The World is My Oyster

To close my day I’m posting this short post on QQ Rice Ball! Boy I AM hungry right now, at this very second! Hence the post. It somehow soothes me to see pictures of food when I can’t have any.

On a side note, I’ve been extremely busy the past weeks or so. Moved house and all. So I have good reason :). Believe me, I’VE BEEN EATING. Wish I have all the time in the world to show all of them! Anyway, let’s just make do with whatever we have kay.

I knew about this place first time from Joice, who is a fan of food show on TV. I myself don’t really watch TV. But these pictures were taken the second time I went there to pick up Passion Run running pack with Waiming. Story about that another time. In short I ran 5km at East Coast and it wasn’t so bad, I should run more often.

When you try to find the place, keep in mind that the stall entrance is outside, not inside the building. The stall is very small, so most of the time you can only have take-outs. They did have 2 tiny tables with 2 tiny chairs for each table the last time I went there, and one of them was empty so we sat and ate, while praying that the chairs wouldn’t crumble into pieces in the middle of savoring our rice ball.

So this is how it works. You pick your choice of rice (out of 6: purple rice, brown rice, mixed grain rice, wheat germ brown rice, red rice, and ice lake wild rice) and 5 fillings (out of 46: a few types of floss, some types of meat, vegetables, etc), then they will put the fillings inside the rice and makes it into a rice ball (although it’s more of an oval than a ball or onigiri shape).

It’s all about the fillings! I had a good time choosing what I wanted! First time I went there there was quite a long queue, so everybody picked up a piece of paper that they provided at the entrance which has list of the fillings with tick boxes on the side. You can then (try to) make up your mind while waiting. Second time I went there, it was quite empty, so we could just point.

Before we go to the rice ball, there’s reason why I chose this place out of many on my to-show list.

Me with short hair! +D

My hair actually looks pretty fine here, hence the need to show it ;D. Other times it can look weird. It’s mighty comfortable, but I think I start to miss my long hair..

Nuff with the hair! Let’s go to the rice balls!

I tried the mixed grain rice first time (because they ran out of purple rice, the one I wanted!), and second (finally) the purple rice. I love the purple rice!

YUMMY! I don’t really remember what I chose for the fillings. I think it’s dried spicy shrimp, mushrooms, crispy yellow beans, omelet egg, and floss.

This one is Waiming’s piece.

According to them, it’s best to mix dry (e.g. crispy yellow beans, meat floss) and wet juicy fillings (e.g. emperor vegetables, minced chicken meat). If you can’t make up your mind, you can order the recommended package ones. Personally I think you’d lose all the fun that way.

SO HUNGRY!

The rice ball cost from S$3.20-S$3.90. Add $1 for a drink (purple rice drink, soya purple rice, milk purple rice, etc). Add 80c for pudding (purple rice or mixed grain pudding). Tried the soya purple rice drink and purple rice pudding. The soya purple rice drink was so-so. It wasn’t cold and they didn’t have the (plain) purple rice drink that I wanted *disappointed mode here*. Come on, they should really prepare enough stock for everything! First time they ran out of purple rice. Second time they didn’t have any other drinks apart from soya purple rice and it wasn’t even cold! Not enough effort to satisfy customers I’d say.

I didn’t have a good picture of the whole rice ball. I found good ones here by Camemberu. Really wish I can have the rice ball now…

QQ RICE BALL
10 Sinaran Drive
Novena Square 2 #01-06
Singapore
www.qq-rice.com

Plus: Yummy rice balls! Love it! Note that this depends on how you can mix and match the fillings…

Minus: They seemed to always run out of stock of something. First was the purple rice, second was ALL drinks except for one!

Back to Singapore for a bit, a few weeks ago I went with Blue Water Volunteers for a ReefWalk at Kusu Island. Seriously, I need to write this up NOW otherwise I’ll start forgetting the details! (already started happening)

We met up at Marina South Pier (near Harbourfront) to catch a ferry to the island at 5am in the morning! Yea it was still all dark. I’ve never been to this Pier before, it looks pretty cool, reminds me of the Southern Cross Station in Melbourne.

