Singapore Sling

I am in Singapore. The atmosphere today is balmy and dense enough to cradle the delicate scent of last night's tropical shower and dewy Frangipani. The cicadas deliver their nightly recitals diligently and peacocks cackle and coo at one another as if sharing a private joke. There are hundreds here at Sentosa Island, roaming freely, peacocks, peahens and a cavalry of chicks, these birds breed like rabbits. Nico and I have marveled at them daily. 

I am still trying to place her, Singapore that is, she is a familiar stranger, perhaps a hearkening back to my childhood spent in Hong Kong, her somewhat older and brassier cousin.

Singapore city is reminiscent of the metropolis dreamt up in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, it is the portal to the South East, a cultural hotpot: brothy, pungent and steaming with deliciousness. The Chinese dominate in terms of population but there is a profound and palpable respect between all the different nationalities in this city. The old and new worlds harmonize with one another. Raffles Hotel, resplendent in its late Victorian architecture still holds its own amongst the fierce and glacial sky scrapers that surround it.

If the food maketh the place then I have found my gastronomic Mecca, the fish head curry at Banana Leaf Apolo in Little India, is sublime, surprisingly fleshy albeit frightening to behold! xx

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