Singapore-Day 3

This morning I woke up quite content with myself and the previous nights chocolate indulgent activities, this is when I realised that I was singing (my parents would probably describe it as screaming) the words of a number of songs including Joseph's Technicolored Dream Coat (with new and interesting colors), Bohemian Rapsody, Thinking Out Loud and Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Anyway, after visiting the breakfast buffet, for a less full breakfast following last night, we went to the famous Orchard Road (really, famous? I hear you ask) (via the metro), which was made famous due to the high number of malls on the one road. These malls looked like this.

                                  

       

                                  

                                  

The visits to these malls were both interesting and successful from my perspective.  Interesting because of the size of the malls and successful because I got some great clothes and a new pair of shoes. Towards the end of the trip to the last mall we stopped in at another famous place (oh really?), except this time it was a food court and it served authentic food - it had handmade noodles, numerous drinks carts, and different meats being cooked,

       

I myself had a bowl of cold roast chicken lying in a bed of spring onion and broth accompanied by a miso soup and a portion of rice, this food was accompanied with some ribena. After returning to the hotel and just chillaxing we went out to (unaware at the time) the best dining experience I have had ever! We went to a restaurant called Nox which in latin translates to night.  From the small clue I just gave you, one of you may have gathered that when at Nox you dine in the dark. Just take that in a moment and imagine having dinner in the pitch black with only my sense of smell and (now impaired) sense of taste. It's funny I should mention impaired because the waiters/waitresses/guides are all blind or visually impaired. Hopefully now you've made the connection between seeing impaired and Nox meaning night (aaahhh). Anyway, what they do is they tell you the concept downstairs which is that you will have your food in the dark and at the end guess what you just ate, Each course comes with four dishes in individual sample bowls placed on our plate like a clock at 3,6, 9 and 12 o'clock and there are three courses: Appetiser, Main and Dessert. At the start of the pitch black experience my guide (Fabian) leads me up the stairs and to our table.  You can feel the back of the chair and the table.  Once I sat down Fabian gave me a large bottle of water and said "Pour yourself some water" which I cautiously proceeded to do. I took off the twist off cap, felt for my glass, lined it up and started to pour, apparently around the halfway mark was when I started to miss the glass and hit my inner thigh....... So for the rest of the night I had to be the human clothes-line (and still I had an almost perfect night, They must be doing something right.)  It was fun trying to guess what we were eating.  We always started cautiously, feeling it with our fingers, smelling before tasting it.  The desserts were easy - mango gelato, passionfruit sauce, strawberries and icecream, tiramisu and banoffee pie in chocolate sauce.  The appetisers and mains were more difficult.   Rocket and parma ham salad was easy.  Smoked fish and croutons was eel.  Roast pork and apple, roast duck and mashed potatoes was also familiar.  Interestingly at the end of the night what I believed to be pork turned out to be cow stomach, and what I thought was a poached egg turned out to be fraguar (or liver) with figs & honey. All in all it was a great day and I'm looking forward to tommorrow. Bye.

Joseph Hewson