We were divided into 4 or 5 groups with about 10 participants and 1-2 volunteers each. Not long after, we got into the ferry. Took us about half an hour to reach the island.

While we were in the ferry, it started raining. Great. Things to remember for your next outdoor activity: BRING SOMETHING IN CASE IT RAINS! Be it umbrella, poncho, parachute jacket, hat, whatever. Anything to help than to have nothing at all. We all thought that it wouldn’t rain that day because it was raining heavily the whole day the day before that. You’d think the clouds had run out of water, but noooo. Lucky I grabbed my disposable poncho just before I left the door, I was really going to leave it. But the rest of the party had almost nothing. Among the 12 people in my group, only me and my friend Callista brought disposable ponchos (who later she gave to Joice, my housemate), 3 people who were all ready with their comfortable strong parachute jackets, and another 3 girls who shared 1 big poncho like a tent. Oh, Joice brought a small umbrella which she lent to the rest of the people (all 4 of them). So yea they got pretty drenched at the end. Don’t forget that wind on beach can be COLD! Rain and wind with wet shoes… you can imagine. But anyway before we get to that part, we had very nice time, which I’m going to start now (nuff with all the complaints).

When we got to the island, it was almost pitch dark. And great thing was they forgot to tell us to bring torchlight in the prep email. So to emphasize how dark it was, I have to show you this:

That pathetic light is the one torchlight we had in the group which one of the volunteer brought.

Talking about volunteers, our group went with June (right below) and Regina (left below). Oh right, I have to tell you that all the pictures starting from this point were taken by Waiming, because I didn’t bother to take my camera out of the ziplock with the rain and all.

I found the girls nice, knowledgeable, and quite professional. It’s always nice to see people passionate about what they’re doing. June is actually a graduate from some kind of Marine Biology degree, so it’s her area. Regina assisted June. I saw her studying some papers on the way to the island. She either studied about the reef walk or exam :).

We waited under the shade for around 15 minutes before finally deciding to embark to the wilderness of the beach. The rain got better by that time although it was still showering. But we got no choice, it’s either walking under the rain or no walk at all. This kind of reef walk can only be done once a month, in early morning, during low tide. A few people were reluctant to go and get drenched, but everybody decided to go ahead at the end.

So this is the very early shot of seaweed we found all over the sand. I remember there are a few types: green, red, black? I almost forgot everything they told me by now :(.

It was pretty dark for the first 20 minutes or so, so it was quite hard to catch anything with bare eyes and no torchlight. But it brightened after a while and the view was great.

There were a lot of this purplish ‘thing’. It reminds me of cloth you use to clean kitchen. A bunch of clothes. By the way those shoes in the corner are mine. So obviously I just stood around pointing to things which I think Waiming should take pictures of.

I call this the baby purplish thing:

Some kind of alien-like object:

Take notice of that diving shoe in the corner. That’s the best shoes you could wear during this kind of activity. I saw some at the army market before and they were pretty cheap too (~S$20). But I guess the quality and prices always range.

I feel like I’m supposed to at least know whether the stuff I’m showing here animals or plants, because our guides kept asking us that trivia. They later explained things to us. But now I’m just blank like a white paper. I mean of course I know crabs are animals, but how about that purplish thing and that alien-like object? I have no clue. My wild guess will be plants.

Joice kept asking the guide whether so and so can be eaten or not. Any sea creatures must watch out…

This was what we did almost the entire time. Looking down. Searching for something interesting. When somebody found something, they’d first ask the guide, if it was truly interesting. If it was, then the guide would ask everybody in the group to come closer and pay attention while they were explaining why it was interesting. Not seldom that we had false excitement over a plank of wood or some dirt in the sand.

Nice view right? The rubbish-bag looking plastic we wore were the disposable ponchos. It was really annoying to hold it against the wind. Not advisable to wear it to the beach or anywhere with wind.

Another alien-like object. Looks like giant mushroom.

