Prohibition Days

Dec. 31 

We wandered into a few prohibition zones yesterday--no meat at one place, no alcohol at another. 

And not one person was a Californian or a Methodist. Close, maybe, but not exactly. 

Larry is leaving Singapore Tuesday afternoon, so he joined us for his last afternoon and evening in town. We had planned to try lunch at the Maxwell Road hawker center, but there were lines for everything and no space at the tables. 

If you walk out the main entrance of the center onto South Bridge Road, you see the Buddha Tooth temple almost directly across the street. This gives Harry an idea. “I’ve read that there is a vegetarian restaurant somewhere in the building.” 

OK, so we go ask, and find that it’s in basement 1. There are four basements and maybe five upper floors, all accessible by a lift. They speak Brit English here, and the word is a lot shorter than “elevator.” 

The temple is a very new building, a dozen years old or so. The relic around which the temple was built came to Singapore within the past 20 years. There are purported relics of the cremated remains of Siddhartha Gautama in many places around the East. There are only two tooth relics. The other is at a temple in Sri Lanka. 

Anyhow, this is a new building and doesn’t pretend to be old. Hence, four basements and a bank of elevators (or lifts). 

The restaurant has steam trays with various dishes. Joanna and I ate at the restaurant in the monastery on Lantau Island, and it served some of the tastiest vegetarian food I ever had. 

Among the three of us, we tried everything. I thought it was great. Joanna had to pass on a couple of dishes because they were chilied up a bit. There was seaweed soup, stews of mushroom, and green beans. Other stuff too but I lost track. Beer would have gone very well with it. But there was no beer. 

The restaurant also seems to serve as the canteen for the monks. A couple of them came in and ordered veggie selections over rice. 

In Thailand, the monks aren’t supposed to eat after noon until the next morning. The dietary laws must differ from place to place. I also noticed that the monks ordering food wore shoes. they go barefoot in Chiang Mai.

After lunch, we got Larry to admit that the food was OK. 

Joanna and I decided to go to the fourth floor to see the tooth. Larry went across the street to the hawker center for a quick beer. 

The relic is in a glass-enclosed chamber dressed and paved in gold. You enter a large anteroom with its own shrines, and then make your way around to the window where you can see the relic on display. 

I wasn’t sure what I was seeing until I found a photo of the relic up close. It looks like an aged piece of ivory or calcium bound in a large finger ring with a gem. It seems too large to be a human tooth, but I’m no dentist and can’t be sure. 

One of the features of the antechamber is a place where pilgrims can kneel for prayer with a monk. Joanna asked if I wanted to try it for the benefit of my feet, but I declined. 

It was maybe two in the afternoon, and all the bars on Mosque Street had yet to open, so we shared a large bottle of Tiger outside the Szechuan restaurant at the Dragon Court. 

We wandered in the direction of the laundry shop, and stopped at Perfecto for a couple of beers. The ladies who work at this restaurant were our guides to the laundry on Friday. In fact, one of them recognized us as we walked through the plaza and came out to wave. 

We brought the stuff back to the Dragon Court and then cabbed to Bali Lane. 

Now, we were back in Larry’s territory. He had come here in the morning to a tattoo parlor called Hounds of the Baskervilles, which also has a thriving business of giving shaves and haircuts. Very popular. The customers were lined up outside. 

The Beerhouse, despite the name, was disappointing. The beer selection was no wider than you’d find at the average restaurant--Tiger, Asahi, Heineken, the syrupy-sweet locally made Guinness, and Stella Artois. 

Anywhere I have gone in Asia, good, healthy ales are few and far between. 

Don’t recall what I drank at the Beerhouse. 

We strolled through Haji Lane, which is lined with small shops selling clothes and  accessories. According to one website, it is “a fashionista’s paradise” in the Muslim Quarter. Larry took a shot of Joanna and me with Haji Lane in the background. 

There was a place on the sidewalk with benches. The wall behind them declared it an alcohol-free zone. 

We saw a sign for “ordinary-looking baby squid but still delicious anyway.” Can’t pass that up, so we went inside to try some. They were, in fact, very tasty, and so were the sweet potato fingers. Don’t recall the beer here either, probably Tiger. That’s about the best you can do in most places here. I can drink it, but it’s still too reminiscent of American Budweiser for my taste. 

It tasted much better with the food than without. 

We were looking for a place where Joanna could eat, but the area was all curry shops. She told us not to worry.  “No, I can at least eat the bread.” So we wound up at a Halal restaurant across the street from the neighborhood mosque. 

I was a big intersection. One of the roads was called Arab Street. Traffic was flowing in all directions. At least half the ladies were wearing head scarves. 

We went in because the place was offering venison. We ordered that and mutton biryani. The biryani was too hot for Joanna, but the prata (a buttery unleavened bread) and the venison were fine for her. 

The venison was diced with onion and served cooked inside a thin wrapper of bread. 

The side dishes were a spicy masala for the venison and dahl (similar to a thick lentil soup) for the biryani. Biryani and dahl are one of my favorite combinations. 

The only thing missing was beer. There were signs all over the place saying that pets and alcohol were forbidden. Most of the women eating there had head scarves. 

After dinner we went back go Bali Lane. The food may have been Halal at the restaurant, but the restroom was hardly Kosher, and we needed to use the facilities somewhere. Anywhere. 

At the first bar we came to on Bali Lane, a guy came out to ask for our business. “Do you have a restroom?” “Do you want to buy a drink?” “If you have a restroom, we’ll buy a drink.” Done deal. 

It was remarkably clean. 

I think the bar was called Pure Blonde and I think we shared a pitcher of the house brew called Pure Blonde. And it was an appropriate name. It was OK, but not out of the ordinary. It had an inoffensive flavor and was hoppy enough, but it was still Pure Blonde. 

The coolest thing about the experience for me is that we’re sitting drinking beer and listening to the amplified prayers being chanted at the mosque two blocks away. Harry was pretty sure then that he was someplace else. 

That was it for me in the Casbah. It was a short cab ride back to Mosque Street and a short time before I was out. Joanna, of course, was doing just fine. 

The photo of the day is a poor shot of the Sultan Mosque, across from the Halal restaurant. The light on the tower changes color, but I caught it in Moslem green. I believe evening prayers were in progress, amplified across the neighborhood. I fancied that I could make out “Allah akbar,” but can’t be sure. 

Happy new year to everyone, and to everyone good night. 

Dec. 31 

Assuming this matters, Grasshopper and friends:

Beer at Beerhouse: San Miguel on draft.

Beer with the baby squid: Estrella de Galicia (from northwest Spain).

The three-quarters side view of a very ugly face,  further ruining a not very good picture: me.

You also neglected to mention that I actually got a haircut and straight razor shave earlier in the day at that very funky-cool, hipster barbershop/tattoo parlor, which was how I found that area.

Great seeing you and Joanna and have a happy new year in Singapore. 

Hopefully, you'll be somewhere where they serve alcohol. 

Larry