Visit to the Fish Wholesale Market (ASA)

"Oh shit," I thought to myself as I completed a wrong turn into Paya Lebar, which was usually the choice of route I take to Eddy's house, due to light traffic as compared to Geylang. I'm supposed to be picking up Eddy at Kallang instead. It was already 12.20, which was the time I was supposed to reach Kallang. Soon, I arrived at a red light. I reached for my phone and hastily punched in the message:

"Gimme another 10 mins. I took the wrong way."

I managed to hit the 'send' key a few seconds before the light turned green. Having bought more than enough time, I changed my course towards Kallang.

As I approached the carpark beside the Kallang Mac, I spotted Eddy sitting on some nearby bench and I pulled over for him to get onto the car, at the risk of blocking any vehicle which might happen to be entering the carpark. I expected him to board the car fast, but being the ku-niang he is, he actually took his time to open the back door, slowly loaded his stuff in, closed the door, opened the front door, got on gently, and closed the door. We were lucky there wasn't any vehicle behind us. I droved into the carpark, turned out, and headed towards the ECP.

I decided to exit at Telok Blangah and stop at the petrol kiosk near Ro's house as I was in urgent need of a piss. At the same time, I wanted to consult the map so I could plan the route. It seemed like an easy one. Go by AYE, turn out by exit 15, go all the way straight pass a crossroad, turn left into the next minor road, and turn left again. I made myself memorize the directions before leaving the petrol kiosk. In no time, I was back on the expressway.

It was approaching 1am. The road was rather clear, consisting of mainly a few taxis. It was a rather relaxing journey towards Jurong. Confidently, I followed the directions which I had memorized earlier on. I passed through Jurong Port Road, made my turn, and finally arrived at a huge compound which we believed was our destination.

The security of the market was relatively tight compared to that of the Vege-Market, probably due to the presence of the boat docking bay there. Before we were allowed to enter the market, we had to exchange our ICs with some security pass. I drove through the gates while Eddy alighted to do the pass-exchange. Like the Vege Wholesale Market, vehicles entering the compound would need to drive through an ERP gantry.

Once I was in, I stopped to make way for a reversing lorry. In the meantime, Eddy was done at the security post. He came back into my car just in time as the lorry had completed his maneuvre. We started searching for a parking lot, and soon found one. A noob driver had parked his vehicle too near to the left side of our lot, allowing very little space for Eddy to get out of the car. Luckily, he isn't as fat as I am, so he managed to squeeze through.

After a short walk, we reached the main marketplace block. In terms of size, it looked only slightly smaller than the Vege-market - roughly the size of 4 ordinary wet-markets combined. At 1.30 in the morning, it was already full of activities.

As we walked through the marketplace, we really noticed the visual difference between the fish sold here and those sold in supermarkets. The scales of the fishes wore an unusual shine, and there were even buckets of fish and prawns that has just reached the market and were still alive. Bags of fresh catches were transported on trolleys and poured out upon reaching the stalls. We took out the camera and went "snap, snap" all over the place. Just as we were feeling weird taking pictures there, 2 girls holding a camera each squeezed past us. However, we still tried to minimize the attention caught by deactivating the camera-flash. We strolled through each stall, ensuring that we've had a glimpse of every variety of fishes and seafood sold in each stall. At the same time, we tried to identify each fish we could, and evading moving trolleys at the same time. Through the crowd, we even spotted a group of students who were having an excursion there. After some time, we came across a stall where the hawker was tying some crabs. We spent some time there watching how he actually tied the crabs.

Time passed really fast as we walked through the market. By the time we were done walking through the place, 2 hours had already passed. It only felt that we've been there for half an hour! Before we left the ASA area, we had a look at the docks and searched for the toilets. Thereafter, we went to collect our ICs and left ASA. $2 were deducted from my cashcard by the gantry. >=(

We left Jurong by the exact way we came. This time, the traffic was almost zero, particularly after we hit the AYE. Feeling hungry, we decided to drop by Kallang Mac for supper. I was so hungry that a regular meal did not fulfil me, so I ordered an additional box of McWings. At around 4.30am, I sent Eddy home and rushed home, eager to continue the restoration of my PC as I had formatted my hard drive.