Text 1930, 100 rader
Skriven 2008-02-06 11:09:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: travelogue 814
======================
Steve had kindly offered to put a rollaway into his Royal
Ambassador suite to accommodate me (how else could I afford to
buy all those beers for folks?), and we toddled off to the
Inter-Continental, where we were greeted with an excellent
Shophouse suite overlooking the busy marketplace at Bugis
Junction. With two double beds plus a rollaway. I ended
up with my own double bed, which was with its feather duvet
and two gigantic pillows quite luxurious indeed. The only
downside to this was the news from Steve that I snore,
something that generations of young ladies have never had
the indelicacy to complain about.

Be that as it may, after an excellent night's sleep we went
to Banana Leaf Apolo, meeting Lori and two other colleagues
for an even more excellent lunch. The schtick of this place
is that you get a banana leaf, upon which they pile rice,
cabbage curry, and some weird red mixed vegetable and dal
thing (I forget exactly what, as I don't eat much of it,
the cabbage curry being so good); then you get your dishes
of real food to add to the mixture. Our real food:

Steve insisted on the yellow dal, despite my pointing
out that we got some dalish thing anyway; he was right, as
these are some of the best beans I've ever had.

Chicken masala was I don't know whose suggestion, but it
was excellent.

My suggestion was mutton masala, but as someone had already
ordered the above, I compromised with mysore mutton, which
is a spicy rather coarse dish of which I am quite fond. It
was as expected; I think some of us may have found it a bit
too too, but that meant all the more for me.

It is said that fish tikka was ordered, but I don't recall
seeing it. We also had a double order of the excellent
naan bread that they make here.

I had a big young coconut instead of beer, bearing in mind
the potential foie grassiness of my liver and the fact that
we were to run off to Southbank Thai for beer later in the
afternoon. Which we did. Lots of Tiger beer with Boris and
Alexa and his former boss Dave.

At length it was time to get our taxi to the main event at
No Signboard (we thought it would be a waste of time, and at
that point we thought time was of the essence, to go to the
Meridien and transfer to the bus that Sean the pilot had so
kindly booked for us). We actually got there early, got our
table set up, and went to town.

The ordering was done largely by Steve, who is a take-charge
sort of guy, and Karen Kay, a white girl who actually knows
a lot of Mandarin - more than I do, anyhow.

We ended with:

salt and spice pork, quite excellent, what I know as "pepper
and salty style," texture better than usual

fried chicken wings, quite nice

bok choy - the usual, very crisp, very good

butter prawns - the usual; Dave and I have this perennial
discussion of which is better, the butter prawns or his
favorite cereal prawns. The main differences are the butter
ones are skewered straight and coated with some kind of
cereal, whereas the cereal prawns are allowed to curl
naturally and are coated with some other kind of cereal
which is sweeter and with a vanilla note.

chili crab (2) - very good this time, not too sweet

black pepper crab (2) - very good this time, not too harsh.

We also had the dessert soup, which our host Sean insisted
on and which comes free for the asking.

I also sneaked the head of a cereal prawn from the adjacent
table to see if it was any different from before - it was
just as expected.

Lots of Tiger beer. S$40 each. The table(s) that got the
lobster salad paid maybe $10 more.

The oldsters at the Inter-Continental - Lori, Steve, and myself,
pooped out of the drinking party at Boat Quay and went home
to bed. At some point Steve fielded a call from one of the
youngsters about raiding minibars (Royal Ambassadors get
free minibar). He said to come on down but promptly fell
back asleep.

I spent much of the night fiddling with my tooth, worrying
it loose with the aid of minibar Chivas; eventually, at
around 6 in the morning, it came out, no blood, no pain.

___ Blue Wave/386 v2.30
--- Platinum Xpress/Win/WINServer v3.0pr5
 * Origin: Doc's Place BBS Fido Since 1991 docsplace.tzo.com (1:123/140)