Gay Ear Candles and Yum Cha
When you live in a country you can get a bit lazy and out of the habit of leaving your “24” DVDs in the box and going out to do the tourist stuff. So a couple of weeks ago we decided to “do” Chinatown.
First stop, Temple Road. Lots of old shophouses, most of which are selling Chinese “antiques” that were probably made a couple of weeks ago. We went for lunch at Yum Cha’s, the most famous dim sum restaurant in Singapore. You enter through a small door and go up in the antiquated lift. We arrived at 12.15 and as lunch starts at 12 o’clock sharp in Singapore, with office workers pounding out of the door, jamming up the lifts and the girls tripping on their high heeled sandals in their eagerness to get at the fish ball soup, it was already heaving with Chinese families, wedding parties and the ubiquitous and stoic looking Filipina maids standing woefully to one side, literally left holding the baby and looking a bit hungry.
Yum Cha’s has the latest technology. At each table there is a wooden bar with buttons – one to call a waitress, one to ask for the bill, one to ask for extra rudeness. On Saturdays you can either order from the menu or take your chances with the 70s style stainless steel trolley that gets wheeled past your table full of steamers with unidentifiable dim sum. The lady comes up and lifts the lid, you peer inside and decide whether to go for it – will it be prawn, chicken, frog’s brains or gecko gizzard surprise?
On offer are stacks of dim sum (both the weird and the wonderful) and of course the all-present congee. There is no excuse for congee in a civilised society, which has the colour and texture of wallpaper paste and the taste of the devil’s underpants. For some reason, when faced with a whole smorgasbord of perfectly lovely scoff and a big bowl of grey sick, the locals go for the congee every time. They’re hooked on it. It is the engine of Singapore’s thriving economy. If Lee Kuan Yew banned it tomorrow, there would be riots (polite, terribly well organised ones) in the streets.
So, after dim sum, what does one do on a Chinatown day out? Clearly, the next stop should be gay ear candles.
Temple Street is full of spas and we wanted to have a go at hopi ear candles. So we wandered in to the first place we found and got ushered in to a dark room. As we waited, I noticed that the (male figure) anatomy chart on the wall went into unusual levels of detail around the groin area. Several men, with steroid biceps and little vests, walked past peering into the room, and seeing me, looked disappointed. Posters advertised massages for men by men only. Aha, it was a gay ear-candling we had signed up for.
Not to worry, Andy plays netball and listens to Beyonce so he was not fazed by this turn of events. Andy was flipped onto the very short bed, dutifully curled up in foetal position and bizarrely was given a large, cuddly, stuffed pig to hold. The ear-candler bloke lit a very long, hollow wax candle and put it in Andy’s ear, stroking his temples as the candle burned down. Change of sides, rearrangement of the pig, and candler-man continued until the candle had started to singe Andy’s ear-hair. Candler-man held the candle aloft and behold! it was full of gunky crap and Andy swore he could hear the insects talking and all sorts of stuff he’d been missing. He was allowed off the bed but only after candler-man had whispered in his ear “you come back for massage, massage very good here”.
We were in Chinatown again that night, at the request of Steve who refuses to pay S$15 for a beer at the bars in Clarke Quay when you can get a S$4 giant bottle of Tiger to wash the noodles down with. We found a Thai place on the edge of a night market and did some people watching. We were sat by the papier-mache mask making man, who makes traditional Chinese masks of gods and spirits and stuff, and in deference to modernity, a good selection of Spiderman masks as well.
As we sat scoffing Pad Thai, we heard the sound of multiple tinny ghetto blasters. The Japanese were coming. Just like in the 40s but without the bombs and stuff.
At every tourist spot in Singapore there are (very) old men trying to drum up business for their bicycle rickshaws. During the day they sit and drink strong lager and make rude remarks as you go past, but at night they are alert and ready to trundle you round Singapore. Their unique selling point is that each has a tinny ghetto blaster playing Chinese pop, all turned on to max. This seems to attract elderly Japanese ladies on coach tours for some reason, but no-one else. So down they came, past papier-mache man, past the shouty German man yelling about his cakes, past the pig’s organ soup stall… a long line of whitening-product-junkie, designer-clad Japanese ladies filed past, ghetto blasters each squawking out a different pop hit, all looking very serious, waving their fans but keeping face forward at all time like the queen during a particularly solemn state event.
On the walk out of Chinatown, near the Buddha Tooth Temple (the Buddha had very holy teeth), there was a special act doing his thing on a hastily constructed stage – a face-changer. A guy in a mask, a floppy hat and a highwayman’s cloak was flouncing around the stage to music, and every now and then, there would be a big arm flourish, and his face would change! This is bona fide magic, and I know this because when I was bored in the Philippines one evening I watched a Korean show about face changers (with sub-titles). The crew followed a face-changer about his daily routine, and undertook a full investigation, but there was no trickery to be found! It is in fact magic.
Filled with wonder from oriental trickery, and with much-improved hearing, we wandered back to Robertson Walk. See what you can experience if you leave Jack Bauer to his own devices?
Jo 7 August 2007
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Really looking forward to our trip to Singapore later in the year, particularly the gekko gizzard surprise and the bowls of grey sick. Can’t wait!
Wendy Harvey # Aug 7
But why would you want to leave Jack Bauer to his own devices?!
Sarah # Aug 7