We (by we, I mean June or Regina) caught a few animals this way. They brought a couple of empty containers with them so we could temporarily catch them, show to everyone, have short talk or discussion about it, then free them back to the wilderness.

We got to see a couple of types of crab, which I can’t remember now. I think there were moon crab and another type. There was also hermit crab. But hermit crab is not exactly a crab. Well, at least not the crab that we usually eat. They’re the tiny crab-like creatures who use empty seashells for their houses. In my primary school time in Jakarta, some people sold these poor hermit crabs to kids, who often bought them home and fed them rice (including me). They’d usually die in a few days. Sometimes the pimp showed off their hermit crabs by having them pull tiny cart and all sort of other things. Now that I think about it, it’s really quite barbaric.

Another interesting type of crab is Fiddler crab, which has one claw much bigger than the other. On that beach they usually gather at one spot and we could see them from afar. Then they would look like they’re waving to us. But we didn’t get to see them that morning. Probably because of bad weather.

Unknown crab. Pretty big one. We also got one tiny one and when we released it back, the guides kept telling us not to blink. Apparently it dig a hole in the sand and disappeared in the blink of an eye.

Coral that reminds me of beehive.

This is a good example of 2 organisms (the top dome and the bumpy things below it) fighting for space. Or whatever it was they needed in the middle. I think the dome was supposed to be winning.

View of the beach area. During high tide the water would go up to the mud line we see in the picture.

The greener side of the coast.

The poor fish was stuck on the dry land (only about the size of our middle finger). So we saved it. But before that we took picture of it first ;)

Group photo at the end of the day. As you can see most of us were pretty drenched. And for me the last half hour or so was very cold due to all the wetness and wind. My rubbish-bag-like poncho could only do so much. I can’t imagine the folks that were totally wet from head to toe. So message to all, be more prepared if you do any outdoor activity!

There can only be so many you can capture on camera. There were a lot of other things we saw that you didn’t see here. Snails on rocks. Small little fish. Oysters. Shrimps. Sea cucumber, which I touched for the first time. It’s long, black, and furry. Felt like touching big short snake with carpet-like fur. It looks like this (picture stolen from Naked Hermit Crab blog). Good way is to go see them yourselves ;).

We finished around 9am and sort of had to rush back to the ferry. It was still raining all the way through. I thought we would have time to go to the temple, which I heard had giant tortoise statues and ponds full of live tortoises. I did see one small pond with many tortoises inside (which I couldn’t take picture of, because of, again, the rain). I would want to go there again next time and take some time to explore the temple and other part of the island.

I know my post has not been the most informative about marine life. I found this blog quite comprehensive. I think he’s one of the volunteer for Naked Hermit Crab, another group of volunteers who lead this kind of nature walk at Singapore’s shores like Sentosa, Chek Jawa, Pulau Semakau, Kusu Island. The last few posts were on Sentosa, which I first thought couldn’t be so beautiful, but I could be proven very wrong.

Anybody who’s interested to go, here or other places, can ask me to go with you :). I love nature walk. Nature is fascinating.

1. The three types of seaweeds are green, red and brown.
2. Both the purplish baby thing and the alien looking thing are animals. (!!) The former is a type of soft coral while the latter is a hard coral.
3. The crab, that your guides had caught and shown the group, is commonly known as the flower crab. This crab can be eaten and the best way to cook it is to steam it, and dig the meat into light soy sauce.

Thanks Peter! :)

Reef Walk with Blue Water Volunteers
Kusu Island, Singapore
www.bluewatervolunteers.org/reefwalk

Time: 5am-9am
Cost: $15

Following my post on Southeast Asia trip, I will also post reviews on all the backpacker hostels that we stayed in. Finding a good backpacker hostel is like finding a piece of gold in a fresh water river in area where people don’t usually find gold. Well okay, it’s not that bad. But it does take a lot of luck to find a decent one. If I could help my fellow backpackers in sharing my experiences, I would, so hopefully less people would fall into a series of unfortunate events. On the other hand, if you always long for a little extra adventure, you can always random pick those hostels and cross fingers you wouldn’t get bitten by bed bugs ;).

