Singapore Travel Series: Day Trip in Ang Mo Kio Heartlands

As a Singapore Travel Blog, in addition to the top 101 Things to do in Singapore post, we’ve decided to start on this series of posts we’d like to call – Singapore Travel Series. In this Singapore Travel Series, we will introduce to you a precinct, town, neighbourhood or district in Singapore, highlighting some of the sights, local attractions and of course food! To kick off this series, we decided to start off with Ang Mo Kio – one of the oldest estates in Singapore. During this trip to Ang Mo Kio, we visited

A. Mayflower Market and Food Centre
B. Ang Mo Kio Town Garden West
C. Teck Ghee Court Food Centre
D. Chong Boon Market
E. Dragon Playground Ang Mo Kio
F. Cheng San Market
G. AMK Hub

An overview of this day trip is as shown…

Besides being known as one of the older towns in Singapore, Ang Mo Kio was actually where Town Councils were piloted as well. In 1984, Mr Lim Boon Heng, then Member of Parliament for Kebun Baru mooted the idea for local town councils made up of residents, with a MP taking care of estate related issues. In this way, residents would have more say in how they would want their local towns to be run and ultimately have more sense of belonging to the towns. In 1986, Ang Mo Kio was a sprawling new town and it made sense to test the new Town Council concept here. 3 town councils were implemented in Ang Mo Kio and after a successful year of trial, the Town Council act was passed in 1988. Today, Town Councils are part of our everyday life and it all started in Ang Mo Kio!

We started our day at Mayflower Market and Food Centre. As with many markets in townships around Singapore, the Mayflower Market and Food Centre is both a market where locals can get their meats and vegetables as well as their local hawker fix at the food centre. Since, we’re at a hawker centre (now known as food centre), we just had to try out what’s good at Mayflower Food Centre. One of our criteria? Follow the long queues. We, Singaporeans know our food and when there’s a long queue, it usually means that it’s worth the wait. This time, we followed 2 long queues and discovered 著名冬菇鸡脚面 (translated as “Famous Mushroom Chicken Feet Noodles” #01-30) and 自己来香菇肉脞面 (Mushroom Meat Noodle – #01-07)…

Although the noodles itself was a little too oily, the chicken feet was FANTASTIC. Probably better than many restaurant dim sums out there. This is probably why the queue to this store is always seemingly endless. In Singapore, chicken feet is first deep fried and then immersed in a concoction of dark and light soy sauce together with some secret asian spices. At 著名冬菇鸡脚面, not only were the chicken feet plump and tender, the taste also had a faint afternote of those spices. A surprising local find!

香菇肉脞面 is also known as bak chor mee (minced meat noodles) in Singapore. At 自己来 (translated as “Help Yourself”), the bak chor mee tasted authentic. For $3, it was chock full of ingredients with generous servings of noodles (we chose mee pok this time). But there is one thing you need to note. Uncle does his noodles like clockwork. He will first cook the choice of noodles, followed by the minced meat, sliced pork and liver before doing up the sauce for the dry noodles. Once, the noodles are cooked, he does this “tornado-like” movement to mix the sauce evenly into the noodles and then finally top off with the ingredients of meat and mushroom. Clockwork. Hence, in order not to affect his rhythm, you will need to know your order and else uncle will turn into a grumpy old man. A young man in front of Tom made the following boo boo by not making his order clear

Young Man: 水饺面打包 (dumpling noodles to go)
Uncle: 哪一种面， 汤还是干，要不要辣椒 (what kind of noodles, dry or soup, chili or no chili – at an elevated tone)

Having learnt this lesson, Tom ordered Bak Chor Mee Pok, Dry, with Chili. Be clear in your orders else you’d be disrupting uncle’s mojo like in the visa paywave commercial. Loved the 古早味 (traditional flavours) at this store. Another must try at Mayflower Food Centre.

Address of Mayflower Market and Food Centre: 162 Ang Mo Kio Ave 4, Singapore 560162

Right next to Mayflower Market and Food Centre is the Ang Mo Kio Town Garden West. This is a place where locals go for their morning jogs and exercise. An attraction here is the Kebun Baru Bird Corner where enthusiasts gather and share their love for beautiful birds that sing!

