A City for the Senses

When I started visiting Southeast Asia more than three decades ago, it was still a notorious destination for Westerners in search of cheap narcotics. Novels and films depicted degenerate Europeans and Americans holed up in dingy hotel rooms in an opium stupor.

Today there is a new wave of Western addicts in this part of the world. They wander down hidden alleys and through open-air markets in search of the maximum food experience at the minimum price: irresistibly delicious Chinese soups, Malay noodles and Indian curries served at street stands for just a few dollars. Back in Los Angeles, New York, London and Paris, these people seem perfectly normal. But here in Singapore, the Asian capital of “street food,” they lie to friends and relatives, break away from tour groups and secretly search out food counters and tiny restaurants where they can feed with little fear of encountering familiar faces. I know these new addicts well because I am one of them. I don’t fit the classic profile of a promiscuous eater. I am by no means obese. I exercise regularly at a gym, and I politely refuse second portions at dinner parties. But in Singapore, I am like the old German professor in the movie “The Blue Angel” who loses his dignity because of his obsession with the seductive Marlene Dietrich.

Singapore certainly doesn’t have a reputation as a city of sin. This tropical island-state is far better known for an intolerant government whose main concerns are that citizens obey authority, make money and live in a metropolis where everything functions perfectly. (Late last year the government successfully targeted a terrorist network that was closely linked to Al Qaeda and had planned to attack U.S. military and business targets there.) In keeping with the city’s squeaky clean image, most “street food” has been herded into vast indoor courts regularly patrolled by public health officials.

This certainly isn’t an environment that encourages sex: The birthrate has fallen so low that the state runs programs to introduce men and women in hopes they will marry, and then offers them cash bounties to produce children. But passion must find an outlet, and in Singapore, food has become the ultimate object of desire. On my most recent sojourn last December, I stayed at a luxury hotel, the Oriental, because it caters to respectable tourists and businesspeople and is near many of the “hawker centers”--clusters of food stands--that I love. The evening before I had been invited to a new chic restaurant offering a pleasant but ultimately unsatisfying Asian fusion dinner of the sort I could have had back in New York. By noon the following day, I was ready for a heartier repast, served in a more vulgar, authentic ambience.

So I headed to Chinatown, seemingly a misnomer since about 75% of Singapore’s 4 million inhabitants are Chinese, with Malays and Indians accounting for most of the rest. But Chinatown got its name because it is on the spit of land where the first junk-load of Chinese immigrants settled shortly after a swashbuckling British merchant, Sir Stamford Raffles, founded Singapore as a trading post in 1819.

In recent decades, a love affair with modernity induced Singaporeans to turn their backs on Chinatown and instead revel in the Western-style shopping malls and restaurants of Orchard Road. But now the city’s cultural and culinary center of gravity is moving back toward Chinatown and the old waterfront where Singapore began. The former General Post Office, a colonial behemoth with Doric columns, cornices and coffered ceilings, has been transformed into the Fullerton, a luxury hotel. Nearby, in a less fortunate architectural style, the Esplanade is assuming its ultimate armadillo shape in time for a scheduled opening late this year as Singapore’s main center for the performing arts.

Walking past these new projects and beyond the postmodern high-rises of the business district, I meandered down narrow streets of herbal medicine shops and antiquarians until I reached the Chinatown Complex. It’s a huge concrete block with all the charm of a multilevel parking garage. But nobody comes here for the decor. On its second floor, there are about 200 food stands with cuisine from every corner of Asia. Working-class men and women in T-shirts, shorts and floppy sandals slurped their soup and talked so loudly that if I closed my eyes, I could imagine myself in a sports arena. Soon I was surrounded by waiters offering to guide me to the best food stands.

I stopped first at Joe Pork and Fish Porridge, food stand 02-069 (fortunately, the stands are numbered consecutively, making them easier to locate on return visits), where I was served a soothing bowl of congee with the texture of cream and flavored with fish, green onions and sesame. Next, I ate at Jolly Yummy (food stand 02-137), where I accepted a plate of Hainanese chicken rice: strips of satin-smooth chicken with rice balls and three dipping sauces of varying spiciness. For the grand finale, I sat down at Zhao Ji (food stand 02-054) to relish an exquisite rice dish: scallions, bitter Chinese spinach, mushrooms and slices of duck and bacon--all cooked in a clay pot and served on top of rice fried in a sweet, brown sauce. The owner was surly, even rude, knowing full well that a culinary libertine like myself wouldn’t dare complain because the food was so good.

