My 2014 Adventure: Travels to Singapore, Australia & New Zealand: The True Singaporean Foodie Experience

Yesterday Emily and I took a personal day and went to Sentosa Island. I'm not sure if we're a bunch of sickos, but we proceeded to eat spicy Indian food on the beach at 88 degrees F. It was so nice to walk along the beach, with the cool waves splashing up onto our feet. No swimming for us; there were a ton of ocean freight-liners in the bay. Em got some sun while I laid in the shade, and then we had some ice cream:)

On our way home from the beach we stopped at the grocery store to pick up some items for the party we're throwing tonight. The food prices in the grocery store are absolutely ridiculous! We paid $7.50 for a box of brownie mix (that's about $6 USD). Granted, that's a specialized item that's imported from the US but food prices are generally inflated here compared to what I'm used to.

We celebrated Valentine's Day by going to another of the happy hour events at Emily's work. They had three specialty drinks and we had the French Kiss (gin, St Germain, lemon, Champagne). Afterwards we went for dinner with two of Emily's coworkers, one from Singapore and the other from South Korea. Since we had a true Singaporean, he gave us the ultimate foodie experience by taking us to the Newton Hawker Centre. Hawker centres are basically open-air food courts. As I'm learning, food is a central part to the cultural identity of Singapore. Emily said when she first moved here, people were always asking her, "What did you eat for dinner last night? What did you eat for breakfast this morning?" Always an important topic of conversation among coworkers and friends.

I really pushed my boundaries by trying all of the foods bought for us at the hawker centre: sting ray, oyster omelette, squid, pork satay skewers, and sugar cane juice. Let me describe to you the foods...sting ray has a very soft texture and was pretty neutral, tasting like the spices used to prepare it. The oyster omelette just tasted like fried food. The squid freaked me out at first, and I had to work up my courage to eat it. It tasted a lot like a marinara sauce, and then the squid just took a long time to chew. Of course the pork was delicious, and the sugar cane juice tasted like sweet grass. Below are pictures of my newest foodie adventure, so proud:)