Location: Singapore

Author: My Husband

After spending more than a week in Europe, it was time for us to head to Asia. An Air France A320 took us from Barcelona to Paris, where we would board the Singapore Airlines flight to Singapore.

We met a friendly flight attendant on the Air France flight who chatted with us for a bit, showed us maps of Paris, and gave us suggestions on places we should visit on our next trip. As on our flight to Barcelona, a meal was served on the 1 hr 15 min flight. This time, it was a full meal – a pretty edible one – with a salad appetizer, a vegetarian pasta main course, and a slice of orange cake for dessert. A choice of beverages, including alcoholic ones, was also offered. And all this was included in the price of the return tickets, which cost less than CAD $200. Pretty good deal, wouldn’t you say?

Our SIA flight was leaving out of CDG terminal one, so we experienced the avant-garde tubed escalators and long tunnels again. Regardless of how many times you travel through CDG terminal one, it doesn’t feel any less weird.

This was the bird that flew us to Singapore.

I’d been looking forward to flying on an Airbus A380 since last year. So when I was arranging the flights for this trip, I planned our Paris to Singapore flight around the schedule of the SIA A380. It is a fantastic plane, and the quietest I’ve ever flown in (and I’ve flown in every Boeing and Airbus type). During takeoff and climb, the noise level in the upper deck of the A380 is only as loud as a B777 at cruise – very impressive and very helpful for getting some sleep. I had originally planned to sleep, but the awesome entertainment system onboard – 80 movies, countless TV programs, hundreds of hours of music, and games – kept me up for the entire 12+ hr duration of the flight. The movies (I caught up with all the recent movies I’d missed on the flights this trip) and the music made the flight go by in a flash, and all too soon, we were making our descent towards Changi Airport. This is why I love Singapore Airlines.

Our flight landed in Singapore at a little before 7am. We disembarked, went through immigration, collected our bags, and were in a cab by 7:18am. I have no idea how the Changi people do it, but in all my years of travelling there, my luggage has always been waiting for me at the baggage carousel, and never the other way around. And Singapore immigration takes all of 30 seconds to clear. Simply amazing efficiency and consistency.

We arrived in Singapore on the last day of the APEC conference and, given the very high hotel occupancy rates across Singapore that week, we were more than a little concerned that our hotel wouldn’t have a room available for us that morning. My wife was especially finicky since she really wanted a shower after the long flight, and I wasn’t helping any by holding my nose when looking in her direction. It’s so easy to get a rise out of my wife… (and no, she didn’t smell.)

Christina needn’t have worried, because the Pan Pacific at Marina Bay came through for us – they had a room ready and waiting. And after the last few days of the nice but smallish hotel room in Barcelona, the Pan Pac’s spacious room and bathroom were a joy. Here’s a view out of our 32nd floor room:

In the foreground on the left, the Marina Mandarin Hotel. In the forground on the right, the roof of Suntec City. In the background on the right, the famous Raffles Hotel (home of the Singapore Sling). In the middle, the Swissotel Stamford. On the left, the padang and the colonial buildings.

Our main purpose for coming to Singapore was to visit family. We don’t usually visit sights or do any touristy thing here; what we often do, which we very much enjoy, is to accompany our Singaporean family members on their eating and shopping sprees. On this trip, we went to many of the same places that I’d already written about in my previous posts; so for this and the following one or two posts, I will simply include photos of food that we had at restaurants that I’d not hitherto written about.

The first of these places, which even relatively few Singaporeans know about, is a restaurant called “The Ship”

The Ship is one of the old-school coffee houses that was so in vogue in Singapore in the 70s and 80s. Located in Shaw Centre, the restaurant still boasts a nautical décor that was fashionable oh, about 30+ years ago. Like many “western food” restaurants, The Ship was started by a Hainanese chef who got his start in the business cooking for the British military personnel who used to be stationed on the island. Unlike Jack’s Place, a chain of “western food” restaurant that was started by another Hainanese chef, The Ship never grew beyond two locations. And as of this writing, only the Shaw Centre location remains. Fortunately, unlike Jack’s Place, The Ship has managed to keep the quality of its food to a high standard, which is why my parents, my wife, and I consistently eat there on our trips to Singapore.

The Ship’s “western meal” sets.

While The Ship is known for their “western food”, the purpose of our visit was to have this – their awesome fish rice-noodles in soup.

Silky smooth rice noodles in a soup. The soup, redolent with the umami-ness of fresh fish, is made by adding some milk to fish stock. The resultant rich and full-bodied concoction has layers of complimentary flavours that go together like… cream and sugar.

This is fresh deep-fried 生鱼. The fish inside the crisp exterior is cooked to perfect doneness, and the natural sweetness of the fish comes through loud and clear. Dipped in a little chilli soy, this simply prepared dish will leave you (and your tastebuds) grinning from ear to ear. If Cal Pep did fried 生鱼, this is exactly how they would do it.

The Ship has been handed down from the founding generation to their kids, and hopefully, will continue to be handed down to the next generation. It seems to me, however, that the restaurant is just about the only business that continues to draw customers in considerable numbers to Shaw Centre. Many stores in Shaw Centre have been left empty, which suggests that a major refurbishment may soon take place. If that should happen, I hope The Ship will continue to remain viable as a going concern. But just in case, to our Singapore readers, I urge you to make a beeline for this place to have yourselves a taste of Singapore as it was in the 80s. You won’t regret it.

Next post – my favourite Thai Teochew restaurant in Singapore. Until then, I’ll leave you with some snapshots of the Christmas decorations and lights on Orchard Road…