New Year’s Eve -- Singapore

We started the last day of the New Year out early as the Peranakan tour was on our agenda.

The Peranakan people are Straits Chinese -- a group of early inhabitants in Singapore who brought a wealth of customs, their own architectural style, cuisine and beadwork proficiency.

The tour -- just us and a German lady living in Madrid -- started at a garden to go over various spices used in Peranakan cooking. The spice garden sits on the original site of the first Botanic Gardens (Fort Canning Park) – lovely green space with a wide array of plants and trees on the hillside, stone walkways meandering through and signs along the way with information about plant uses (food, medical).

Among the many featured in the garden were nutmeg trees and its “fruit” and cinnamon trees (the sticks are made from stems). Even the leaves smelled like cinnamon, and apparently all parts of the tree can be used. We saw turmeric and ginger plants, red pepper plants, plants that produce black peppercorns, laksa (a plant used commonly in Peranakan cooking), basil, cumin, a vanilla tree, pineapple and banana trees, tiny lime plants, anise seed, fennel and more.

From the spice garden we went to the Peranakan Museum, housed in a 3 story blue/green building built in the Peranakan style. It had a wonderful in-depth exhibit on the lifestyle of the people – 12 day wedding ceremony, the emphasis the culture placed on beadwork abilities of women (an important way young women proved their worth to their mothers-in-law), food and dining (tea, elaborate dishware and table settings, etc.), religion (mix of Buddhism, Confucianism, some later becoming Christian through European influence). (Peranakan beadwork, too, was heavily influenced by the European culture.)

The exhibit included examples of clothing worn by the women (sarong-like skirts and lovely blouses pinned closed with ornate brooches).

Jewelry, particularly pieces worn by brides, was extremely ornate. It was so important to wedding ceremonies that it was often rented for the occasion.

Women’s sleeves were crafted a bit short so they could show off their bracelets. Attire for various stages of mourning was also exhibited – black to blue, green, etc (less auspicious jewelry was worn during this time).

One room of the museum even showed how a body was laid out for funeral services.

The main floor had photos of Peranican descendents and quotes regarding their heritage.

From the museum we headed to a Peranican home/shop. The lower level was a café where a woman was cutting green cakes into slices and packaging them. Upstairs was a shop with beaded items, clothing, jewelry, etc. for sale. We were introduced to a young Peranican man who explained how a wide array of spices were pounded with a VERY heavy mortar and pestle (I picked it up), then cooked for a long time to flavor meat – in this case pork. The guide’s sister was making pork and rice dumplings wrapped in leaves.

After the demo we were seated for tea and got to sample the dumplings. They were incredibly tasty, very rich and not meatlike in taste – a wonderful blend of spices (a bit reminiscent of Mom's mincement, which is fabulous). It was hard to pinpoint any spice one specifically – a trademark of the style of cooking, we were told.
We also sampled spices of fish, again wrapped in leaves and cooked with Peranakin spices to “defray” the fish taste. This, too, was delicious – not “hot” spicy but with a hint of citrus.

The dumplings and fish are commonly served for breakfast and tea, per our guide – appetizer portions that allowed people to eat many different things without getting too full.

Last, we sampled a cake made with laksa, the green plant we’d seen in the garden. It was a very good congealed dessert – a bit like a fruity flan, perhaps?

After tea we watched a beading demonstration; someone was decorating a pair of shoes with the tiniest beads imaginable. These are very expensive today, as the work is so laborious and detailed. Now larger beads from Poland are commonly used to speed processes up, we were told.

The kids each got a coin purse made in the Peranakan style (with the larger beads).
The last demo was of the clothing; I got to model the sarong-like skirt and shirt. Claire modeled the children’s size. And I left with a lovely souvenir – one of the dainty shirts.

What a fun morning!

As we left the Peranakan area of town we caught glimpses of rows of homes restored in the original architecture – a bit of a Victorian look, with fancy sculpted detail and a wide array of pastel colors. Lovely homes.

For lunch we had the tour bus driver drop us at Newton’s Circus, one of Joe’s old haunts and another hawker’s market. Full of stalls like the one in Chinatown, this one wasn’t quite so busy, no doubt due to the holiday. Still, plenty of shops were open and trying to sell their foodstuffs. We tracked down chicken and rice and noodles for Claire and Ava, a chili crab for the two of us to split. It was heavenly. The sauce was rich and tomato-y, with lots of cooked onions and garlic and a very nice chili kick. And of course the crab itself was succulent.

After a delicious, messy meal, which was great fun to eat (the kids were dying for us to wash our hands), we had our first MRT (subway) trip in Singapore. Very clean, quick and efficient, we took it to Circular Quay, an area along the river with lots of bars and restaurants. There we wandered the bends in the river, took a boat ride up and back, under bridges, checking out the sites from the boat.

We then wandered the Quay area on foot, stopped for gelato and meandered to Boat Quay for a drink. This one seemed a bit less trendy – lots of bars and restaurants with houses above, all with varying architectural styles. Great views along the river, too. We stopped at Harry’s, where I tried the infamous Singapore Sling:

- a cocktail invented by Ngiam Tong Boon for the Long Bar in Raffles Hotel between 1910 and 1915. It’s a type of sling, a traditional kind of cocktail. Recipes vary, but the original recipe used gin, cherry brandy, and Benedictine (most often in equal parts). The drink was shaken and strained into a glass, and then filled to individual taste with club soda).

Quite tasty in my opinion.

From Harry’s we took the MRT to our hotel, grabbed our luggage and headed off to the port to board our cruise ship!

After a lengthy boarding/baggage process and beer/pizza at another Harry’s (we like Harry – apparently he likes to drink, too) we boarded the ship, along with 1,996 other New Year’s Eve cruisers (mostly Asian and Indian).

The pints and long day caught up with us so we didn’t make it to watch the ball drop
or, in this case, the ship lift its anchor.