutes later, $15 at MUJI and a takoyaki snack later, you have re-emerged on the other side of the street. Why were we crossing the street again? I’ve already forgot. Let’s go back to MUJI instead. Or maybe let’s explore one of the 29 other malls.

Siloso Beach

Take the MRT from HarbourFront and get off at the beach stop. Lie down on the beach and be really happy because you are on the beach and it’s February out. Go in the water and it will be warm and the seaweed is cute instead of disgusting. Also, Siloso Beach appears to be the beach with the fewest children, which is probably the most important beach-selection criterion. Party tunes emanate from the bars behind us.

This is how each of us felt about being on the beach, and also how I felt when Boyce spilled his smoothie on me. Verdict: his smoothie was yummy! But smoothie bodyshots, probably not for me.

Wander over and find some rocks when it’s time to go think on rocks.

Haw Par Villa / Tiger Balm Gardens – A strange park where you get a tour of the Ten Courts of Hell, and you learn which sins on Earth result in which punishments in Hell, and illustrate said punishments it through creepy sculptures. Here’s a helpful sample of the crime/punishment menu:

Other fun part about visiting, you can legit tell your travel buddies to go to Hell.

Also, there are some animals with guns. Might also has something to do with Hell.

That’s pretty much all we did that didn’t have to do with food or partying, so stay tuned for the next two posts!

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Hong Kong Nightlife

by mo on 02/24/2012

Time for Party Mode.

After extensive googling and asking friends, it became clear that the two party places to check out in Hong Kong are Wan Chai and Lan Kwai Fong. Wan Chai is semi-chill and LKF is very dance/clubby, so it makes sense to hang out in Wan Chai on the weekdays and LKF on the weekends (it is slightly RIDICULOUS on weekends). Also stay tuned for a romantic picnic spot and some incoherent sentences about the highest bar in the world.

Wan Chai – just go to Carnegie’s and dance on the bar


Children, gather round, it’s time for your lesson on Wan Chai!

Wan Chai is kinda old, grungy in a good way, and full of ex-pat bars and topless bars — it’s got a red-lighty history but seems tame these days. There are people out and about any night of the week, up and down Lockhart Road, but it can be sort of a weird crowd. Lots of older ex-pat dudes in groups, sometimes accompanied by local and/or southeast asian ladies (prostitutes? probs). Outside each nude bar was always a little old asian lady sitting there, but she didn’t do much to try and solicit us in. Not really our scene, old white dudes and hookers.

For a more student-aged crowd, follow the internet’s advice and go to Carnegie’s on a Tuesday or Wednesday (why YES, they DO have an angelfire website!)

But be warned: as soon as you step inside Carnegie’s, you will no longer be in Hong Kong, but in total ex-pat/exchange-student/traveler’s Narnia. White people THEY ARE EVERYWHERE.

For my Lund friends, Carnegie’s is just like stepping inside of VGs on Wednesdays / Kalmars on Tuesdays (all exchange students all the time!) Seriously, the resemblance was eerie…
Same playlist /waka waka.
Same demographics (Australians, New Zealanders, and Germans, I swear you’re EVERYWHERE.)
Same “It’s Tuesday And Therefore We Must Party” attitude.

Also, Carnegie’s is apparently THE ONLY PLACE.

I went there both Tuesdays, and then after the horse races in Wan Chai (a Wednesday), the exchange students we had just met and were hanging with were like,
“We’re going out in Wan Chai, want to come?”
“Maybe, where to?”
“Carnegie’s, where else?!”
SERIOUSLY??? I have been in this country for seven days and already know to be affectionately annoyed that we always go to that place. (Like I said, it’s Hong Kong VGs.)

So the deal with Tuesdays is that vodka-based drinks cost 10 HKD = $1.25, so yes, people are ordering (and consuming) in bulk. I wouldn’t wear my favorite shoes.

The other deal with Carnegie’s is that when the clock strikes midnight, you are GETTING ON THAT BAR and doing it Katy Perry style.

11:59 PM…

MIDNIGHT. And life is like this.

When you’re done getting your Sexy And You Know It on, go get keBABs at Ebeneezer’s with everyone and scream and shout, then hop in a cab and go home. Good job, you’ve just Wan Chai’d.

Lan Kwai Fong – Let’s cram all the party of Hong Kong into a two block radius.

I have never seen a more densely-packed party district. You sort of wonder what the point of having streets is, and then you remember that if there were no streets there wouldn’t be enough room for people to stand. This place is INFESTED with partiers on Fridays and Saturdays.

When you see this mural, you know you’re basically in the right place. (It’s not that hard though, go to Central and follow the exits to Lan Kwai Fong).

If it’s a weekday, you can chill at any of the numerous bars and sit outside people-watching. No bars really seem to have doors/very many walls, everything is very open and inside/outside run together. It’s seriously tiny, but everything is a bar or a club. Illustrated by this really wonky map of LKF.

