Chinatown – Bradley Farless

It’s Friday but we’re not going anywhere

March 27, 2020 Bradley FarlessLeave a comment

Mood:

I can see the train station from our window. It looks pretty dead out there. It’s normally packed at this time of day. I’d like to go downtown even if it’s just to walk around, but I don’t want to take the risk for no reason. Maybe tomorrow? I don’t know. Probably not.

It’s not that I miss the people. Of course I like seeing other people, but mostly I just miss the sunshine, fresh air, and exercise. I’m going to be dying trying to get back to my previous fitness level after this is all over. I could go to the park, sure, but I’m just not interested in inhaling someone else’s coronavirus breath while following them down the track. Central Park was packed last weekend and I don’t expect that to change unless the parks are shut down.

Pretty sure this is from a dinner we enjoyed at Wonton Noodle Garden on Mott Street in Chinatown, Manhattan, NYC

I also miss Chinese food. I don’t care what people say. I’m not eating out anywhere and I’m certainly not eating out at a Chinese restaurant until the pandemic subsides. But damn I miss those egg rolls, that pork fried rice, and roast duck!

I really don’t see things being back to the way they were by Easter. I’m not expecting to see full churches any time soon. Not like Trump wants. China had Hubei province in lockdown for months before they finally reached a point where there were no more cases of local transmission of the virus. In the US, we’re not even close to achieving that. We don’t even know how many people have it because we still don’t have the capacity to doing the testing we need to do. Plus, some States are obfuscating the number of deaths by attributing the cause of death to something else like pneumonia or SARS.

1000 people died today in Italy from COVID-19. They’ve been on lockdown since March 8th. Can you really imagine going back to work and risking death or risking killing your family members just to help boost stocks sooner?

It’s going to take even longer for New York City (and places like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle) to recover and get back to normal than it will for the rest of the country. The city is an international travel hub. Face masks, gloves, and social distancing might stay the new normal here long after it stops being a thing in other parts of the country.

Busy little noodle joint – Tasty Hand-Pulled Noodles in Chinatown

April 20, 2017 Bradley FarlessLeave a comment

Duck noodle soup and chicken veggie dumplings at Tasty Hand-Pulled Noodles

Doyer’s Street is kind of a weird looking spot, but it has the best noodle shop I’ve been to in New York City: Tasty Hand-Pulled Noodles. The location subtitle on Google Maps, “Busy little noodle joint”, sums the place up pretty well. It’s a hole in the wall establishment. You could easily walk by and not even notice it was there. It’s cramped inside. In the summer, it’s hot. And, it’s always busy. Seating is very limited and you have to shift around to let people move past you. It’s totally worth it, though.

The first time I went to Tasty Hand-Pulled Noodles, I wandered in by accident while on a break from jury duty. Each time, I somehow wound up at the tiny table squeezed into the corner by the front door. I haven’t come close to working my way through the menu. I usually stick with the noodle soup dishes and I’m really partial to the duck noodle soup, but I find it hard to believe I would be really disappointed by something they prepared. The food just has a good, authentic, quality taste to it without being unreasonably expensive. Most of the soups are about $9 – $10 a bowl, but the portions are large.

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The only thing that’s a little annoying about the place is that it’s a cash-only establishment. Luckily, there’s a Chase bank across the street with ATMs so it’s not too big a deal. I’ve noticed that a lot of Asian restaurants are switching to cash-only lately. I wonder why? I try to not carry cash. Lately, I’ve even cut down on the cards I carry. My Galaxy S7 has Samsung Pay and it works really well. It also has a rewards program.

If you want dessert, you can stop by Taiyaki NYC over on Baxter Street on your way to the train station on Canal Street. It’s a Japanese ice cream place that is pretty popular. The original, vanilla soft-serve in a fish pastry with warm custard, chocolate syrup, strawberries and a wafer cookie is pretty awesome.

Saturday Afternoon in Chinatown

July 29, 2014 Bradley FarlessLeave a comment

We visited a vegetarian kosher Chinese restaurant. It was pretty good. And totally unexpected.

Gong Xi Fa Cai! NYC Chinatown 2012

January 26, 2012 Bradley Farless2 Comments

For the first time since I was a kid, I was able to check out the Chinese New Year celebration in New York City. It didn’t quite live up to my memory, but I have a feeling that we missed the best part of it. There was already confetti all over the ground. Next year we’ll have to go check things out earlier in the day. I must have gotten bad information about the start times of the events.

We wandered around Chinatown for a while but didn’t see much. At first, we only found one lonely dragon dancer.

Then, we passed through the Roosevelt Park area. There were some booths set up selling Chinese New Year decorations. There was also a stage where performers were singing traditional Chinese songs. I don’t understand Mandarin, so I have no idea what the songs meant, but it sounded pleasant.

We were about to leave Chinatown when we stumbled onto Mott Street. It seems as though that’s where all the fun was. The place was packed with crowds of people shooting off tubes of confetti and generally having a good time.

For more pictures, click here.

Like I said, I’m pretty sure we missed most of the festivities due to bad information, but it was still a lot of fun to go down to Chinatown and look around for a few hours. We managed to get in some shopping while we were there too!

