Where to buy bargains in Singapore

Food
Watch out for prices of food which are not what you expect. For example, spinach in January, courgettes were marked at a couple for dollars per 100g but when you get to the checkout your half dozen courgettes are costing you S $10! (£5). (S$ is Singaporean dollars, currently about two to £1, not necessarily the same as US dollars.)

Even allowing for the fact that Marketplace is an upmarket supermarket chain brand, if you opt for familiar vegetables they can be dearer than the local ones.

You can buy in the local 'wet markets' (open air stalls which are open air and used to have wet floors from rain and spillage - now kept much cleaner). However, you may need to adapt to local vegetables. In ethnic areas such as little India you will also find unwrapped vegetables at cheaper prices. The seller has lower overheads. Possibly the wobbly shapes of the vegetables are just as tasty but not looking nor fitting into the evenly shaped packaging trays.

It helps to know the local names for the vegetables if buying specific items for a recipe. However, if you just want to buy what it is available, you can simple point, and look up recipes for whatever you bought after you get home - or put small items such as bean sprouts into a large basin shape wok for a stir -fry, or chop the sold vegetables to go into a slow-cooker or casserole. (You can buy slow cookers locally at all sizes in the department stores as well as on offer in drug stores and all sorts of shops.

Looking for cheaper shops? Locals will buy in the suburbs, not in Orchard Road. For example, take the MRT to Toa Payoh.

Here are some of the cheaper stores:

NTUC FairPrice

A supermarket with small sections on stationery and home wares.

Valu stores
Tiny shops like corner shops with shelving like warehouses with floor to ceiling shelving. Crammed space between shelves, scarcely
room for one person. You have step over boxes and to back out to
let somebody through. Looking for Nutella or cleaning materials like Jif/Cif/local brands bleach or a pack of ten pens or three toothbrushes in a pack, this is the place.

Japan Home
Cheap plastic everything with pictures of princesses and Teddy bears. Loads of stuff such as toys for toddlers and for Mum there's frying pans with colourful bases. Er  - not $2 for a frying pan, it might be $20 or $30, still cheap for what it is but sorry, no good if you've only $S10-20 or $50 maximum cash, aren't carrying a credit card for fear of pickpockets.

Popular Bookstore
Huge shop like the UK's W H Smith. I found three varieties of watercolour pencils. I wanted a box files. I was shown plastic box files, half the size of the cardboard ones posting about £4 each in the UK but twice width and twice the price of the slim A$ files for S$2 in Daeso.

A Diary
At last I found a diary in Singapore's Popular stationery and book shop in Toa Payoh (end of January). Fairprice supermarket in Toa Payoh no longer stocked the diaries. In the UK you can buy diaries all year, at assorted reduced prices depending on when the diary dates are running out. For example in the huge department store size Tesco which is on one of two floors and open 24 hours (one in Watford - others in most major cities - but you might need a car to get there), diaries from January to January and also 18 month diaries and school year diaries starting September.

Daiso - spaciously laid out. Staff very helpful. Wide central aisle - looks like a cross between the UK's Marks and Spencer and British Home Stores and Homebase.

Basement market stalls:
The basement area of major malls will be filled with stalls selling tote bags, pillows and sheets and curtains sets. Some are stalls from the building's major retailers. You buy from the stall seller, then are escorted by her/him to the cashier who acts for the whole area and can take credit cards.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer.

Shopping for Asian Ingredients in London and Singapore

Where do I find a cafe and car parking, and toilets and durian, rosewater and recipe cards?

China, India, London, Singapore and more - shopping, cooking, eating!
Head for the Chinatown shops for oriental recipe ingredients and Indian restaurant areas for your exotic fruit and vegetables, herbs and spices for curry ingredients and savoury dishes as well as for sweets such as gulab jamun which I mentioned in my last post. In North Harrow there's a large supermarket size grocery store near Headstone Lane station (where the London underground comes out as overground - so you see lot of bridges over the high streets). If you're driving there's parking behind. It's open from 9 am until 6 30 during the week and later at weekends.

London's Chinatown has Loon Fung, which is also in Alperton, Tottenham and Silvertown. The have a website and an online article said they sell Malaysian durians. Delicious durians, despite the fact they are called the world's smelliest fruit, like ripe banana, dead rat, what you will. Durian, the most delicious sweet taste, like banana and chestnut custard, but the worst smell, like over-ripe cheese, ripe bananas, dead rats, or to be more alliterative ripe rats.

How do you avoid the smell, and transport the goods home? Vacuum-packed durian, apparently, is what was once promised, although demand and supply might add fresh durians you can feel and smell here and in other suppliers.