I returned to the Oriental for a long, restorative nap. When I awoke, I swam for an hour in the pool, washing away sinful calories and working up an appetite for more gluttony. At nightfall, I headed for the Little India neighborhood. Settled in the second half of the 19th century by immigrants from Calcutta and Madras, Little India is a teeming conglomeration of shops selling spices, bolts of silk and satin, and finely spun gold jewelry.

On this visit, I was meeting two friends at the Sri Srinivasa Perumal Temple, one of the city’s oldest and most important Hindu centers. The occasion was a holiday at which teenage girls, clad in colorful saris, danced barefoot to the sound of cymbals, drums and horns to advertise their availability for marriage. The ceremony was all the more appealing because two participants were nieces of my friends, but all I could think about was the nearby Lavender Food Square, one of my favorite food emporiums.

“I’m afraid I have a headache and must get back to my hotel,” I lied. My friends looked grief-stricken because family duties obliged them to remain at the temple instead of accompanying me. Safely out of their view, I doubled back to Lavender Food Square, a covered arcade where even a Westerner can lose himself in the crowds. I gorged on nasi padang--an Indonesian-style dish of rice, peanuts, fish, egg, tofu and a sauce so spicy that I broke into a sweat. I cooled down with a large glass of foamy sugar-cane juice, and then ended the surreptitious meal with popiah--stewed turnips with garlic, fried bean curd, chiles and sweet flour sauce wrapped into an egg roll.

Back at my hotel, there were worried messages from my Indian friends. But I sank into my king-size bed with a sense of utter satiety that only a true Asian street-food addict can appreciate. Who says the guilty cannot sleep?

The following morning i was in a horticultural mood--it’s hard not to be on this verdant island. The terminals at Changi International Airport are greenhouses for ornamental plants, and arriving visitors can admire exotic species as they wait at the baggage carousels. The expressway into the city is festooned with white-flowered frangipani and purple bougainvillea. While I don’t like to toss bouquets at former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew (he’s still very much the cranky strongman behind the semi-authoritarian government and gets enough credit as architect of Singapore’s remarkable prosperity), he is largely responsible for a 30-year-old state program to transform Singapore into a garden city even as new skyscrapers rise.

Today Singapore has 10,000 acres of parklands, almost six times as much as it had in 1965, when it became an independent nation. The most famous expanse of green is the Botanic Gardens, where I arrived for a 10 a.m. appointment with a knowledgeable guide, Abdul Hamid bin Hassan, who promised to point out the highlights among the tree groves and flower beds bordering limpid ponds and rolling lawns.

A crowd favorite is the cannonball tree whose large, heavy seed pods hit the ground with a thud and smell like skunk cabbage. I preferred an enormous rain tree, majestic as an oak and covered with epiphytes, some the size of small palm trees.

But the best moments of the tour were in the 12-acre Orchid Garden. Here were the Dancing Lady, an orchid so small that its yellow blossoms must be viewed with a magnifying glass; the mammoth Tiger Orchid, which weighs as much as 2 tons and has brown-spotted creme flowers the size of an outstretched hand; the Vanda Mimi Palmer, the only scented orchid I have ever encountered, with a pungent vanilla aroma emanating from its mottled mauve blossoms. Pride of place went to the VIP hybrid orchids, named after famous visitors. The “Margaret Thatcher” was hardy, with spiky dark blossoms that flowered year-round, while the “Princess Di” was a more delicate, short-lived white orchid. I confess that my visit to the Botanic Gardens was not entirely devoid of gastronomic impulses. Rumor had it that the adjoining Taman Serasi Food Center, a collection of stalls famous for roti john (crisp egg, onion and minced lamb omelets with chile sauce), would soon be closed to make way for an expansion of the gardens. When I broached the subject with Abdul, my guide, he eyed me suspiciously: Was I one of those food fanatics who valued a roti john more than an orchid?

“We’ve gotten a lot of complaints about the end of those stands,” he said guardedly.

I assured him that I was asking out of idle curiosity--though apparently I wasn’t convincing enough because he dropped me off at the gate closest to the food stands and offered a word of advice: “Try the soursop juice--it’s the best thing to drink with roti john.” And he was right. (Alas, Taman Serasi has since closed.)

