Despite all the chai I'd consumed in India, now that I was in Singapore the only thing I really wanted was a pot of Chinese tea. So, once I got a room at the hostel, I walked to Chinatown, and headed straight to Tea Chapter.
On the bottom floor, they had a great collection of pots for sale and on the upper floors, quiet, relaxing clean spaces to enjoy tea. One space in the corner was where Queen Elizabeth sat during her visit. When you enter the upper level, the walls are covered is red canisters of tea, marked with Chinese Characters. I chose Ti-kwan-yin, the best Chinese oolong, and a sample of Dong-fang-mi-ling, Oriental Beauty, my favourite Taiwanese tea.
At the table, they gave me a little demonstration on how to enjoy tea with a snifter. First, pour the tea from the pot to the snifter and smell, then pour the it into the cup and smell the snifter again, then roll the snifter in the palms of your hands a few times, and smell it. Each time, the scent was slightly different, with the last being the sweetest.
The food was amazing, too. Rice mixed with vegetables and meat, cooked in a lotus leaf, two shrimp Shao Mai, and two unfortunate, but delicious, shark fin dumpling. I would have been just as pleased without the shark fin, but it was included... (I know, that's not a good excuse!)
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