If it’s Friday or Saturday though, not a lot of sitting will be going on because this will be happening:

I think it would be physically impossible to go to LKF and go to *a* bar. First of all, it’s totally unclear sometimes where one bar starts and another one ends, due to the general lack of storefronts/walls, and second of all, it’s a party tidal wave and you’d best just ride it out, wherever the current takes you.

Case in point, we stopped into one bar, Stormies, because we were mildly overwhelmed and this place looked relatively empty/calm. Then:

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen bartenders pouring shots DIRECTLY into PEOPLE’S MOUTHS from the liqueur bottles before. Like, ALL CASUAL and stuff too. We spent a lot of time on this trip trying to identify precisely where the Zombie epidemic would start in Hong Kong, and in retrospect I think Lan Kwai Fong is a likely candidate. Zombies take note: start the apocalypse on a Saturday night.

So, clubbing.

I was told by an internet friend to go to Beijing Club, but when Boyce and I got in line there, we were shuffled by a bouncer to a different line a block away, for Magnum Club. Turns out this is a new place (looks like it opened in the past few months), so maybe that’s why they herded us that way.

Although the streets of Lan Kwai Fong were filled with trashy, trashed white people (the young ex-pats strike again), once we got into the club it was suddenly 100% well-dressed Chinese twentysomethings. We were literally the only non-Chinese people we saw for the next three hours. But if these people were never in the LKF street crowd, WHERE WERE THEY? And how did they even get to the club?!?!

Entering the club was as Twilight Zone-y as entering Carnegies in Wan Chai was, but in reverse: going from ex-pat zombie crowd -> Chinese mob.

The club itself was a well-executed, definition-of-club type club: club music, club lights, club outfits, club djs. I was really excited when they played Knife Party because that song is a) ridiculous, b) involves The Internet and blocking people on Facebook, c) Zombie-apocalypse appropriate, and d) danceable in a cray way.

Knife Party – Internet Friends by Knife Party


Queue the several hours of dancing. I wasn’t sure how into dancing Hong Kong peeps would be, but this crowd did not disappoint. They seemed like young professionals (lots of suits) rather than students, which isn’t surprising considering the outrageous cover, but also mostly guys, which is REALLY surprising, considering the outrageous cover…

The Outrageous Cover:
For girls – free.
For dudes – $400 HKD = $50 USD WHAAAAAAAT (okay, not as bad since mine was free, so we split it, but STILL.)

And yet, the club was somehow FULL of dudes. Boyce didn’t feel like it was super sausage-festy, meaning there were probably girls around there somewhere who I never actually saw because I was too busy being literally swarmed by dudes. Who were unexpectedly aggressive. Not in a scary way, or anything…but just, AGGRESSIVE. One guy who I had not yet seen, talked to, or danced with, who was standing a few people away from me, shoved his phone past 3 innocent bystanders and into my face, asking for my number. WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT’S WITH THE LONG-RANGE NUMBER-GRAB ATTEMPT? Perhaps swarmy tendencies were further aggravated by me being the only foreign female in the establishment? Or maybe they were extra ragin’ because of whole $400 cover situation, who knows. Maybe this is just how things work in Hong Kong.

But so, so strange.

Eventually we left the club because it was 3:30 AM, and we hadn’t finished our LKF tour yet. We wandered into Club 97, which was a more Wan Chai style club, with a bunch of 19-year old looking dudes jumping and hitting this low-hanging vent at the back of the club for some unbeknownst reason. But it was annoying and we left, heading for old faithful 7-11, and then sat on the curb people-watching as the zombie-mob walked down the hill when 4 AM rolled around and the bars and clubs began to close.

We watched, entertained, as some dude puked down the street from us. We knew it was time to leave when a dude with a bleeding head (bottle smashed on it, perhaps?) sat down next to us to chill for a sec, with his friends. They looked harmless, but, come on, bleeding head? Cab time, BYE.

In conclusion…
Lan Kwai Fong probably had as much party mojo as the entire city of Lund, except that it was all packed into a 2 block radius instead of distributed evenly across town. I hereby challenge all future travel destinations to outdo LKF’s ridiculousity. Best of luck.

For a Super-Romantic Evening, Head to the IFC Mall Rooftop

Okay, you’re totally overwhelmed by Carnegie’s and LKF, and it’s time for a relaxed, romantic evening. Go to the IFC Mall Rooftop and have a picnic! Stare at the view of Kowloon, and ask someone to marry you.

The chairs/tables on the roof are for the public, but there’s a real bar here too. Also, lots of color-changing lights.


