The next day we just got up and packed for our 12:00 flight to Singapore. We decided to have breakfast at the airport:
Almond croissant. This must have been the worst excuse for a croissant I've ever had. The almond filling was ok, but the croissant was soggy and limp, which made it greasy... but I was starving so I wound up finishing it.
Once on the Singapore Airlines flight (linked at the top of this thread).... then, we had about a 7 hour layover in Singapore. That's just barely enough time to get into the city, have dinner, then come back in time for the flight.... plus, we haven't really seen the airport's new Jewel which I had been looking to see so we decided to stay in the airport. The Jewel is not in the security area, so we actually had to go through immigration first. The Jewel is like a giant mall, with tons of shops and about 100 restaurants - some international chains, others are locations of local chains of which SG has quite a few nowadays. Many chains started out as a hawker stall or kopitiam but in order for the owners to survive, they've had to expand to multiple locations.
Here's some Jewel shots:
The walkway from the airport terminal....
There is a huge forest in the Jewel, complete with walking paths through the trees. Unfortunately, they've been prepping for some event, so they closed the trails just before we got there.
It is also home to this huge waterfall. In the evening, every hour or so, they have a light show that is projected onto the water.. but I'm getting ahead of myself.
After taking a quick look at the atrium, we headed for dinner. In all our trips to Singapore, we have never had Bak Kut Teh, which is a pork rib soup and considered one of the national dishes of Singapore, even though it's also very popular in Malaysia (but I gather it's different there). After a bit of research, Song Fa seems to be one of teh best places for it.
This is the original Bak Kut Teh. As you're eating, servers come around with pitchers of soup refilling your bowl. The soup is very savory with the aroma of pork and garlic, and has a bunch of dried spices in it, but most notable is pepper. Supposedly, Song Fa uses a particular Indonesian pepper which makes them stand out.
This version made with pork tenderloin (we're trying to be a little healthy!)
pickled veg to brighten things up..
fried dough
stir fried very young pea shoots
Gong fu tea - Bak Kut Teh was originally a dish you'd sit around with friends and family to eat while having tea - hence the "Teh" in the name... They had maybe 10 different teas you could get for the gong fu set, I decided on Ti Kuan Yin oolong - the shot above just has the hot water warming the tea cups. We were exhausted by this point (it was about 4AM New Zealand time) and we must have had like 40 shots of tea each to perk us up. Also note the requisite lime juice behind the tea set.
I really enjoyed the bak kut teh - I can't believe I waited this long to have it. But it seems simple enough, so I'm going to try to work it into our repertoire at home...
More walking around the Jewel after dinner...
They have something called the Canopy Bridge, which is a glass floored bridge over the trees...
It was also a good place to watch the light show... kind of hard to see here:
So that's it for me... it was way too short, but we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and definitely plan to return to NZ - we only saw a small part, and there's so much left to see!!!
