Adventures of David and Paul: Singapore Botanical Garden and Intro to Hawker Food Culture

The next day, a Wednesday, we made plans to meet up with David's undergrad friend, Dian, at the Singapore Botanical Gardens. Dian lives in Germany, but happened to be visiting her family while we were in town. This was a great opportunity to catch up with a friend we haven't seen in-person in about 10 years.

We started the morning off by hopping on a bus to Atlas Coffee, right near the gardens. The trip actually involved a transfer of buses... something we would never consider doing in Atlanta. Singapore has an amazing transit system and this was super easy. You can pay for transit (trains or busses) by just tapping a credit card while boarding/moving through turnstiles for the train. Each trip included transfers and was around $0.80. Super easy. To beat the heat, Dian wanted to meet us pretty early, around 8:30am.

We really enjoyed Atlas Coffee. It's a bright and airy space. Paul got iced coffee and we had a few breakfast snacks to share. Dian ended up meeting us here, and we chatted a bit before strolling off to see the gardens. The Singapore Botanical Gardens were founded in 1859, are on the UNESCO list and cover over 200 acres. We strolled through a few different sections like the Herbs and Spice Garden (where we saw pandan - a plant/seasoning that we ate a lot in deserts), the Evolution Garden, and the Rain Forest before making our way to the National Orchid Garden (the highlight of the site).

Buses in Singapore were great! This is by far the least crowded bus of our trip since it was early in the morning.

Cold-brewed coffee at Atlas near the Botanical Gardens.

Paul was pleased with his Atlas coffeeshop experience.

Cool root structure on a tree.

A unique looking tree.

David and Dian on the tropical forest boardwalk.

The National Orchid Garden is a highlight of the Singapore Botanical Gardens.

The garden names special orchid varietals after visiting dignitaries from across the world.

Pitcher plants are super cool.

Part of the orchid garden is in a greenhouse, and kept at a cool temperature for the mountain varietals

David & Dian in the orchid garden.

Roots for days!

There were signs to be on the lookout for river otters here, and in many places around Singapore...but we never saw any. 😞

After spending 2-3 hours at the gardens, we walked across the street to the Adam Food Centre, a "hawker centre." Hawker centres were a big part of our time in Singapore and Malaysia. These are essentially street food courts. Generally, these were open air but with a roof, with hand washing stations, bathrooms and centralized tray/utensil returns for all the venders. Trays and utensils are differentiated between halal and non-halal, so its important to pay attention to what you ate and to return to the correct location.

Since we were with Dian, she helped explain this all to us, and was helpful for the rest of our time in southeast Asia. The other benefit of being with Dian is she knew exactly what was good and what we should try. We ended up ordering about twice the food we needed, but she wanted us to try a little of everything. We had some nasi lemak (rice and fried chicken with sambal (a spicy sauce), a fried egg, dried anchovies and peanuts), steamed fish cake, carrot cake (don't be fooled, here its a savory radish dish), pork noodles from a coincidentally Michelin bib gourmand noodle shop, fried oysters, and sugar cane juice with lime. Fruit juices are everywhere in Singapore and Paul became a big fan of fresh calamansi lime drinks.

Most of the stalls look like this. Small, few item vendors. But across the entire hawker center there are usually dozens of options!

Paul was not disappointed with the selection. Not pictured, the pork noodle soup!

After lunch, Dian had a couple more hours before she had to get back to work (she was working on German time while visiting family in Singapore so was starting around 3pm). We decided it would be interesting to go to a less touristy part of town, so we visited the Clementi neighborhood. This was about a 20 minute bus ride from the Adams Food Centre area. The ride was really interesting and we got to see some nice areas of Singapore in a lower density party of town. There were townhouses and some smaller gated communities.

We hoped off the bus at the Clementi mall, which was a mix of indoor and outdoor spaces. Dian pointed out some random and interesting things about this neighborhood and the customs and items we saw. There were lots of fresh food venders selling produce and people were going about their day shopping and getting items they'd need to make dinner that evening. After strolling for a while, we stopped in the mall to grab some drinks before heading to the bus stop and saying goodbye to Dian in a semi-tearful departure. We owe Dian a trip to Hamburg, Germany soon!

This is what expensive private houses look like in Singapore.

Clementi Mall hawker centre area.

Yet another hawker centre! These were everywhere.

Paul's first, but not last, calamansi lime drink of the trip.

We took another bus to our next stop, Har Paw Villa. This is a bizarre series of outdoor dioramas depicting scenes from Chinese literature, folklore, legends, history, reflecting Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism. Oddly, there's also a museum about hell. It's really a bizarre sight, and a good stop if you're into weird things. It was mid afternoon by this time and quite hot, so we enjoyed the Hell Museum's ironically cold AC.

The entrance gate to Har Paw Villa.

A diorama of... underwater holy wars?

Even the parking lot is decorated.

Paul with a dragon!

This is a totally normal-looking goat statue. The person that made this has definitely seen a goat before.

Good David.

Bad David... which do you prefer?

Nothing to see here, just a guy getting sawed in half in the Hell Museum.

Interesting marketing campaign for electric vehicles!

We took another bus to the Asian civilizations museum, which was close to our hotel. It was a hot day and we'd been walking around outside a lot, so we started with a cold drink and snacks in the museum café. The museum was great, with a wide variety of exhibits, and a special exhibition on the Manila Galleon (a Spanish trading ships that linked New Spain (Mexico) with its Asian territories, collectively known as the Spanish East Indies, across the Pacific Ocean). One of our favorite parts of this museum was an art installation showing food origins (from Mexico to Asia and vice versa).

Crossing the bridge to the museum. We never tired of this view!

David with museum café satay. Pretty yummy!

A model ship on "waves" of pottery found in a shipwreck.

Foods in ships crossing the Pacific.

A cool mask.

Part of the Manila Galleon exhibition.

After visiting the museum, we crossed the pedestrian bridge back to our super conveniently-located hotel, and freshened up before walking to the Elephant Room for dinner. This place was recommended by the bartender at Sugo the night before as an innovative place with good cocktails. Still full from a big lunch and the satay at the museum, we had a light dinner with a nice eggplant dish and some poppadum. The cocktails were mild but had interesting flavors and were very pretty.

After dinner we made a stop for ice cream at a place called Aviary, then walked back to the hotel to wrap up what was a very jam-packed exciting day of gardens, food, neighborhoods and museums. Our walk back took us through some very lively neighborhoods with people eating and drinking al fresco enjoying the evening's cooler weather. Singapore is nothing if not bustling.