Then, take pictures with the pretty lights, and call it a successful evening. The mall is open until 1 AM so you have plenty of time, and on the way out be sure to stop by the bathrooms in the mall, because they are super-nice and you can get your shoes shined in the men’s room, as reported by Bhargav.


Ozone – Highest Bar in the World

I have no more energy to write anything even partially coherent here, but it’s on the friggin’ 118th floor. Drinks cost infinity dollars, and it’s ritztastic.

Don’t go on a foggy day like we did (oops) and get no view. It could have been 118 floors underground for all we know.

Which might actually have been MORE AWESOME.

Do bring your friends to Ozone, unless you want to hang out with groups of old asian businessmen, who are the only people who can afford this place and want to be at a bar 118 floors in the sky in a district where there is nothing else going on.

So, there is fun to be had in Hong Kong. QED.

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Hong Kong in Food Porn

by mo on 02/20/2012

The good news about food in Hong Kong is that it’s really hard to go wrong — everything is delicious. The bad news is that you’ll, at some point during your day, have to decide what to eat and it’s not easy.

How to Find Food

The only internet tool you need to aid in restaurant selection is OpenRice, Hong Kong’s Yelp equivalent. I recommend filtering by the location and then by dish or restaurant style – there is so much good food around that you shouldn’t really bother crossing town for something. Pay attention to prices and photos on OpenRice, and even if you can’t read chinese, it’s sometimes worth clicking on those reviews for the pictures.

Option B is to wander the streets, and though I did this if I was out shopping (okay, actually I would just go to the SOGO basement and buy takoyaki) it’s too easy to become paralyzed by choice. Just OpenRice it.

Dim Sum

Why hello Hong Kong. We come in peace, and in search of Dim Sum.

I mean, who doesn’t? Dim sum isn’t difficult to find in major US cities, but between the trek over to your local Chinatown and the social barrier to choosing dim sum over traditional (read: pancakes, omelets, and mimosas) brunch, the dim sum stars align less frequently than I would hope back home, particularly in large groups.

But with a dim-sum-ready team of travelers and readily available goods on nearly every block, all obstacles were vanquished. We sleep in, we wake up, and we DIM SUM IT!! to our hearts’ content.

The dim sum report is that actually, much of the available dishes were pretty similar to ones that exist in the US. Typically there was a bit more variety, but we didn’t see anything incredibly surprising on the menu or on other peoples’ tables.

The big difference though, was that every item had approximately 170% the flavor of the dim sum I’m accustomed to. This is your tongue on drugs? No, this is your tongue on Hong Kong dim sum.

If you’re ready to get militant about dim sum, apparently the place to go is Tim Ho Wan, a Michelin one-star restaurant. I’m sure it’s lovely, but we stopped by one day and the queueing was of the variety I normally reserve for Swedish clubs. In light of me being in the final stages of recovery from Post-Traumatic Queue Exhaustion after a semester in Scandinavia, we passed. And still ate plenty of good dim sum, elsewhere.

The hardest part about dim sum blogging is that since your food comes out one dish at a time, you will have the urge to just dig in, and may forget to photograph it…so I don’t even have pictures of some of the best things we ate. Alas.

One other tip: what are dim sum restaurants by day are often hot pot restaurants by night (dim sum is more of a lunch thing, hot pot a dinner affair). Which brings us to…

Hot Pot

A wintertime classic, hot pot is a mandatory experience in Hong Kong, as well as an exercise in teamwork. Bring four or five of your best friends to Tao Heung in Tsim Sha Tsui and put your name down on the list. While you wait, play in the electronics store downstairs, Fortress. Then head to 7-11, and loiter in a staircase for 15 minutes before heading back up to the restaurant.

When you finally get a seat, begin Challenge 1: Battle the Cantonese-only menu and order based on pictures (roughly 1/4 of the menu), color-coded lists of Cantonese words (the rest of the menu), using a combination of luck and basic kanji mastery.

Our results: We ordered WAY too much food.

After you order, they bring out a bunch of things and you make your own sauce. SO many things. Jane’s expert strategy was to just dump everything in in large quantities, and hers at least appeared to be the most delicious, so that’s the algorithm I’d advise.

Challenge 2: Order the dish pictured below.

We pulled this off successfully by pointing at the table next to us (who had received this before us), making hand gestures, and using the words “rice” and “leaf”. Not sure which of those steps were essential, YMMV.

Finally, our hot pot arrived, along with 20 plates of our mystery-order food (the waitresses were sort of giving us weird looks). Throw it in!

Hot pot is very similar to Japanese nabemono, although the dipping sauce is different and the Hong Kong version seems to involve more fish balls. (Either that, or we just ordered too many fish balls.) We also ordered this tube of fishball paste, where you squeeze it out of a tube (like icing a cake!) and it makes sort of a fishball noodle in the hotpot. Pro tip: cut the fish-noodle before squeezing the entire tube into the pot in one, long string.

