Singapore Food Tour

The island city and country of Singapore has three distinct organized communities. Malay, Chinese and Indian. We set out to taste them all. A skillful guide makes all the difference and we had that in Arthur Ang. We found him through www.localtours.com where you can pick the kind of tour you want, watch videos of different guides before picking one, and then customize that tour to meet your interests.

We started at the Malaysian community. This is the community with the oldest roots here. Traditional food.

From there we went to the Chinese community. Singapore is almost 80% Chinese now. Many of these people made a very difficult sea voyage on sailboats to get here. Their respect for the sea shows in their culture. We happened to be in Singapore on day 13 of the 15-day celebration of the new year, the year of the dog. Do you know what food franchise has the most outlets in Singapore? Ah. I bet you are thinking golden arches, yes? Subway? Well, follow this video as it ends up at Singapore’s largest food franchise.

(video through chinatown ending at___ ___ ___)

Arthur had a checklist of ten items from all three traditions that he wanted us to sample and we got to all of them. You must pace yourself. We were advised to not eat everything on our plate. What does not get eaten, gets composted and returned to the soil.

Singapore is all about recycling and reusing. It is also one of the cleanest places on the planet. They had a leader that just died at the age of 91, who pushed through all kinds of laws with stiff penalties. Illegal to spit. Illegal to sell gum. Illegal to litter of course – but the penalty is huge.

Finally, we arrived at little India. Some say the food here is even better than most places in India.

Even though we had walked over six miles on a tour the previous day, Arthur went at a pace that worked for us. The tour is billed as a two to three-hour event, but Arthur says you can’t do it justice in that time frame. His tours take between five and six hours – no extra charge.

more details and pictures to follow…