nasi le-MAK: A night in little vietnam

Little Vietnam

So Reynold and I decided to head over to this restaurant at grandlink called Little Vietnam. Initially it was just him and me but Lim Pin tried to scam me into some tuition teacher pool. This culminated in me getting him to go out with us and I asked Zuhair to tag along. Our last member is unfortunately overseas having her honeymoon so she couldn't join us. I was way too early today because my work ended real early. I went to chill at burger kind and found out their coke float is just a mere 95 cents

That's like really dirt cheap. After a while, Rey and Zuhair appeared while Lim Pin was still trying to figure his way out in the East. We took a short bus ride (1 stop wtf) to Grandlink for our meal.

When we went into the mall the first comment was that the place is really shady. The mall seemed to reek of a weird smell. It was as if the human sweat has combined with the rubbish to metamorphosis into one crazy disgusting odor. We walked a few rounds around the first floor before they began questioning me if the shop was actually there. OF COURSE it was there, we happened to walk just past it when we entered the freaking mall. The entrance to Little Vietnam was located on the outside while they have sealed the entrance from within the mall.

We were greeted by weird Vietnamese "Welcomes" and some Chinese lady, As in Chinese from China, not Singaporean Chinese. I took at quick glance around the stall and realised this place was filled with migrant workers. A quick sneak peek in the kitchen made me realised that the head chef was a Vietnamese woman with 2 other sous chef which I couldn't identify. Oh come on, they were dressed in white from top to bottom and covered their mouth with a mask, how could I recognise their nationality. They gave us a sit next to the counter and I must say, it was quite spacious compared to the hocus pocus Cafes I have visited in Bugis the other day.

I then dumped out all the information regarding the food here to the three other guys. I told them what dishes to order and about the only 2 drinks that was nice there. The Chendol or the dripping coffee. There was some confusion down here because I assumed this restaurant to be Halal which I was totally wrong. ~~This brought me to recognize a similar situation whereby as long as Zuhair doesn't knowingly eat pork, he was fine~~. What surprised me was that in both the vietnamese pancake and papaya salad they included Pork in it. This meant that we couldn't try 2 out of the 5 popular dishes here. But it was alright as we can still try out their pho and rice vermicelli.

The food soon arrive and Nasile-Mak is going to transform into a temporal food blog.

Dripping Coffee

Apparently this is the traditional style of coffee in Vietnam. Hot water is filled on the tub at the top and mixed with coffee beans. It will slowly drip down through a filter into the cup. And the coffee was awesome. It tasted like kopi-o with little sugar.

Spring rolls and Kang Kong

The fried spring rolls were awesome whereas the wrapped ones weren't to everyone's liking. Apparently raw vegetable doesn't go well with some people but dipping it with the sauce changes things.

Lemongrass chicken with Rice Vermicelli

They gave me some sweet and sour sauce to go with it and I just dumped the whole thing into the bowl. It tasted okay and the vermicelli tasted like bee hoon LOL

Beef Pho

Didn't get to taste this one but my friend says it's alright.

The Real Little Vietnam

After our hearty meal and catching up we decided to really visit Little Vietnam. We googled the location and started walking there. That begins our 2 hours of getting lost and tiring trek. At first they followed me and I almost brought them to the red light district unknowingly so we decided to all follow Zuhair's lead. We walked pass city plaza and entered some lane that is freaking ulu. There was minimal road lights and people living there did not on their lights at night. This meant that the setting was that of a horror movie. And there was this unfortunate person walking in front of us which we decided to disturb. We kept making hooting and annoying noises at him until he decided to speed up and escape us. Of course, me and Zuhair was laughing like crazy while Lim Pin kept saying that we are damn screwed up.

We were lost

After crossing that damned path we arrived in the Joo Chiat area and realised something was wrong. The roads were lined with restaurants that were halal and it seemed more of like Little Malaysia than Little Vietnam. We continued walking and Zuhair kept telling us about this place that had a wedding planner for Malay weddings. I told him that he should start finding his wives as he needs to marry 4 of them. I suggested this chinese girl that was going to go overseas with Lim Pin and Zuhair decided to take one step further. He said that he would marry 1 chinese, 1 malay, 1 indian and 1 eurasian. When asked about the minority, he said that he was the minority representation in all these marriages.

Still Lost

When we arrived at Joo Chiat complex, we then tried to find a solution to our problem. We only saw one freaking vietnam stall out of our 1 hour walk. We made a simple google search and realised we made the wrong turn. We turned left instead of right at the intersection where I took this photo. We then started out route march back towards Little Vietnam to see a little bit of this part of Singapore.

Small in size, big in heart

I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of bars and pubs clustered along the streets. Every few steps meant a new bar, with a new hostess trying to lure you in. There were a lot of men in their thirties or forties that went into the bar holding a lady in their arms. Of course, they had bouncers which looked like uncle dressed in Bermudas and t-shirt standing guard at the door. They really resembled Vietnam, a combination of seriousness and foolishness as their dress sense couldn't keep their appearances up.

I guess globalisation is a thing eh

Of course, we didn't go into any of the stated shops and just looked around the area. It was pretty interesting. This was the 3rd time we decided to walk around a random area in Singapore and discover yet another side of it. It was really cool as we saw what we may not normally see in our daily lives being holed up in school or hanging out at that expensive cafe nearby. I could put more things into perspective as this area seemed to be a relief point for the Vietnamese living in Singapore. After a stressful day of work, they could come to this area to just chill out. Despite being in Singapore, this area had a little resemblance of home and that is enough to them. After all, family are the most important to them and whatever can relive those great memories would give them that strength to continue fighting and press on in their work.

We took a long walk to Katong 112 whereby Zuhair requested to pee.