Jonathan's Spontaneous Travels: Fifth day food round-up, and trip wrap-up

The intent today was to cover the remaining foods I was curious about but hadn't gotten around to yet. I mostly did that, but had some hiccups with out of date listing and closed buildings that cost me a few hours and left me unable to visit a few places, but overall I didn't wind up missing out on anything I wanted to try.

I started with a guava and sour plum juice to hydrate, and it hit the spot. Then I warmed up with a chicken curry puff and a Singaporean diamond-shaped egg tart from a Chinese bakery, but good but nothing to go out of your way for. These can't hold a candle to the Portuguese egg tarts either.

I then tried to to find the nearby outlet of a notable dessert place, Annie Peanut Ice Kachang, but alas the food court in which it was supposedly had no mention of it at all. No matter, it was time to head out to the burbs again to reputable locations for prata. I went to the Roti Prata House and ordered a prata with egg and onion, which also comes with a little curry sauce for dipping. This is buttery deep-fried heart-clogging stuff, and boy is it good. Buttery, flaky flatbread filled with scrambled eggs. I also ordered a lime juice, which is made fresh from calamansi limes and cane sugar, and that too was extremely good and refreshing, so I ordered a second.

Now it was back into town to try to found an outlet of a place know for ayam penyet, or "flattened" fried chicken, which is mallet-smashed before being marinated. Alas, this place had moved far away, and I had failed to understand this when I had checked their website this morning, so I had so far struck out twice today.

I was heading south so continued further south as part of my contingency to find the main location of Annie Peanut Ice Kachang. I went to where the placemark on the map was and wandered around a shopping plaza at that place, but couldn't find it. I did pop into a grocery store and discovered to my deligh bags of both Malaysian mangosteen and Malaysian passionfruit, which I will attempt to bring home tomorrow, crossing my fingers that this will not be a problem when trying to re-enter California. Then I walked half a block up the street and noticed a construction site and a sign that informed me that the food plaza I was looking for was being reconstructed and would not open until 2014. Damn you Annie, I spent over an hour trying to find you and your ice kachang in not one but TWO locations, and you failed me.

But I had a contingency for this too, and I walked just a few blocks up the very scenic colonial Tanjong Pagar road back to my home base, the Maxwell Food Centre. There I recharged first with a straight-up passionfruit shake, which was about the best thing I've had in liquid form this year. I also got more popiah because it's addictive and amazing, it's basically the love child of a spring roll and mu shu, so how could it not be good. And then I got a mango ice kachang from a place I'd spotted on the first day, ensuring I wouldn't be deprived of this. It's a shaved ice with sweet mango sauce, as well as about 3 other sweet sauces, with red beans and jellies hidden beneath the ice. It's totally delicious and perfect for hot weather, and at only S$2 seems criminally cheap.

At this point it was time for happy hour so I was going to try out a Japanese rooftop bar at Marina Bay that potentially had good views. I ordered a Spicy Hachimitshu, a vodka-based cocktail with cucumber, honey, lemon, and wasabi gomme. I should have known better to order wasabi in a beverage. Needless to say, I was unimpressed with the cocktail, as well as the bar, the views, and the price.

It was sunset, so I wandered along Marina Bay again to get those pastcard-ready views, which were particularly nice because the smog had cleared back down to about 66 today, which is merely in the "moderate" range, compared to the "hazardous" 401 from Friday. On my way home I found another impressive hawker food court in the business district, and the second stall I saw had none other than ayam penyet, the smashed fried chicken, so I got to try it after all. It's not that unique from other fried chicken, but it's tender and falling off the bone, and still delicious. Plus hidden under the chicken was an omelette, and you can hardly complain about that. Not wanting my last night to end, I grabbed a nyonya dumpling, glutinous rice filled with bbq pork, as well as a final passionfruit banana shake, and that's going to have to end the show, unless there's anything notable at the airport at 4:30 am tomorrow.

In kind of a poetic ending to this unplanned trip, while I was not fully aware that there is a public laser light show, it so happened that I was down at Marina Bay at the perfect time as well as at a perfect place, as the 8pm nightly light show at the Marina Bay Sands began right as I was looking out from a roof terrace with a sweeping view of the area, as if the travel gods were smiling upon me for my spontaneity one last time.