For all its vices, my street-food addiction had the great merit of drawing me into Singapore’s most picturesque neighborhoods--hidden nooks and crannies that I assumed had been obliterated long ago by steel and glass towers. It had been years since I had thought about Arab Street and its adjoining lanes. Settled by Middle Eastern traders more than a century ago, the neighborhood still retains an Islamic flavor, with two-storied “shophouses” selling silks, beads and condiments on their ground-floor level.

I followed Singapore’s foremost food maven, Violet Oon, there one night. She is the author of a best-selling book on the island’s cuisine and an entrepreneur with her own boutique line of sauces, spices and sweets. It was still the month of Ramadan, and the faithful streamed out of the gold-domed Sultan Mosque famished after a day of fasting.

On Kandahar Street, a name of sudden notoriety because of the war in Afghanistan, people lined up in front of dozens of stands where women in head scarves sold fresh home-made dumplings, stuffed bean curd, shish kebab, chicken tikka, lamb curry, Sumatran rice, Malay noodles and a rainbow assortment of sweets. At Oon’s insistence, I didn’t break my own fast (five hours since lunch) until we reached a restaurant aptly named Sabar Menanti, Malay for “wait patiently.” Thirty minutes later, our sidewalk table was a checkerboard of delicacies: dried beef in coriander and cumin, stewed sweet potato leaves, oxtail soup, sardines in tomato and curry sauce.

To balance this Muslim fare, Violet suggested we go around the corner to Seow Choon Hua, a southern Chinese restaurant. We shared a Foo Chow fish ball soup, its main ingredient as fluffy as the finest matzo ball, and then a red wine chicken mee, its meat and noodles marinating in a subtly alcoholic broth.

Between this cascade of courses, Oon offered some observations on why tiny Singapore has emerged as a food capital comparable to Hong Kong, New York and Paris. Perhaps the key reason is the single-mindedness with which many people here approach a restaurant meal. They care not a whit for fine furnishings, rarely engage in conversation and avoid any other distractions from the task at hand: savoring the food.

“And another thing, we are stingy,” Oon said. “In other cities, the affluent are willing to pay for fine food. Here, we are outraged if a street stand raises its prices 50 cents.” Which explains why even the most memorable meals at food stands cost only $4 to $5.

As a much-needed respite from all this eating, I headed one evening to the Night Safari adjoining the zoo. Here, on 100 acres of seemingly open spaces, more than 1,200 animals of more than 110 species roam, feed and dawdle in full view of visitors. The reasoning behind the Night Safari is that the majority of wild animals are most active after sunset--although, in fact, they are kept under low-wattage lighting that resembles a permanent dusk.

Visitors can either follow footpaths or, as I did, take a leisurely, hourlong tram ride through a changing terrain that re-creates Himalayan foothills, African savannas and Malay Peninsula rain forests, among other settings. The rubber-wheeled tram, which looks like a segmented caterpillar, was quiet enough. But a chirpy guide, constantly reading from a feel-good, hug-a-tree manifesto designed for elementary school kids, made me regret that I had chosen not to walk.

Still, even she could not entirely subvert the sense of wonder at the armor plating on the greater one-horned rhino, the unexpected dignity of a bearded pig and the sensual terror of a Gir lion. As we passed in close proximity to flocks of cranes, herds of water buffalo and packs of jackals, I marveled at the invisible trenches, electronic fences and other barriers that created an illusion of freedom for the animals and titillating danger for humans.

The next day, I headed over to Lau Pa Sat, a cavernous, cast-iron former train station transformed into a congenial hawker center overlooking a marina. Here, at a table set up on the street just outside the main entrance, I devoured a heaping plate of satays--chicken wings and strips of beef and lamb impaled on sticks, marinated in a secret concoction of herbs, grilled over charcoal and served with a spicy peanut sauce.

Then I was faced with a quandary. This was my last evening in Singapore. There was only room for one more dish. I wandered the stalls, leering at the fried oyster omelets, the black pepper crab meat over glass noodles, the Penang laksa noodles in a sour and spicy fish broth. In the end, I chose what many consider Singapore’s national dish, Hokkien mee: fried noodles with shrimp, chopped squid, garlic, lemon juice and a pungent fish paste. Draped limply over a chair in a postprandial daze, I briefly considered a small portion of kaya, an egg-and-custard jam dessert. But whom was I kidding? I no longer had the stamina of ribald youth.

