Singapore - Day 4

A Different Kind of Spa
The next morning, prior to leaving Sentosa island, we went for a spa treatment. Not exactly what you are used to, I doubt. How is it different? Well, we opted for the foot rub special, which starts out with you putting your feet into a pool that is filled with fish that nibble away your dead skin. Read their sign for yourself.


There were two pools to pick from, one with the Turkish fish, which are really tiny and the other with larger African Spa fish. I picked the latter, since Puffin looked fearful of the larger fish. What is eerie is how the fish swim towards you hungrily as you step near the pool's edge. I was afraid it was going to be ticklish and sure enough it was. There was nobody else in that particular pool so I got their full attention. If you close your eyes, it feels like your feet are in a bubbly sauna. It requires mind over matter.


Puffin is way more ticklish than I and kept lifting her feet from the pool. At one point she would only give them her heels. After 20 minutes of this we washed our feet and got 20 minutes of traditional chinese foot reflexology. It was painful at times and ticklish at others but an hour later my feet felt really good.


Now for Some Mental Exercise
Mahjong is a big time game here - a money game. Of course, I had to learn to play and jump in the family game. It is pretty complicated, but in essence it is like gin rummy on steroids. What makes it so complicated is depending upon whether you have certain "special" tiles (flower, wind) you can or cannot play certain combinations of suits. So, for example, with a flower tile you can combine three of a kind with three in a row in your hand. There are quite a lot of other rules that I won't go into. The goal is to go out and make as many points as possible. I cannot even begin to explain how you maximize your points - I am still learning that.


What makes it even more challenging is that I don't know Chinese, so I had to learn not only the symbols, but also their pronunciation since you have to announce your discards. This is an example of one of the suits - the symbols are one to nine, in order. You will be happy to know that I won money my first game (ok, I had my coach on my shoulder - thanks Puffin.)


Dinner at the Local "Food Court"
As you may have guessed by now, Singaporeans take their food very seriously. They have the benefit of a mix of Chinese, Malay, Indian and Indonesian food cultures, which seemingly multiplies the variety exponentially. Almost all food is eaten at what they call "Hawker Centers" which are open-aired food courts. You find a table and then go order various things.

First dish of the night is strangely called carrot cake - it is neither a cake nor does it contain carrots. Instead, it is a sauteed mix of turnips, egg, garlic and other vegetables. It is a nice, light dish.

This dish is called oyster egg and it exactly that: sauteed oysters and eggs held together with a sweet potato flour paste. I did not care for this too much - not much of an oyster fan.

The barbecued stingray was not what I expected. It was meatier than I expected for a fish, I quite liked it.

Barbecued chicken wings with curry sauce for dipping.