Chris and I were super excited when we heard about Singapore Day coming to Shanghai. They were flying in the top chefs from famous hawker stalls around Singapore for the event – I mean, how much more awesome can that be?!?! We were salivating in anticipation leading up to the day.. so eager to have a wonderful day out in the park, letting Hunter get some sunshine and air, and eating ourselves silly. Did I mention THE FOOD WOULD BE FREE?? A food fair with free food……. I quiver.

When the day rocked round, I was dismayed that it was soooo dreary and cold 🙁 Considering the whole week was sunny and gorgeous, it was so disappointing that only on that day was it crap weather! Determined, we still rugged ourselves up and headed out to Singapore Day.

The bad weather obviously didn’t keep the Singaporeans away because the place was PACKED with thousands of people! I was actually pretty shocked at the sheer numbers. We could barely see green grass, and found a spot to sit squished up amongst 52351278 other people. I sat down and huddled up in the cold, then Hunter decided he was hungry and so I had to pull him out of the (warm) stroller and breastfeed him – right there out in the cold, with tons of people around me! Man. It was rather surreal.

At the same time, Chris was attempting to brave the queues. Every stall had a 45 min queue. And what do you get at the end of it? A small bowl/plate of food, waaaay too small to fill one person. We were assuming we could eat at EVERY stall, and believe me we have the appetites too, but we ended up only eating from ONE stall because we just couldn’t handle the wait any longer. We ended up with Wee Nam Kee chicken rice which, on the plus side, the guy gave Chris a really big portion (Chris was one of the only foreigners there, so he was quite the novelty!).. but on the down side, the chicken wasn’t very nice (though the rice was freakin’ fantastic).

I felt like CRYING because I had been dreaming about my luscious Singaporean food for WEEKS leading up to the day! I wanted to eat everything and anything, but the queues were just insane, and it was just freezing out there. It was so disappointing 🙁

Funny story though – when Chris was queuing, he really sticks out since pretty much 99.9% of people there are of Asian descent. Almost everyone was either Singaporean, or the China wife of a Singaporean guy. Chris was one of the very very very rare Caucasians there, so it was very easy to spot him in the crowd, heh. Anyway, the Singaporean guy queuing behind him said “Are you sure you’re Singaporean???” to Chris, to which he replied “Ya, of course!! I am so kiasu I’m already planning to send my son to RI.” (a school in Singapore). The guy laughed and said “Oh I’m not even planning that far ahead, haha!”

We didn’t stay for long because it was just too crowded, too cold, and too little food. I don’t think the event was planned very well because 1) they either need to seriously increase the number of stalls or 2) limit the number of attendees to perhaps first 1,000 that RSVP. We left, disappointed.

A cold and dreary Singapore Day

Packed to the rafters *shudder*

The magical queues that never ended. Well, for 45 mins anyway!

Cute goody bag!