Day 25 – and he won

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Honestly, we just didn’t know where we went wrong. After spending 25 days with us, our Ang mo friend Matt left Singapore weighing slightly less than he’d first arrived! Mind you, this is after stuffing him with the below items (and he had 30 roti pratas alone):

  1. Paranakan Cuisine: laksa (Katong of course!), nonya curry, rojak, popiah, otah, mee siam, kueh kueh etc
  2. Chinese cuisine: dim sum (e.g. xiao long bao from Din Tai Fung), clear soups, Hainanese chicken rice, duck rice (A* coffee shop), shrimp dumpling noodles (Rivervale Mall’s Foodcourt), Old Chang Kee Curry Puff, fried carrot cake , fried rice (Din Tai Fung’s), mee swa, three layer belly pork, chwee kway, fried oyster omelette, Chinese rice dumplings, coconut pancakes, curry yong tau fu, fried Hokkien mee (Punggol Plaza foodcourt), chinese pancakes, beef hor fun (Casaurina Rd), fried kway teow, dim sum & congee (Crystal Jade’s), steamboat, Jumbo seafood chilli crabs (revisit)
  3. Malay cuisine: mutton / beef rendang (my mother in-law’s one is good), nasi lemak, nasi briyani, satay, lontong, mee rebus, mee soto, mee goreng etc
  4. Indian cuisine: Roti prata (Compass Point Banquet the best!), teh tarik, teh halia, mutton curry, fishhead curry, naan, etc
  5. Thai cuisine: green curry, mango and glutinous rice dessert, red rubies, sweet tapioca, etc
  6. Local fruits: durian, mangosteen, malay apples
  7. Misc: Mcdonald’s breakfast in Singapore, Yang’s Carbonara
  8. Bak kwa, Jasmine Green Tea, chrysanthemum tea.

So we did miss a few items here and there. For instance, a follow-up visit to Jumbo seafood (we brought him there the first time he came in 2006), Casuarina Road’s beef hor fun (the place was closed for the afternoon), and a few popular Malay cuisine.

We’ve pretty much determined that the huge amount of food we force-fed him—including half a kilo of bak kwa we bought him to bring back—just still wasn’t enough to offset the incredible amount of walking he did while here in Singapore, Malaysia and Bangkok. We’re gonna have to wait for him to tell us how much did he walk up and down here, but we conservatively judge it to be at least 3-4 hours of it every single day.

Ling was thinking mournfully as we sent him off this morning at Changi airport when he’d be back. Personally, I don’t think it’d be too long. Matt’s already said he’ll be back for Singapore’s 50th birthday at least, but I think the beckoning of Compass Point’s roti prata is going to be too much for him. I’d give it 2 years.:)