S2L77: Singapore, My Landfall in Asia

Singapore
January 28 - February 1, 1977

We attended a Chinese celebration for a baby boy, eating a feast of roast duck, quail eggs and seaweed.

We visited Toa Payoh and Dr Lee's home. We had fresh coconuts from a tree in the yard.

At midnight we went to Bugis Street -- amazing!

We ate Indian food. The cost for seven people was $US5. Later we attended the outdoor Chinese opera.

We ate seafood at a beach restaurant on Sentosa - cockle shells, crab, prawns, squid, cuttle fish.

Source: Personal travel notes.

From 1977 01 29 Singapore

Whereas many things in Australia reminded me of America, my trip home was going to take me to places as unlike America as I could imagine. I was able to ease myself into all that by starting my journey in Singapore, exotic but more like America than any other country ahead of me on my journey to London.

After the jump, Singapore, a fine city.

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What struck me about Singapore was the tropical heat and humidity. Too early sunsets on a summer-like day. Outside food courts everywhere.

I was used to having my eyeglasses fog up when you come inside on a frigid winter day. I wasn't used to having my eyeglasses fog up when you go from air-conditioning into the hot and humid outside air of Singapore. I was used to late sunsets and long twilights on midsummer days in Wisconsin. I wasn't used to life on the Equator, where an earlier sunset is the norm, every day of a year that knows no winter. It was all a topsy-turvy experience for a Wisconsin boy.

And the food. Singapore is a food-lover's paradise. Seafood that I, raised on meat and potatoes, had never seen. Exotic fruits in abundance. Stroll the streets and stop at any of the many food carts piled high with pineapples and coconuts and bananas and point to this and that and the other, and before you know it, the vendor will have tossed it all into the blender with some ice and milk and you'd have a fresh smoothie to die for. This was back in a day when I didn't even know the word smoothie. It was an introduction to heaven on earth. And strolling, eating and people-watching late at night in a place like the long vanished Bugis Street added a dash of devilry to the heavenly experience. Look it up.

From 1977 01 29 Singapore

From 1977 01 29 Singapore

Toa Payoh, Singapore

From 1977 01 29 Singapore

From 1977 01 29 Singapore

From 1977 01 29 Singapore

From 1977 01 29 Singapore

Sultan Ibrahim Bldg, Johor Bahru, Malaysia

One of a continuing series.
Start: Around the World in 800 Days
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