Singapore: Food Tripping at a Hawker Centre and the Botanic Gardens

I just realized I’m not too creative with these titles. No really, I’ve been doing this for a few years and this just occurred to me. This post was originally titled: “Singapore: Hawker Centre and Botanic Gardens” (snore). So I thought to myself, let’s mix it up. What if I call this “Food Tripping in Singapore!” that’s fun right? And accurate given how food centric this is going to be. But for the sake of google-lability, I’ll leave it at “Food Tripping at a Hawker Centre and the Botanic Gardens” (at the time this sounded like a best of both world’s solution but now it sounds like an awfully boring and overly descriptive children’s book).

But I digress, let’s get started. First stop for today was the Old Airport Rd. Food Centre. Based on all the research I did before the trip, most bloggers agree that this is one of the best hawker centres in Singapore. It was easy enough to get there, the bus stop (Blk 39) was right in front of the building. What we weren’t expecting was that there were many buildings, all filled with food stalls. We didn’t know which was the best so from there we simply let our stomachs lead the way.

Deciding which stall to try first is simpler than you think. I situated myself at the center and picked the stall with the longer line. Which was #05 Vegetarian Food. I’m sure that’s not the name but my chinese is failing me right now and aside from xiang and chu I’m not sure what the rest of those characters are. Anyway, if you wanna try it, it’s stall #05.

I had the kway teow mee (photo above) since that was what everyone ahead of me ordered, with lots of tofu skin, lots and lots. Trust me on this, the more you have the happier you’ll be. I was sorely tempted to line up again and ask for me after I tasted mine!

Meet aunty and uncle who couldn’t stop giggling when I asked for their photo.

After we ate we decided to explore the other buildings around us (and walk off our meal) and found a food centre that seemed to be more popular than the one we went to. If you’re getting off at the blk 39 bus stop, turn left to meet uncle and taste his amazing kway teow mee, but turn right and you’ll find all the stalls all the popular Sing food bloggers wrote about.

Then it was off to the Botanic Gardens.

And whats the first thing we do there? Eat of course! Anthony Bourdain would be proud. We headed for Food for Thought, a restaurant inside the gardens. We were still full from the hawker center (most of us were anyway) so we decided to share. But oh my goodness, the burger was soooo good after the first bite I knew I would regret not getting one each. After the pancakes with bananas and walnuts arrived (and disappeared just as fast) our bulging bellies were ready to explore the gardens (or lead us back to the hotel for a nap).

Wall art at the Food for Thought cafe.

It started to rain while we were walking and we didn’t have any umbrellas so we had to get creative. Meet Sr. Sabrina.

The gardens were beautiful and massive. We were only a quarter of the way through when we started to feel the strain of all that walking (and pigging out). So I stopped taking photos (boo) and just focused on enjoying the view. Which looked mostly sort of like this:

Congrats to the happy couple having their wedding photos done in the park. And sorry if we photo bombs a few of your shots.

x,

Jack

p.s. I woke up this morning to find out I’d been Freshly Pressed again (that sounds wrong). Thanks WordPress x

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