The tofu rolls in the next photo (bottom right corner and just above the plate of meat) were fun — submerge them in the water with your chopsticks for ~30 seconds, sauce them up real good, and enjoy.

If anyone can identify the white stuff in the bottom left corner (yes, that’s what she said) please tell me what it is, because it tasted good but none of us could figure it out. Mushroom? Fish-based? Alien intestines?

In Japanese families doing nabe, there’s typically one family member who completely dominates all things nabe – temperature, when to put in what, when to take it out. I believe the technical term for this control freak is a nabe-bugyou in Japanese, a bugyou being a certain feudal-period shogun administrator. I’m not sure if there are nabe-bugyou in Hong Kong style hot pot, but none of us were particularly domineering, so after about an hour of hot pot our pace dropped off considerably, yet we kept slowly trying to push forward and consume most of what we’d ordered.

After people started dropping off like flies, we gave up, got the bill (surprisingly low), and headed back to HK Island, only partially defeated by the hot pot experience.

By far our most intense and epic meal. (For locals, this was probably just Regular Ordinary Cantonese Meal Time).

Cha Chaan Teng

Think Hong Kong-style diner. A wide range of comfort food, including pastries and omelets, but also sandwiches and meat, so you can choose whether you’re feeling more breakfast, more lunch, or both. This NYTimes Travel article explains cha chaan tengs pretty well.

We went to Honolulu Coffee Shop in Wan Chai one day for our usual 2 PM brunchtime. Went both breakfast and lunch, ordering egg tarts, an egg & pork with rice dish, and sandwiches (not pictured).

See, kinda dinery? I drank some yuanyang, a mixture of coffee and milk tea, making it taste like a cantonese bizarro chai bomb.

Friggin’ amazing. Huge fan of egg tarts and how they’re just slightly sweet. And flaky.


Props to Bhargav for capturing ALL THE YUMMY of this dish in one fabulous photo

Char Siu at Joy Hing

Here’s one where we were Doing It Right, thanks to Bhargav’s local resident friend, YinTing, who helped us follow in the footsteps of Anthony Bourdain. She brought us to Joy Hing, a char siu (bbq pork/other meat) restaurant deserving of its own Wikipedia page, and totally took charge. Like a boss.

Basically, all I can say is MEAT. Go there. Order some stuff. Eat it.

The green stuff is full of garlic and incredible.

Tan Tan Noodles

This was purely an OpenRice discovery — the best Hong Kong style food in our immediate vicinity while staying in Tin Hau was a restaurant called Sister Wah, a tiny hole-in-the-wall place like Joy Hing, serving Tan Tan noodles, which we discovered were incredible. The broth was very peanuty, and the dumplings were probably the best dumplings in a soup I’ve ever had. The only problem was that I could only eat approximately 1/3 of the noodles. Luckily, my travel buddies left a less embarrassing amount of noodles in their bowls.

Other Asian Food

Just because you’re in Hong Kong, don’t feel pressure to eat chinese food for every meal, as they have delicious eats from all around asia. The thai food we had in SoHo was very interesting (no pics, sorry) and didn’t taste anything like thai food I’ve had in the US. Having not been to Thailand I can’t comment on authenticity. That restaurant was where I discovered that my maximum mango enjoyment comes in the form of mango + sticky rice.

Time for a whirlwind tour of our non-chinese asian eats.

Indian Food at ChungKing Mansions – a giant apartment complex full of apartments-turned-Indian-restaurants. At the bottom, you’ll be hassled with flyers from each of the restaurants, so find the one you want and you’ll be led up some sketch-ass stairs to your restaurant. Ours was called Taj Mahal and pretty yummy, but not super spicy. Here’s the fish masala, my favorite of our selections.

Korean food at Arisu – where they start with completely the appropriate amount of kim chee. Do Korean bbq, and try the seafood pancake, which seems to be Korean okonomiyaki. It’s sort of like hot pot, but less of an Event and more like dinner.

Japanese Ramen at Ippudo – a Japanese chain that has come to Hong Kong in the last couple of years. I’ve had better ramen, but it was still quite yummy, and who doesn’t love some spoon decor?

Japanese snacks from 7-11 – I told you we were addicted. Let’s get Crunky and Meltykiss! This is what Katy Perry would do at 7-11 if she ended up there on a Friday Night.

Don’t forget your shanghai food

When you’re exhausted thinking about all your food options, don’t forget about your garden variety chinese restaurants. Our favorite was Shanghai 3.6.9, down the street from our Wan Chai crib. It was the very first place we ate in Hong Kong, around midnight after the 13 hour flight.

Tired and jetlagged, this is when we realized: well-chosen vacation destination, team.

If you’re still hungry, check out CNNGo’s 40 Hong Kong foods we can’t live without.

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