Anyway, I love backpacker hostels. I had more stories there than I could ever had staying at big hotels. I met other fellow travelers who share their amazing stories, people who hang on the Lonely Planet book like a bible just like I did, carrying maps, big backpacks, and look like they’ve been on the road for a long time. It smells freedom.

The more interesting stories I had were the ones where I stayed for more than a few days because by then I had met more people and recognized faces. But I also had a lot of one-nights. I would say the experience that you get heavily depends on how long you stay at one place, like everything else in life, country, city, workplace, someone’s heart, and so on.

Enough chit-chatting!
So on my trip to Singapore, I stayed at Bugis Backpackers for 3 nights, located just ever so conveniently close to Bugis MRT station. No hostel can be any closer to MRT station. Moreover, it’s Bugis, which is quite central in Singapore island. The hostel is just opposite of Bugis Junction, a few shops beside KFC to the right.

To ease your entry, I provide you with a picture of the main gate:

So yea you mark it by the SHARED name board just along the shops area. See the door? Go through that door to the upper floors. Like other backpacker hostels, you usually have to arrange the time beforehand if you arrive at late hours. I did. So far I met one chubby woman and one old man at the front desk and they’re all nice.

Rooms have no windows. According to my research, backpacker hostels in Singapore are generally windowless and have only shared bathrooms. For $20-35 range of price anyway. But both room and bathrooms were reasonably clean. Oh and there was air-con too. I purposely chose air-con rooms for my entire trips in Asia where possible, because I couldn’t imagine the heat I had to endure without air-con (Note that that time I’ve stayed in 4 seasons country for many years without ever touching tropical countries once during. These days I’m (more) okay with the tropical heat. It’s just a matter of getting used to.) They also have hot shower. Same reason with why I chose air-con room. I was from ang-moh country where hot shower is NECESSITY and NOT luxury.

I stayed in a double bedroom which cost about 32 SGD per person. I saw their dorm room and the store room was inside the dorm room, so every time someone needed something from the storage, they needed to go in and out. O well, what do you expect from a dorm room.

They have shared (obviously) kitchen and fridge where you can put your food IF you want to ;)

The living room was pretty dark, although colorful, dark colors. But maybe because I always saw it at night =9. In daytime they could open the windows so there’d be more sunlight. There was one computer for Internet in the corner which you can use for a cost. Travel brochures were everywhere.

I took this picture from the hostel:

This view was the one they used on photo they put on some websites to attract people (it definitely attracted me). Note that this is NOT the actual hostel. It’s the VIEW FROM the hostel. Although they also have some circular staircases and colors on the wall, so I guess they don’t exactly trick people.

Bugis Backpackers
162B Rochor Road, Bugis Village
Singapore 188437
www.bugisbackpackers.com

My duration of stay: 3 nights

Plus: Location is totally convenient. Room and bathrooms were moderately clean.

Minus: No breakfast. Room had no windows. It did have a big air hole at the ceiling so you can hear people from upstairs if that’s of your interest.

I went to the army market last Sunday with Waiming and Callista to buy hiking gears (going tomorrow!). Then we found this precious hidden gem just right in the heart of Beach Road hawker’s center. (How to find a good food stall Singapore way: find the ones with longest queue, then start queuing too even when you’re not sure what you’re queuing for)

I present you:

Note the “ang moh desserts” text in the corner. I saw an ang moh there, so I guess the name board doesn’t just bluff ;)

Look! Real ang moh!

And this is all what we’ve been waiting for:

THE WAFFLES! Yes people, they were as good as they look. SOOOO YUMMY!! The gelato and chocolate dip are nice too! Oh man I keep drooling for the past week when ever I think about these waffles. They’re sweet, crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. I can taste the rum in the chocolate and the gelato is light. *DROOL*

(If you see the red camera in the background, that’s mine. Waiming happened to take better picture of the waffles so I used his photo. Everybody thank Waiming! ;)

A peek on the menu: (all prices in SGD)
Waffle $1.80
Waffle + Gelato $3.60
Waffle + Chocolate dip $2.50
Gelato $1.80

They also have some more expensive packages such as fondue (around $7) and family packages. Will try the fondue the next time I go there. But the waffle is the definite winner!

