Singapore was like a shiny, airconditioned Paradise after dirty, crowded China. Not too hot. Polite. Organised. Relaxing. Perfect.

The kids and I spent 45 mins circling just one food hall, with our mouths open and huge saucer eyes – like little lost country cousins. The food in Singapore is AMAZING. Better than Hong Kong because there is so much more variety. And everything looks like a vogue photoshoot. Eaty Eaty Eaty.
There was a patisserie next to the hotel that sold the most luscious, perfect strawberry cream eclairs – Molly and I ate 5 in 3 days. Jack ate nasi goreng at every opportunity. I ate clean, recognisable, delicious Hainanese chicken rice everyday. The both ate Indian food for breakfast – idli and dosa.
When we weren’t stuffing our cakeholes we did some very passive tourism. We went to the zoo for a day which was fabulous. And the orchid gardens. And that was it. The rest was just stumbling about gobbling. And swimming.
We had one particularly lovely lunch at a place in the gardens that we’d been before. I had a watermelon, olive, feta heirloom tomato salad to start. Mouse had beef carpaccio with truffle oil, “not as good as Dadda’s”;. Jack had gravalax. Then the kids both had perfect roast chicken with carrot puree and I had roasted baramundi in duck consomme. Mouse insisted I take a photo of her empty plate because ‘she NEVER eats everything.” Perfect service, not very expensive (compared to some crappy meals in China).

What a lovely little Emperor and Empress. This is at Jumbo in Hong Kong – so it’s completely out of order, but the photos are so cutey-cutey.

I particularly like Jack’s ‘regal’ face. He promises he would be kind to his peasants. At first.

The Sichuan food is pretty intense. Very spicy – but aromatic and floral spicy. But it’s hard going for 6 days – very oily and EVERYTHING is spicy. We were craving something ‘not-Chinese’ to eat – like bread and cheese, and getting depressed about how filthy and foul everything is. Stayed at the Sofitel – absolutely filthy. Everything – everywhere. Went swimming – men coughing/snotting and spitting into the pool – etc, etc.
So we went to Carrefour (which is a European supermarket chain).
And a big fat rat ran across the aisle over Jack’s foot. Not fun. I thought he was going to cry.

Beautiful scenery. Fresh air. Lots of trippy bugs and creatures. but no snakes/monitor lizards = good. In the photo I am pretending to enjoy cable cars more than I really do.

It had a lovely smile, and it was delicious.

Here are a couple of action shots of Chinese food. The first one is Molly crunching a Sichuan pepper corn unexpectedly, resulting in squealing, then numbness and tingling and a lot of huffing and puffing and whistling. The second is Jack eating a type of steamed daikon thing. He said, “It tastes like a solid fart”.

We saw the Leshan Buddha – very cool. A thousand years old – 100 years to build.

After Shanghai we flew to Chengdu (on a tiny, crappy plane that sounded a) like a tractor, and b) like it was changing gears and struggling the whole time. Jack and I held hands and ground our teeth the whole flight).

Chendu is a medium big city – about 13 million. High in the mountains. It’s a very nice city. We were there for 6 days and the weather was great for a couple of days, because it had rained – then the smog settled again. The highlight of Chengdu is the PANDAS. Which are every bit as awesome as you’d think. They smell like honey and rice and they are playful and clumsy and fat. I could watch them all day.

The research center is in beautiful grounds and its very well organised and efficient. We watched a film about artificial insemination which was brilliantly euphemistic and coy. “When pandas, like humans, become 15 they dream of having a girlfriend and falling in love” … who knew 🙂

PANDA TIME OMG

They smell like rice and honey.

‘Great Wall Cab Merlot’ – tasted like a $6 bottle of red. Not too bad. Heavy advertising around their fledgling wine industry. But it’s not widely drunken. If you order wine here you get a clear, 55% liquor, which I think is made from rice … or sorghum … ? It tastes like sake and it’s great for sterilising wounds.