The highlight of my final day was a visit to the Rasa Sentosa Resort on the island of Sentosa, just over the causeway from downtown Singapore. It is a popular family destination for Singaporeans who don’t mind lolling on a beach in full view of one of the world’s largest commercial fleets. But I was there because my plane was leaving late in the evening and I much preferred spending $100 on a three-hour spa treatment at Sentosa than paying twice that for an extra day at my luxury hotel.

Besides, nothing better prepares a passenger for a 20-plus-hour flight than a long bout of muscle pampering. A young woman named Yvonne got me started with a body polish, scrubbing away my outermost skin layer with a grainy lotion. Next came the Swedish body massage and, finally, a seaweed body wrap that left me feeling like a California roll. I slept for an hour to the recorded sounds of surf and New Age music.

And then Yvonne sent me away with a few words of wisdom: “Better not eat for a few more hours.”

I would heed such advice when heading to any other airport in the world. But this was Singapore. The food court in the departure terminal offered dishes I had neglected back in town: squid fried with Chinese parsley and drunken prawns marinated in rice wine and garlic. I almost felt sorry for the business and first-class passengers closeted with canapes in the luxury lounge.

GUIDEBOOK: Singapore Fling

Telephone numbers and prices: The area code for Singapore is 65, followed by the local number. All prices are approximate and computed at a rate of 1.80 Singapore dollars to one U.S. dollar. Room rates are for a double for one night. Meal prices are for two, food only. Getting there: There are no nonstop flights from Los Angeles International Airport to Singapore, but United and Singapore airlines have direct flights (one stop, no change of plane); Northwest, Cathay Pacific, China Airlines, JAL, Korean, Malaysia and Thai have connecting flights.

Where to stay: The Oriental, 5 Raffles Ave., Marina Square, 338-0066, fax 339-9537, toll-free reservations (800) 526-6566, www.mandarinoriental.com. In a city of many luxury hotels, this one ranks near the top, with 524 spacious, comfortable rooms and suites. Rates: $227 to $288, though steep discounts are often available.

Berjaya Duxton Hotel, 83 Duxton Road, 227-7678, fax 227-1232, www.singaporehotels.ws/accomodation/hotel/duxton/. This cozy 48-room hotel is located next to Chinatown and amid traditional shophouses, and has a fine French restaurant, L’Aigle d’Or. Rates: $105 to $125. Hotel Bencoolen, 47 Bencoolen St., 336-0822, fax 336-2250, www.hotelbencoolen.com. A clean 74-room hotel that’s an equidistant walk from Little India and the Western boutiques of Orchard Road. Rates: $55 to $68.

Where to eat: The hawker centers and food courts--indoor conglomerations of street food stands--offer a variety of delectable Asian dishes at $2 to $6. Chinatown Complex, at 335 Smith St.; Lavender Food Square, at the corner of Lavender Street and Jalan Besar; Lau Pa Sat, Raffles Quay and Robinson Road.

Restaurants: Sabar Menanti, 52 Kandahar St., 293-0284, specializes in Malay cuisine; $12. Seow Choon Hua, Sultan Gate 33/35, 298-2720, is famed for its Foo Chow fish ball; $10. What to see and do: The Night Safari at the zoo, about a 20-minute taxi ride north of downtown, offers one of the best “open zoo” experiences. 80 Mandai Lake Road, 269-3411, www.zoo.com.sg. Nightly from 7:30 to midnight. Tram ride, $11.

The Botanic Gardens, at the junction of Cluny and Nassim Roads, has one of the world’s finest collection of tropical plants. 471-7361; www.sbg.org.

sg. Open daily from 5 a.m. to midnight. Free, although admission to the National Orchid Garden is $1.10.

The Aspara Spa at Shangri-La’s Rasa Sentosa Resort, 101 Silosa Road, Sentosa Island, 270-2933, fax 339-2884, www.theaspara.com. A two- to three-hour session of body pampering is available for $100.

For more information: Singapore Tourism Board, 4929 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 510, Los Angeles, 90010; (323) 677-0808, fax (323) 677-0801, www.visitsingapore.com.

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Jonathan Kandell last wrote for the travel issue about France’s Finistere.