Excursions, I

By Friday I was feeling better from my cold and antsy to explore beyond our immediate neighborhood. I was anxious about the logistics of getting a cab and collapsing the stroller, which requires removing the rear seat, while wearing the baby and keeping Sam from running into traffic, but figured I just had to do it. As with most things, the anticipation was worse than the actuality.

We headed to Jurong Bird Park, a zoo for all things avian. I expected an open reserve, like the Bharatpur Bird Sanctuary I visited in India, but this layout was probably more digestible for kids. Alighting from the cab, I was unsure if the park was open yet, but it turned out we were just the first ones there. Given Sam gets excited whenever we hear the birds around Robertson Walk, I thought for sure he would've been interested in JBP--we even looked at pictures and talked about it before going--but he couldn't have cared less. The monorail and the elevator up to the platform was the highlight for him, and he spent the rest of the time asking for more choo-choo. I, of course, was enthralled. Thankfully Pat would like to see the park, so we will return and I'll get to pay closer attention to all the exhibits we raced past.

One, albeit obvious, thing I learned when I volunteered at the zoo is that birds, especially large numbers in close proximity, stink. Yet JBP smelled like brownies fresh from the oven. It was subtle at first. Only as we progressed through the park did the scent's pervasiveness, and thus artificiality, become apparent. I couldn't locate the dispensing mechanism, so perhaps there happened to be a large commercial bakery nearby. I did question the scent selection. Wouldn't something floral or herbaceous be more appropriate? At least it wasn't barbeque chicken.

Pat was attending a two-day symposium (including a 12-course tasting dinner Friday night), so Saturday the boys and I were on our own, again. I plunked them in the stroller and walked to Chinatown. The streets were bedecked for Chinese New Year, on the 26th and 27th. I was hoping to find a certain hawker center (more on that topic later), but Sam declared his hunger well before we were in range, which meant we had to find something NOW. I think I read that a local specialty was bbq meats, and one storefront had a queue half a block long. The sign read "Pork Floss." I opted for some mediocre ramen-type place a few stores down (it was one of the few establishments that wasn't completely empty by comparison).

After a speedy lunch (Sam ate three bites and pronounced he was "All done;" my arm probably looked like a cartoon in fast-forward, blurred in motion, as I shoveled to keep up), Sam held my hand as we walked up the main pedestrian street lined with the typical Chinatown shlock. We stopped to buy a few postcards and for Sam to dance outside the stall selling Chinese pop music. Then I plunked him back in the stroller and high-tailed it home in time for naps, stopping for a scoop of green tea and red bean at the Japanese ice cream stand on Clarke Quay along the way.

On Sunday, Pat and I were both eager to visit Little India. We consulted the front desk on the best path to walk there, a concept completely lost on the attendant. He offered to call us a taxi; he described a free shuttle from an MRT (subway) station. There was no explaining that for us, half the pleasure is the exploration in getting somewhere. We then experienced the epitome of Singaporean directions. We'd both observed that Singaporeans can be vague: "it's just up that way and then on the left over there." We presented our map, knowing we had to take the road that wrapped around Fort Canning Park, but we weren't sure where to branch off. He indicated a small road that would connect us to the major link up to Little India, but it was unclear on the map how to get to that small road. The attendant's solution: "Just go straight" through an area where nothing went straight; the roads all curved without intersecting. We shrugged, figuring we'd see when we got there. Of course, we completely missed the small road. We picked it up from the other end on the way back; it dead-ended into a 15-foot wall of hedges--where we were supposed to go straight.

Little India was quiet on a Sunday morning. We visited a temple that contained lots of individual shrines, incense, and men in white shrouds doling out I'm not sure what. The boys fell asleep, which allowed me to shop for beaded sandals and get suckered into a linen shirt to boot (for ~$10, so what?). We stopped for an early lunch--a banana leaf thali, naan, and fresh lassis--at which Sam ate surprisingly well. We then meandered through the streets, the highlight for Sam being some cows and goats that were part of a harvest festival (I think).

On a tip from one of Pat's colleagues, we stopped on the way back at Liang Court, the nearby mall where we changed money the first day. Although the stores in the rest of the mall compare to a cheap, cheesy mall in Jersey, there is a gourmet Japanese grocery store in the basement. The sushi case was the length of an entire dairy section in an American supermarket--this was no ordinary food-store sushi. We picked up dinner and tried to contain other impulse purchases to little avail. We went back two days later for more.