OK, I started out with something completely different but I had to make it a post by itself.

A hawker center. As I understand it, Singapore used to be filled with street food stalls. How a city shows it’s ethnic diversity is a lot of times showcased in the variety of food at it’s disposal. Singapore is probably one of the most ethnically diverse places you will ever visit (they are quite good at labeling that themselves), and food has almost in every part of the world a cultural history and traditions that comes along with it. So you can imagine there are a lot of hawkers dwelling on the streets. It was a place to get fordable food for many, but it came with the price of being heavily unsanitary, and there was no license for serving, and for many I would imagine no electricity and therefore no cooling system for the food. So at 30 degrees, there is not much that can stay fresh for too long.

So basically the government wanted to fix the problem related to hygiene and the hawkers, and maybe something about the image of the city as well if I may add some personal analyze. So what they did was to mass them altogether in centers where every stall had to get a license and also graded for there cleanness. You can see the ”grades” hang at every stall today, though most of them seem to be outdated with a few months.

The government found a way to regulate the food stalls, and today the Hawker centers seem to be a factor of identity for Singapore and I would presume most of the hygienic problems are stable by now. The food here is cheap (a meal for 2-5SGD/1-3 euro varies a bit between locations), authentic from most corners of the world, made on spot and just one of many buzzing places where life goes on during most hours of the day. It’s a place where all kinds of people eat and meet, and the centers are everywhere!

Street smart now how fact: People run around to grab something different from what they had the day before, or maybe have to queue at the most popular stall. So people reserve their seat, by leaving some possession and then they can walk around. You do not sit at a place that is ”reserved”, that is a big nono. It is not on my bucket list trying to see a locales reaction if I actually do, but I would imagine the whole place going dark and thunderbolts flying from heaven and fire form hell spitting out from the cracks in the ground. Wouldn’t really be worth it I suppose.

And yeah, people sometimes leave phones and cameras and everything. Because nobody would steal in Singapore, you know.

(picture from: www.dope.sg)