Singapore 2010 Chinese New Year: Luck, Decorations, Crowds & Surcharges

February 15, 2010 Bradley Farless2 Comments

Last year my wife and I missed out on seeing Chinatown at Chinese New Year’s completely. Somehow, I got the date mixed up and we wound up going down there the day after the celebration. This year I made sure to mark my calendar correctly.

Luck

We’d originally planned on eating at Bugis Junction, at the Pastamania in the food court. We didn’t realize the place would be shut down. In fact, almost everything was shut down. Yoshinoya was open but I don’t care for the way the food there tastes.

We decided to take our chances and headed on to Chinatown. There was a hawker open across the street from the MRT exit so we walked over to it, using the pedestrian bridge to go over the road. At the base of the stairs, hiding by the edge where the plants are, we saw this kitten:

This is the year of the Tiger and a tiger is basically a big cat. Maybe this means luck will come our way this year? We like cats, so my wife carries around a little cat food to hand out to strays that look hungry. We gave some to the kitten before going into the hawker to have our dinner.

Decorations

The reason we went down to Chinatown was to see the decorations. The atmosphere was very lively so we wound up staying a bit longer than we’d planned. I was really impressed with the decorations. They were very nice looking. It put us in a great mood and we even stopped for ice cream. There was a guy there selling ice cream from a push cart. He cut a slice (literally) and put it between two wafers and handed it to me wrapped in a plastic. It was really good and only cost me 1 SGD.

Here are some of my favorite photos.

There weren’t as many decorations as there were at Christmas, which surprised me, but the decorations that were there were really nice.

Crowds

For a short while, we considered staying for the main event, but the crowds were starting to press in real tight. We could hardly walk. The crowds kept bottlenecking in certain areas which made it hard to get around. Also, having so many people in such a small area was cutting out the breeze. The place was starting to get hot, sticky, smelly and just plain unpleasant.

The stage was set up in such a way that unless you were a special person, a VIP, and had access to the privileged seating area, you could barely see anything. There were very few vantage points that would offer a decent view and they were packed.

I have to wonder why the stage would be set up in the center of the road like that. It offers such a narrow viewing area. Wouldn’t it make more sense to set it up caddy-corner in an intersection? A LOT more people could get a good view then, rather than just the few VIPs that were likely sitting comfortably across from the stage.

If you’re going to have a public event, set it up so the public can actually see it.

We decided that it wasn’t worth the hassle and moved off into the side roads to look at the stuff for sale. The crowds there were horrible too, so after fighting our way free to a major road we headed back to the MRT station and went back to Pasir Ris.

Surcharges

Toilets

I forget the name of the mall just outside the MRT exit in Chinatown, but they had a clever scheme set up. I really can’t blame them because it makes sense from a business perspective, but it was still annoying. When we were leaving we stopped in at the mall to use the restroom. The female restroom on the lower level was conveniently closed for cleaning. So, we searched further into the mall and found another restroom. The difference was that it was a pay restroom.

Like I said, I don’t really blame them, because there were a lot of people going into the mall just to use the toilet. They have to cover the cost somehow. But still… obvious scheme was obvious.

Food

The hawker we ate at on CNY Eve didn’t charge us anything extra for our meal. When we got back to Pasir Ris and had roti prata and beer, we weren’t charged extra.

Yesterday though, on Sunday, we went to Bedok to look for something to eat at the hawker. We were hoping the New World Mutton stall would be open, but it was closed. There was a chicken rice hawker stall open though. Great Wall chicken rice I think. We ordered two plates and after our food was ready the guy told us there was an extra .50 SGD per plate as a holiday surcharge. Thanks for letting us know up front. At least the food was good.

Sunday evening after jogging we passed through the hawker to get dinner. We ordered two plates of roast pork rice. 2.50 per plate. After the food is ready the guy says, “7 dollar”. I asked him what he was talking about and point at the sign. 2.50 and 2.50 is 5 bucks. Turns out this jackass wanted to add 1 SGD to each plate as a holiday surcharge. I told him he should’ve put up a notice.

Well, turns out he did. He pointed to a tiny sheet of paper, covered in Chinese characters and prices which I had assumed was another menu, or the same menu but in Mandarin. I just gave him a look. I’m white. The chances of a random white guy being able to read Mandarin are pretty damn slim. I’m sure that there are people from a lot of other countries in Singapore that don’t read Mandarin either, which is why English is the business language. Nice calculated way of trying to pressure people into giving up more money.

Well, I didn’t have 7 dollars on me. We had literally just finished jogging and we brought just enough for what food usually costs plus 1 dollar for either a fee or in case I felt like having an iced kopi. So, I told him sorry, that I only had 6 bucks, and turned and started to walk away. Of course, the guy called me back and said 6 dollars would be ok. I figured he would say that. 6 bucks is better than him throwing the food away. So… haggling win for me.