Wonderful Waitrose recipes and cafes
We find lots of unusual recipes in the Waitrose supermarket Weekender newspaper and they also have large recipe cards. This week's discovery was that Vindaloo came from the Portuguese pork dish of pig's cheek, pickled in red wine vinegar, now known simply as a spicy dish, think Vindaloo, vine origin.

I must admit I feel a bit squeamish about this, especially as I am involved with catering for Christmas parties and with lots of committee meetings held in people's homes on an everybody bring something basis. Pork might not be suitable for your friends and family and colleagues and club. The extended family and friends could include Muslims eating halal, Jewish people eating kosher, liberals who simply prefer not to eat pork, Hindu or other vegetarians. Vegetarians may be vegans who won't have milk or cheese or eggs any product containing animal parts. You could try substituting chicken, meat imitations made from soya, or simply spicy vegetables.

Time for recipe writers to include alternatives to every ingredient. Until they do, I have to race off hunting for hard-to-find items for the recipes. If only Waitrose sold all the ingredients for every recipe on a quick grab and go shelf, recipe and ingredients together, like the packaged Indian meals I have seen in Morrisons, with the bread, meat, rice and warming/cooking instructions.

Waitrose Recipe Cards, Cafe and Toilets
You'll find large Waitrose stores in central London and if you are not travelling by car, it's easy to find which ones are near stations. Take a big zip up holdall or wheeled trolley in case you are tempted to indulge in extra. Some Waitrose stores have a cafe and toilets, so you wait for friends whilst doing your Christmas and holiday entertaining shopping.

Singapore Sweetmeats and Suppliers
In Singapore you can buy hard to find ingredients such as Rose water in Mustafa's. Not Mustapha, but Mustafa. I always say it's in Little India, though in fact it's slightly down the road from the MRT stop. If you don't like crowds, avoid Sundays or shop at night. It's open 24 hours.

Singapore Markets
Most big housing estates also have wet markets, usually right next to the station, so called I have always imagined because they are wet underfoot. You can't take fresh, sulphur-smelling durians on the MRT (underground-overground railway) nor in buses and taxis. (Unless you've managed to triple wrap it so well that nobody can see it nor smell it - which is the whole idea of the rule that the smell doesn't upset others. In any case, although I love durian, I don't like fresh durian, I like the chestnutty flavour in ice cream and cakes - which also have to be wrapped and sealed. Yes, you can get durian sometimes at some London restaurants, but more rarely and seasonally.

Singapore Stores
Most big Singapore stores have a food court on ground floor or basement and often another at the top or half way up. Alongside the kiosks selling savouries and vegetables ready cooked are stall where you can buy fresh fruit on sticks. And juice drinks (check if they are adding sugar syrups if you are health conscious or dieting or diabetic).

Japanese
If you want Japanese ingredients the ideal place to look is in a Japanese supermarket underneath a Japanese department store. Right in the centre of Singapore at the main crossroad under and over the Orchard crossroads and station. Two stories of underground shopping and if its raining an underground street at basement level along Orchard road linking several department stores and shopping complexes. To target one store, or go shopping-hopping, look up Japanese stores in Singapore, such as Daiso (Ion, Orchard Turn), Isetan, Katong Market, MeidiYa supermarket.  Or search by buildings such as ION and IMM, or areas such as Jurong. Lots of sushi and ready made dishes to take away are at deli counters in the front of Japanese restaurants in major shopping complexes.

Central London Chinatown Chinese Store and suburban Branches
www.loonfung.com/contactus

Your north Harrow Asian grocery supermarket:
V B and Sons Cash and Carry, 539-545 Pinner Road, North Harrow, Harrow, HA2 6EQ.
Tel: 020 8861 1000.

Singapore's Mustafa
mustafa.com.sg

Blog on Singapore stores
http://www.sassymamasg.com/where-to-buy-your-groceries-in-singapore-mama/

Angela Lansbury, travel writer, author, blogger, speaker. Past president of a London Toastmasters International group. Private lessons and public workshops on public speaking in China, Singapore and UK. Rent-a-writer. See more about grammar, spelling, public speaking and comic poetry by Angela Lansbury on lulu.com , Facebook, LinkedIn, You Tube.

Gulab Jamon, brand Royal, bought as a takeaway from Coriander restaurant in Hatch End, North London, England. That didn't last long. All gone. Must get some more. In Singapore you should be able to find two or three styles (and/or brands) and sizes (e.g. 6, 8, 12, 24) in the freezer/chill chest display sections of  Mustafa's in Little India.