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I can’t help but wonder how the older generation in Singapore keeps from falling over from the dizzying rate of change here. Whole sections of the city get a complete revamp within the span of a few months, so someone with a number of decades under their belt must feel that they’re living on a movie set, or riding through years on some weird escalator. (Like that scene in “The Time Machine” where buildings go up, then down and a mountain forms … )
As a frequent visitor, I’m astounded every visit by what’s new, what’s different and what’s not here anymore. What was once a down-at-heel, funky local hang-out area becomes an up-scale riverside collection of pricey restaurants. Bargain shopping districts have been replaced with Disney-esque facsimiles in ice cream colors selling designer handbags and hand-painted silk table runners.
While Arab Street still maintains a semblance of antiquity, one whole section behind the mosque is now a fancy-schmancy pedestrian shopping area, and there are more Starbucks to be found than old-style coffee bars where your to-go container is a plastic bag with a straw.
Years ago, I used to love the Satay Club … a noisy, smokey, bustling outdoor collection of tables and food stalls with the best chili crab in Asia. Since it closed down a number of years ago, Newton Circus was my hawker’s center of preference. Hundreds of touts selling everything one needs for a fabulous Asian meal mill around, competing for orders, promising “the best” mee, satay, seafood, and on and on and on.
We’d been looking forward to a dinner at Newton, and saved it for the night we’d have Shelley with us. As familiar as an old shoe, we were so ready to make our way through the densely packed throng to our preferred section of this outdoor dining area, then order from our favorite stalls.
Quite a surprise when the taxi pulled up to a brand-spanking-new, oh-so-very cutsie, can’t-even-smell-the-charcoal, Newton Circus. Yep. It’s been modernized and looks like it could be sitting somewhere between Frontier Land and the Swiss Family Robinson Tree House. Yikes!
Sam didn’t notice much in the way of difference, as we managed to find the live crabs. Very kid-friendly, the man with the crab stall was still willing to let him get up close and personal with someone’s dinner-to-be, so we were pleased that the changes were mainly superficial. On our way out, we even spotted a favorite hawker from the old Bugis Street center … another renovated-almost-beyond-recognition area that’s rather lost its soul since its re-do.
As fast as it changes, some things can be found to be much the same. Good old Singapore …
When we went back in 2000, we were very dissapointed that the Satay club was no longer there. Our friends took us to Newton Circus and we were relieved to see that the food was fabulous at their favorite hawker. From Singapore we went to Kuching and were so looking forward to eating at the seafood stalls just up the hill from the Borneo Hotel. What we found instead was an oh so new and westernised housing development and office complex. We found some other good places but none came up to the quality of our lost seafood paradise. We were so thankful that the old ice kichan and noodle kiosk was still going strong on the grounds of the old anthropological museum. That day we we got to see a grandma bring her “american gradchildren” there and share with them a much loved place from her own childhood. I inderstand that both the old museum and the kiosk are now long gone. Siva was just back in Malaysia. Thank god that the Central Market in KL is still there and you can still walk around the corner from there to a kadai kope and still get murtabok with a good kope or a teh tarik.
Jane,
My mail to you keeps bouncing back. What’s up with that?
Had murtabek and teh tarik for breakfast yesterday. yummmmmmmm
Sandra, I saw your note about mail bouncing back. Are you using my old address through the school district?? That account got closed on Aug. 23rd, my first day of retirement. You need to use the new, Frontiernet address I gave you. Jane