I understand the point that they’re working on a holiday, but something tells me the workers aren’t getting paid any extra. Also, with only a few stalls open, I know they’re already making a killing picking up business from all of the other stalls that were closed. The .50 SGD extra from earlier I can accept, but 1 SGD extra on a 2.50 plate? That’s about a 30% markup. Seems greedy to me.

I don’t remember this kind of surcharge being added to food last year. Hopefully they don’t try to drag that out for the full 15 day holiday.

All in all, it was fun to get out of the house and look around and we had a real good time seeing the decorations in Chinatown. It reminds me of when I used to go to Chinatown in New York City as a kid. I regret not seeing any dragon-lion dances but I’m sure they’ll be other times. I’ve seen quite a few since being here in Singapore, especially with the opening of so many malls over the past year and a half. Lion dances seem to be a tradition to bring luck to a newly opened store here.

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you all have good fortune this year!

3 Days in Kuala Lumpur: Part 5: Hotel Chinatown 2 Review

June 5, 2009 Bradley Farless1 Comment

Hotel Chinatown 2 is located on Jalan Petaling in the Chinatown area of Kuala Lumpur. It’s a little tricky to find it, because there is also a Chinatown Hotel Inn or something like that a few doors down. Also, the only visible sign is the one high up on the building, that you can see in the above picture. There is a sign at the street level entrance, but that entrance is hidden from the main walkway by street vendors.

This hotel is a great find, if you go into it with the right mentality. If you’re looking for luxury, you’ll have to look elsewhere. This place is all about price and location. For two nights in the hotel (check-in Monday afternoon and check-out on Wednesday morning) we paid a total of about 188 ringgit. That’s a good deal! As for the location, the door to the hotel opens onto Jalan Petaling, which is a touristy type area in Chinatown with lots of shops where you can browse for souvenirs. Also, it’s two blocks from the Pasar Seni train station, which we put to good use.

As for the hotel itself, the lobby area is very comfortable. It has a few cozy couches, a TV, a book rack with a guitar on top, and a few computers for public use at 1 ringgit per 10 minutes. There’s free wi-fi, which worked for me on my Nokia E51 in the lobby, but I couldn’t connect properly up in the actual room. I kept getting a “no reply from gateway” error. I don’t know what that was all about, but it didn’t really bother us too much, so I didn’t ask about it. We just used the paid computers for a little while in the evening to keep up with e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

The room we booked was the “standard” room, which came with a double bed. It was a bit cramped, honestly, and that feeling was compounded by the fact that there was no window. At first that bothered me a bit, but then I realized that it probably had no window because it was on the back or side of the building. That’s a good thing, because it meant we wouldn’t hear as much of the racket from the street below. The paint was worn and scuffed, the floor was a bit dirty, and there were no toiletries provided. The TV in the room only picked up 5 or 6 channels. Only one of those channels was in English and it seemed to rotate between different stations. What I mean is, if you left it on that channel, which was 12 I think, it might be National Geographic at 8pm, Animal Planet at 9pm, and then a local station at 10pm. I thought that was kinda odd, but again, it didn’t bother us that much. We weren’t really there to just lay around in the room watching TV. If you do happen to be up late though, around 1 or 2 am, flip through the channels until you find a program where there’s a girl sitting behind a laptop, presenting requested music videos. Neither the program nor the videos are in English, but it’s hilarious! They played these crazy Indian music videos, complete with “Slumdog Millionaire” dance routines and the accompaniment of the high pitched female vocals. Besides that, the videos are just hilarious! I don’t think they’re meant to be, but they were to us! Also, the music really isn’t that bad at all in most cases.

I think the best features of the room were that the water was nice and hot for showers, and the air conditioning blew nonstop and got nice and cold at night. Even under the thick blanket it was a bit cool. Both of these things were a nice change for me, since I’ve been living in Singapore. Here, the air conditioning isn’t used much and the water heaters are small and I can rarely finish showering before the hot water runs out. I think I stayed in the shower for 30 minutes each time, enjoying how hot the water was and the fact that it stayed hot. Plus that cold air conditioning is a relief after a day out in the sun there.

Another thing the hotel has going for it is the staff. They’re very friendly, very helpful, and very knowledgeable about the city. They helped us find the train station and also told us how to get back to the airport for the best price (a cheap bus from the downstairs area of KL Central). Also, the guy at the counter had a conversation with me while I enjoyed a cup of coffee and my wife was busy on one of the public computers. Oh, and the rooms are cleaned daily. At least, I think it was cleaned. The bed was made at least, and nothing was missing from our bags. That’s always a bonus. If you do have something expensive, the place has safe deposit boxes in the lobby too.

The hotel also has some dormitory style areas that can be rented out. I didn’t look around there too much, except for one time when I passed through it to get to a bathroom. It looked clean and the beds were set up two to a cubicle. There was a youngish looking girl writing a paper on her laptop at a table in the dormitory area. I guess it must be fairly safe. I did see a TV behind the front desk that was showing views from security cameras, so that area must be kept under surveillance to make sure nothing happens to the guests.

Overall, we were satisfied with our stay there. If we find ourselves in Kuala Lumpur again and need to stay the night, we’ll definitely be trying for a room there again.

Here are some of the photos we took inside the hotel: