Back Home
Street Food Home Introduction Louisville, KY Cedar Rapids Chicago Denmark Plano/Dallas/Fort Worth Richmond, VA Singapore Hawker Centres The Rules Teh Tarik / Turkish Ice Cream Chinatown Bugis Market Laksa Farewell Trenton, NJ San Antonio, TX India Introduction Bottled Water Roadside Coconut New York City Nashville, TN Olympia, WA	Singapore Bugis Market I don’t have the greatest memory of Bugis Market, and I’m kind of sad about that. I only went once, on a Saturday. It was of course massively crowded. I got badly overstimulated, and left with a headache. Now, granted, it’s also one of the more crowded marketplaces in Singapore, like a flea market tent where the walkway width requirements are reduced and the fire codes ignores, every vendor cramming in every bit of merchandise they can fit and using the vertical space in ways anybody from New York would recognize. I had let myself in for a rough experience, and regret having not gone when the foot traffic might have been lighter. And then there were two tactical errors on my part, one on approach, and one in the progress through. At the entrance, under the red and white striped awning, was a fruit market. Lots of open topped wooden bins, people browsing, looked like every fruit market I’d seen. There was one guy, however, who was out from under the awning, down at the end to the left in the photo, and I really wish I’d gotten better photos of the place. He had a large pile of large brown fruit, and a small pile of refuse in the gutter past it where he was prepping the fruit for ready to eat. And I didn’t think anything about it. Until I got close enough the smell hit me, and I realized why he was not under the awning with the other fruit sellers. And that I should have checked wind direction before approaching. The dude was selling durian. The visible cartoon stink waves that rose up from the pile of durian peels took hold of my nose and shook me, letting me know that this was their turf and I had better show some respect dammit. I will not try to describe the smell. Let’s just say that I was fully justified in avoiding the durian pancake stall, and leave it at that. So I spent the first few minutes in a crowded fruit market trying to recover from olfactory trauma. Then I was halfway through, moving slowly but steadily at the pace of the person iin front of me, when I saw a stand ahead selling hot snacks. I figured I’d better grab something as I went past, and had to make a choice quickly as the crowd was not going to let me stop. So I went for protein, and got a stick with three fish balls. Second tactical error. I don’t know if there was a sauce I was supposed to dunk them in, or a condiment I missed, or a question from the vendor about saucing that I missed, or what. You know the minced fish in a frozen fish stick? Imagine that compressed onto a stick in three spheres the size of golf balls, with no added flavoring, no batter coating, no nothing. No thanks, not ever again. Not if someone told me what I did wrong and how to correct it. Too much food related trauma in one day, sorry.

Street Food Home

Singapore

Bugis Market

I don’t have the greatest memory of Bugis Market, and I’m kind of sad about that. I only went once, on a Saturday. It was of course massively crowded. I got badly overstimulated, and left with a headache. Now, granted, it’s also one of the more crowded marketplaces in Singapore, like a flea market tent where the walkway width requirements are reduced and the fire codes ignores, every vendor cramming in every bit of merchandise they can fit and using the vertical space in ways anybody from New York would recognize. I had let myself in for a rough experience, and regret having not gone when the foot traffic might have been lighter.

And then there were two tactical errors on my part, one on approach, and one in the progress through.

At the entrance, under the red and white striped awning, was a fruit market. Lots of open topped wooden bins, people browsing, looked like every fruit market I’d seen. There was one guy, however, who was out from under the awning, down at the end to the left in the photo, and I really wish I’d gotten better photos of the place. He had a large pile of large brown fruit, and a small pile of refuse in the gutter past it where he was prepping the fruit for ready to eat. And I didn’t think anything about it.

Until I got close enough the smell hit me, and I realized why he was not under the awning with the other fruit sellers. And that I should have checked wind direction before approaching. The dude was selling durian. The visible cartoon stink waves that rose up from the pile of durian peels took hold of my nose and shook me, letting me know that this was their turf and I had better show some respect dammit. I will not try to describe the smell. Let’s just say that I was fully justified in avoiding the durian pancake stall, and leave it at that.

So I spent the first few minutes in a crowded fruit market trying to recover from olfactory trauma. Then I was halfway through, moving slowly but steadily at the pace of the person iin front of me, when I saw a stand ahead selling hot snacks. I figured I’d better grab something as I went past, and had to make a choice quickly as the crowd was not going to let me stop. So I went for protein, and got a stick with three fish balls.

Second tactical error. I don’t know if there was a sauce I was supposed to dunk them in, or a condiment I missed, or a question from the vendor about saucing that I missed, or what. You know the minced fish in a frozen fish stick? Imagine that compressed onto a stick in three spheres the size of golf balls, with no added flavoring, no batter coating, no nothing.

No thanks, not ever again. Not if someone told me what I did wrong and how to correct it. Too much food related trauma in one day, sorry.