HPB Voices Reloaded

By Dr Veronica Tay

On 3 Dec, three of us from Student Health Centre (NM Seet Chwee Gek, Tan Heng Kheng & myself) took leave to go on a local tour of places in Singapore. The tour was organised by Mrs Lim Yoke Lai, a retired MOH staff. She used to organised such tours when she was in MOH. Our tour cost us $13 for visits to 6 destinations.
The pick-up point was at Outram Park at 8.25 am. The bus was packed. There were 48 of us excluding 2 who could not turn up.

To start off the tour, we visited an otah factory in Defu Lane. We left the factory with lots of otah. Visit their website to view their products: www.otah.com.sg

Eagerly waiting to buy otah

Shane briefing us. Look at the bitter gourd!

We next visited Oh Chin Huat Hydroponic farm off Sembawang Road. This was the most interesting place we visited. We were given a tour of the farm by Shane who was a polytechnic biotechnology student on attachment. We were briefed on the advantages, disadvantages of hydroponic farming, how the seeds were germinated and transplanted. The farm grows vegetables and herbs for supermarkets like NTUC and Cold Storage. We were also given a ‘Herb & Spice’ Tour to enable us to differentiate between medicinal and culinary values of the herbs.  We were able to taste and smell the different herbs (Western & Chinese).

Frogs everywhere, for frog’s porridge!

Next, we visited a frog farm, Jurong Frog Farm at 6 Lim Chu Kang Lane. There were frogs everywhere.  At the end of the tour, we were invited to buy their slaughtered frogs, 4 bull frogs for $10. It’s frogs’ leg porridge for us! Visit them at their website at www.jurong frogfarm.com.sg

The next stop was a factory at 10 Senoko South Road that manufactures different flavoured sausages from oriental to Vienna sausages. Their brand is ‘Golden Dragon’ and their products can be found in most supermarkets including NTUC supermarkets. It was a buying spree again, having brought our cooler boxes with us to store our otah, frogs and sausages.

Our second last stop was Fassler Gourmet at 46 Woodlands Terrace, www.fassler.info. This factory owned by an ‘ang moh’ specialised in salmon and seafood food products. Their salmon is farmed bred in Chile. The frozen salmon is then flown into Singaporean and stored till they need to process it into smoked salmon and other salmon products. We were shown how the salmon was ‘smoked’ and packed with a mixture of herbs. They also had other frozen seafood available; frozen salmon fillet, unagi, scallops, tuna and cod.

Yummy smoked salmon, not too much as it’s very salty!

Our 6th and last destination was Fragrance Foodstuff at 60 Woodlands Terrace at www.fragrance.com.sg. They of course, specialised in ‘Bak Kua’. During this off-peak season, it was going for $31-33/kg. Most of us bought the odd sizes types for $22/kg as we were going to eat it ourselves!

By 5.00 pm, we were back at Outram Park and a fruitful day it was. We had bought lots of goodies for our families to feast on.

If you interested in such tours and want to be in the circulation list, email Mrs Lim Yoke Lai at limylt@gmail.com