Sleepless in Singapore: Arab Street

Last thursday, I went to a street called Arab Street here in Singapore and it was quite exotic.. I suppose it is an ethnic place for the muslim Malay population of Singapore. I went on an organized tour from the exchange office of NUS and they organized it pretty well. We first went to this shop called "Grandfather's collection" where this whitty Malay man gave us a glimpse of the different objects in his shop and their history. The objects i liked most were this paste thing which you put on a straw, and if you blow in it, it becomes a nice bubble; and a hacky sack like game, but you play it using a thingamagic made of feathers. It is also interesting to see that many of the games played by the Malays are pretty universal. They play marbles, which, as an Indian, I am all too familiar with. I remember playing in the street with them and I was horrible at it. I usually lost all my marbles (no pun intended!) in the first game itself and I would be forced to borrow them from my friends.. The Malays also play with a top, which they spin using a thread, again similar to those in India. The object of the game is to spin the top on top of an opponent's top and break it. And again, my top spinning skills were disgusting and I usually got mine broken in a day or two...anyway, back to Singapore!

The best part of the Arab street trip was this restaurant, in which they had organized a HUGE table upstairs just for the exchange students and it was filled with exotic Malay dishes.. There was this deepfried banana that was very tasty, some sort of jelly fruit thing (It has some, difficult to pronounce, Malay name), some gravy and something similiar to a rice pappad (Its like a crispy deepfried chip).. Fruits galore!: there were exotic fruits that I've never eaten or even heard about in my life.. There was this fruit called "SnakeSkin", which has a skin, that looks like scales.. but if you peel it, there is this very tasty fruit that resembles a guava and a peach, but a little harder (but nothing like the two).. Absolutely amazing.. Another fruit called DragonFruit.. I guess I had heard about it somewhere.. I think it was in one of those picturebooks for little kids.. The one that has pictures of all the fruits.. I think I read it in that book at some point.. (my memory is not that good.. i might've seen it when some random kid was reading it in the subway or something..) anyway, it was also pretty excellent. It was sort of like custard, but looked like one of those white chocolate hershey bars with the cookie crumbles.. The taste was pretty unique as well.. There was also guava, which was pretty good; and Jackfruit.. ahh, my grandma's house in India had a jackfruit tree and I used to eat it all the time come jackfruit season.. Then, after going to Canada, I was deprived of all these amazing and exotic fruits :(.. The other exchange students weren't as impressed as I was with the jackfruit though.. They said it tastes like bubblegum. I suppose deprived of chewing gum in Singapore (It is illegal here, with a fine of $1000 for importing it!), they are prolly having withdrawal symptoms and it is going to their head! Haha.. jackfruit is amazing.

You will notice that a lot of the time, I will talk about food.. It is indeed what Singapore is famous for. The favourite past-times of people here are shopping and eating. You can find any type of food here for very cheap prices.. One can survive for about $5/day if they want.

There is another fruit that I am yet to try, which they call, the "King of Fruits". I always thought that was the Mango, but apparenly its the Durian. It sort of looks like a jackfruit with all the spikes and all, but I dont know how it tastes like.. Most people dont like it.. Apparently its an acquired tastes, but people who do can't get enough of it! I will try and then you can expect a blog entry dedicated to it alone!