While queuing I saw a fat guy with a mountain of waffles on his table. I could only imagine I had a mountain of waffles. Lucky fat guy! Maybe the next time I’ll have TWO waffles! I registered on their website and supposedly I should get a free waffle or gelato for my next visit with my loyalty card. So that’s my extra waffle. I have reason to eat more muahahaaa!

The Sweet Stone Parad’Ice
Golden Mile Food Centre
505 Beach Road, #01-67/76
Singapore 199583
www.thesweetstone.com

Plus: WAFFLES WAFFLES HEAVENLY WAFFLES!

Minus: Nothing, they’re all good. Good service too, the guy suggested packages that ended up cheaper for us. But that could be because Waiming and I took pictures like food journalists wannabe. They should be nice to us just in case we publish the review on some famous blog *grin*.

In the Beginning

When I asked a few friends, looks like the most popular topic that everybody wants to see is the time when I backpacked around South East Asia in the beginning of 2006 for 30 days. I guess the fact that I was away for 4 weeks alone interests people. Moreover it wasn’t the time when I was jobless, I actually took leave from my job in Melbourne to go travel for that long. Aaww what a nice boss I had :)

Anyway, it took me about a month or two to do the research. But really, for me researching is already part of the trip. So it was all good fun. I specifically planned what to do day to day, including the predicted price of activities and all.

To summarize, I went from Melbourne to Singapore to Malaysia (KL, Penang, Langkawi) to Thailand (Chiang Mai, Bangkok) to Vietnam (Hanoi) and lastly to Hong Kong. I spent about $2000AUD for all the air tickets (bought from home, a bit steep cuz I flied from Australia) and another $2000AUD for everything else (which included a lot of shopping too). My travel partner and I actually spent every cent of that $2000. From our last stop in Hongkong back to Melbourne, we transited in KL for a few hours, and I couldn’t even buy fast food fries cuz we had only 2SGD and thousands of Vietnam Dong (that actually values very little). I did ask some money changers to change my 2SGD to Malaysian Ringgit, but they didn’t let me. Didn’t reach the minimum amount (Come on, what’s the big deal? Argh).

Obviously my posts will be in many many parts, separating places, restaurants, and hostels when I see fit. Unfortunately the journal that I managed to write about everything in details every day that time is now in my parents’ house in Sydney, so I’ll go through things from memory, existing pictures, and info from the net.

First Stop: Singapore

Okay one would ask why I chose to go to Singapore when a few months after that I would live there anyway. There were a few reasons. 1) My travel partner had never been to Singapore and he’d like to go there. 2) I had a lot of memories in Singapore :). I haven’t landed on it for 6 years long, so yea I wanted to see Singapore again. 3) That time I didn’t know that I was gonna go to Singapore to work in a few months time.

We arrived at Changi airport late at night at around 10pm. One cannot pass Singapore airport without being amazed about their free computer stations and internet. I was gonna blog here, but it was late and we sorta needed to rush.

You cannot see it here, but I was so excited to be in Singapore :D. I always have tingling feeling about the country. Long story :)
Anyway since I arrived near Chinese New Year, the airport got all decorated too. Having not seen anything Asian for a long time, I got all jumpy and excited. Seriously, I was excited about anything! The lanterns, the all-asian faces, the MRT, the food (omg the food), the snoopies in 7-Eleven, I was even excited to hear the Singaporean accent. We joked about the accent all the way through the entire month-long trip.

Forgettable Orchard

Subtitle is a bit misleading. Orchard is really not forgettable. In fact, for the first timers, you REALLY should go to Orchard Rd. I had my first love with Orchard Rd in Christmas eve 1998. That time was probably the first thing that struck me hard and later led me to be obsessed about seeing new places. It was totally different with where I’ve been in my entire life (first time going overseas, mind you, at the age of 17).

