Getting there is half the fun

East Coast Park & Steamboat redux!!

Tonight we (the usual 5) went in search of the steamboat place Malini took me to first week here. This was going to be a slight problem though because when I went we drove there in a car and I couldn't remember the name of the place. Well we made it to East Coast Park just fine after asking some kids how to get there. But the problem is East coast park is just that, the entire east coast. We walked around for almost an hour but couldn't find the place. But the time wasn't a complete waste, we stumbled across a swimsuit photoshoot on the beach and in the open...jackpot, of man!!! We stopped here conveniently enough to take a rest from all the walking. Needless to say Cindy and Lisa weren't too impressed with us. But hey, majority rules!

East Coast Park is entirely man made on reclaimed land and the sand is shipped in from Indonesia. I guess they cleaned off the part of the beach that they were using because this is what the rest of the beach looks like on the east coast. The water is brown and a little oily and there is garbage and sea junk all over the place. I guess that's the price you pay for a world class ecomomy and the largest container port in the world.


Giving up our search on foot we decided to take a taxi. No taxi driver would take all five of us because they were too worried about being fined $1000 so we had to take 2 taxis. Here I thought we were in Asia, where you see pictures of people on the riding on the roofs of buses and oozing out of the windows just to get a ride! So what's the big idea about squeezing one more person in the back of a Mercedes? Now I had a general idea of where the place we wanted to go was, but I didn't know the name. This is apparently not allowed in Singapore. I asked the driver to just drive up the coast until I recognized the place. This seems like a modest request, since we are paying him to drive us. Unacceptable he said, we HAD to have a destination. So I told him I wanted to go to this place up the coast with some bars, outdoor restaurants and a steamboat place. But without a name he said he could not take us. He also assured us there were no steamboat places on the East Coast even though we went to one before, but he would take us to one anyway. So despite us being a few minutes away from the place he took us in the complete opposite direction back into town "to THE Steamboat Place." Trying to argue with him was exceptionally hard when you don't have a clue where you want to go, so in the end he won and drove us halfway home to where he recommended. The place did actually look quite good. There were quite a few Steamboat places there with tons of people around, but I still think he was just trying to get an extra long fare out of us!

Now you may be wondering what this "Steamboat" thing is that I am talking about. I had never heard of it before, but apparently you can find it anywhere. Well for about $12 you get an all you can eat seafood buffet where you have to cook your food yourself. So if you get sick from undercookeding your seafood or using your raw chicken plate for noodles afterwards it's YOUR fault. There will be no sueing like some greedy/stupid people like to do back in N.A. if their coffee is too hot. The place we went to tonight was the best I have been to yet (out of 2 anyway). They had tons of stuff to choose from, and many different types of each: clams, muscles, prawns, chilli crab bodies and pinchers, fish, noodles, vegtables, chicken, mutton, beef...the list goes on and on; half of the stuff I couldn't even identify but tried it anyway! I am a complete amatuer when it comes to Steamboat, wanting to try everything and filling up on the cheaper foods doing so. A lot people come there just for one 'species', usually indians for some reason, and fill up on only prawns or crabs. Then they have this heaping pile of prawn crabs or pinchers sitting next to them. So I have a lot to learn in the world of Steamboat. But first I need to get over ripping the head off and eating the entire thing, legs and all.

Here's a pic of one of the seafood buffets. The best part of the pic is the lady licking her lips as she goes to grab some prawns. I can't blame her, they were damn good too!


This is the cooking thingy. There is a propane burner under the bowl. You can either cook your food by putting it on the tin foil like a bbq, or you can put it in the water to boil. For the water you choose either chicken flavour or spicy Tom Yam.


Loading up on delicious meats! I really liked these little fishies.


The best part about Steamboat is that since you are forced to eat slow due to waiting you never get full! So you can sit there for hours chowing down, or until you get sick of eating so much meat and seafood. I can't wait to go back agiain!

Posted by Evan at 8:27 AM