I said it’s forgettable because I can’t remember much about going here in this trip nor do I have pictures of this famous shopping haven. The only picture I have is this dome:

Interesting dome near Orchard MRT. We passed the dome a couple of times. I don’t know why and I don’t know why the dome is there. I have been living in Singapore for the past 10 months and I haven’t passed that dome again. Oh I think we hung around Borders at Wheelock place for a while being a bookworm that I am. Got all excited about Asian books. Was thinking to buy a couple of books but then realized that books are heavy and the prices weren’t really that different with ones in Australia or amazon (I found this fact applies to the all Asian countries I went to during the trip).

Colorful Clarke Quay

I went here following Cliff‘s suggestion.

Please don’t mind my penguin pose.

One thing I noticed about Singapore architecture is the colorful building! From touristy place to HDBs, a lot of them are colorful. Not as in artistically colorful, but simple flat colors, red blue green yellow.

To prove my point I will throw in a couple more pictures:

Note that the last two pictures are not in Clarke Quay, they’re just random buildings around Singapore.

I thought it was an interesting style. But then after that I heard from some Singaporean that the people are just lazy and they wanna save on paint.
O well, reasons don’t have to matter, do they?

Going back to Clarke Quay topic, we took a small junk boat to go along the river. Cost around ~7SGD from memory. It was raining a bit that time. But I could still manage to take some pictures.

Esplanade, also known as the Durian. That’s like the Sydney’s Opera House or Melbourne’s Art Center of Singapore. I watched Forbidden City there and it was really pretty inside.

It’s the symbol of Singapore, Merlion, half lion half mermaid. Freshly made by the Marketing Department of Singapore (no, seriously). For those of you who don’t know, “singa” means lion in Malay language, while “pura” means temple (the original name of Singapore is Singapura, read: see-ngah-poo-rah, so Singapura means temple of lion). The lion looks a bit stupid here. Somehow I always find the Merlion hilarious. Not only its figure, but also the name. They’re all sooo made up! LOL.

The silhouette looks so much better :)

After that we stayed around along the river, waiting for the night to come. I wanted to have the famous Singapore chili crab on the side of the river. I saw Singapore slingshot (not the drink). I think you can ride it for 30 SG bux. But I wasn’t interested because I rode it once in Melbourne. It was cool and all, but 30bux is a lot of money for 1 minute of thrill and excitement.

As soon as the sun set, we walked along the row of open air restaurants on the side of the river and chose one after many many “we serve the best crab” talk from all 20 restaurants that we passed (I actually listened to a lot of them!). Somehow they all bragged about serving Sri Lanka crabs. It’s probably the best crab of all crabs. They also said Indonesian crabs suck. Finally we chose one with a lot of big fish tanks displayed in front of their place. It gave us the illusion of fresh seafood. I picked my own crabs and prawns. Then we ate. No picture guys, sorry, we were so hungry, I could’ve eaten my camera. It was good but not yet the best crab I ever had. The best one so far was the ones I ate at No Signboard restaurant in East Coast. The crabs were gigantic, the chili sauce was heavenly, and the fried buns were out of this world! After I stay in Singapore though, the locals said all those touristy places don’t serve good crabs. The best one is at legendary Ang Mo Kio. So I’ll go there next time and try it for myself.

The view at Clarke Quay at night is really pretty with all the lights along the riverside. It’s worth going. If you don’t want to spend a lot of bucks on food, go for a drink. Too bad with my camera that time I couldn’t take nice pictures of the night view. Nighttime is so pretty and yet so difficult to capture *sigh*.

Man, it’s just the first day and already it’s taken me a long time to compile. I have no idea when I’ll finish this series.

Somewhere in March ’07 a group of friends and I went to Cosafe Maid Cafe in Chijmes (it’s a short distant walk from City Hall MRT). That night it happened to be school night, so all the waitresses (maids?) wore school girl outfit instead of French maid outfit.

To start, I kinda like the overall ambiance. But that’s probably Chijmes in general. Chijmes is pretty ;)

Okay this is the front door, but we didn’t go through it at all. In fact I wanna know what’s inside, because it looks so secluded. The seating area is outside, open air. I don’t know what they do if it rains.

I’m a bit disappointed on their uniforms. French maid is much more interesting than school girl. School girl is just.. dull.. ordinary.. and it reminds me about Lolita syndrome. Especially on Singaporean girls, who are mostly bonny skinny. Maybe it’s just me, but it looked like most guys that come to the place threw each other sheepish perverted smile and/or body language. As if they felt guilty to actually come to the cafe just for the girls. *roll eyes* This included our guy friends, mind you. SHAME ON YOU GUYS! :D

As a side note, I hate to disappoint you, but none of the maids was underage :). I heard the boss was 16 years old that like to cosplay though. That’s almost underage, isn’t it? So that’s how this cafe got to be. We saw the mother and the brother however. The boss was probably too busy cosplaying somewhere else. I got a feeling she doesn’t really get involved in this cafe thingy. The 16 yo old boss idea may just be there for publication purposes. *shrug*

While waiting for the food, we took picture with one of the schoolgirl/maid, but she looked just like one of our friends, hiding her number one asset, the costume! The management should have some kind of training for the maids about taking good pictures with the customers. In fact, the management should train them much much more in basic waitressing for a start. I don’t know about the other maid cafes, as I’ve never been into one, but from what I heard they maids are supposed to ACT LIKE MAIDS and not waitresses in maid costumes! What’s the difference you would ask, well YOU tell me :). Just on top of my head, shouldn’t they act more Japanese-y? You know, with the yelling of Japanese words everywhere, get all cute and excited, etc. Most of the time the maids just stood around or talked to each other. We had to ask for our water to be filled in all the time, when there were free maids everywhere near our table. They were lousy waitresses, and even lousier maids. BAD SERVICE.

Most of us ordered their signature dish, Baby Pork Ribs. It SO NOT justified the price! Cost about $20 I think. It didn’t come out hot, as if they grilled it a long time ago. The ribs was indeed really big, but it’s just meh. Most of the taste came from the bbq-like sauce. I chose mashed potatoes instead of fries and it was very little :(. The fries were actually quite good though (stole some from Arti’s plate), they were huge. The last time I ate big fries was at KFC Australia, the only fast food I know that serves big french fries (as in each piece is individually big, not big serve).

Bandi ordered pizza that came out looking pretty pathetic. I don’t know why he ordered pizza in Japanese little cafe. It’s SO NOT matching. Arti ordered hamburger which didn’t look bad. We all also had fruit juices. I can’t even remember what I had, but it’s alright.

At the end of the night, the waitresses (maids?) had some kind of game. So we stuck around a little bit just to see what’s going on. It was just Japanese paper-scissor-rock ‘game’. Each table has one person to represent to have a go against the maid. We sent Antono but he disappointed us :). I think they had bookmarks or the like in their baskets and you’d get one if you win.

To conclude, the only thing memorable about this cafe is how bad the service and the food were. Paying that much money and with all the hype being a maid cafe, people have higher standard of what they expect from the waitresses (I can’t stop calling them waitresses cuz that’s how they acted like!). The next time you want to bring someone over (that would be the only reason I would go if there’s a next time), go only for a drink. The food is so not worth it. I guess the maid costumes would still attract people (note the use of words ‘maid costumes’ and not ‘maids’).

Last picture is a shot from Bandi with his new SLR. It looks good except for the branch of tree that blocked almost a quarter of the picture unintentionally. Still, the credit goes to him for showing us the pretty Chijmes :). The next time we go to Chijmes, we planned to try Hog’s Breath.

Cosafe Maid Cafe
30 Victoria Street
#01-11 CHIJMES
Singapore

Plus: Waitresses dressed in interesting costumes. Pretty good ambience (at night, when it doesn’t rain). Fruit juice is nice.

Minus: No maids, just waitresses in maid costumes. Bad food, or to be fair, bad baby ribs and pizza. Expensive food for its quality. The girls were pretty nice, but they didn’t know how to waitress.