Also at Ang Mo Kio Town Garden West, you’ll be able to enjoy beautiful greenery as well as a water lily pond. A well-designed playground also provides a venue for the kids to enjoy. Here, Kate indulged in her little joy of sitting on a “swing swing”…

If all else fails, there’s also a MacDonald’s in Ang Mo Kio Town Garden West. This, we thought was an irony. With MacDonald’s located in many parks such as that at West Coast, East Coast and here in Ang Mo Kio, MacDonald’s seemed to have positioned itself with eating healthy and staying fit. MacDonald’s associated with fitness. Hm…

Next, we headed over to Teck Ghee Court Food Centre. Along the way, we passed by the famous “Ikea HDB” blocks located at the junction of Ang Mo Kio Ave 1 and Ang Mo Kio Ave 6. The “Ikea HDB” is actually a DBSS (Design Build and Sell Scheme) HDB project. It is known as the “Ikea HDB” because of its yellow and blue coloured facade, similar to that of the furniture giants – Ikea. Usually when repainting is done every 5 years for HDB flats, the colour scheme is changed. At the “Ikea HDB”, you’ve guessed it, the colours remain! Most probably becoming more vibrant with each repaint job.

During this walk to Teck Ghee Court Food Centre, we also passed by the Bishan Ang Mo Kio Park, where we visited the Cornerstone Restaurant previously. Soon, we arrived at Teck Ghee Court Food Centre…

As we arrived at Teck Ghee Court Food Centre between breakfast and lunch hour, there were no queues at the food stalls. Hence, we followed a second criteria to identify delicious local hawker fare. That is, the awards won by a particular stall. This time, we located 永记肉骨茶 (Yong Ji Bak Kut Teh).

Kate enjoyed the soup which was the white peppery type of bak kut teh that she enjoyed. The pork ribs were meaty and chunky. We also saw 2 customers in front of us ordering the braised pork knuckle. A generous portion which was appealing. Perhaps we should try it on our next visit.

While scouring the vicinity for a refreshing cup of sugar cane with lemon, we chanced upon a super long queue at the coffee shop next to Teck Ghee Court Food Centre. If you’ve tried 传统著名虾面 (Traditional Famous Prawn Noodles) at this coffee shop, let us know your thoughts in our comments section below.

Address of Teck Ghee Court Food Centre: 341 Ang Mo Kio Ave 1, Singapore 560341

Chong Boon Centre is iconic of the heartlands where you have a combination of local stores and a food centre located nearby. At Chong Boon Centre, we saw many local shops that sell household items, confectionery and even dresses…

There was several stalls that sold durian as well. Some samba durian going as low as 3 for $10. This is in stark contrast to the $100 durian that we bought a couple of years back. While we’re at Chong Boon Food Centre, we couldn’t miss the chance to savour some local delicacy right? The “long queue” theory led us to Ang Mo Kio Lor Mee Laksa. Perhaps, the longest queue we saw today…

This time, we tried the lor bee hoon. An interesting fluffy texture to the gravy (also known as “lor”). Contrary to the usual rich textures, this light fluffy lor mee was an interesting twist. As a result, the bee hoon was also well covered with the gravy. Best of all, the lor bak (braised pork slices) were very generous. At $3, we can understand why locals keep coming back to this stall for their loh mee fix.

Address of Chong Boon Centre: 453A Ang Mo Kio Ave 10, Singapore 561453

Enroute to Cheng San Market and Cooked Food Centre, we passed by the iconic Dragon Playground in Ang Mo Kio. The Dragon Playground used to be a version of playground that was a main stay in Singapore. Due to its shape and curvatures, kids (like ourselves) found it to be a fun structure to play games like “hid-and-seek”. However, with time, playgrounds were replaced with those that are safer and can develop creativity in kids. Hence, these Dragon Playgrounds started to be replaced. Thankfully, we were able to still visit this Dragon Playground in Ang Mo Kio. It definitely brought back some good times just to be there. 🙂

At Cheng San Market and Cooked Food Centre (turning out to be a really foodie day isn’t it? :P), we noticed both chicken rice stalls to have really long queues. This time, we decided to try the Mun Fu (满福) Chicken Rice Set Meal…

At $3.50, the set meal was value-for-money. It came with a side dish of vegetables as well. What we love about this store was the chicken rice itself. Every grain of this fragrant chicken rice speaks for itself. However, the roast chicken was a disappointment. Too dry. Not tender. Thankfully, the chili came to its rescue. While we were there, we noticed 2 young boys enjoying plates of fried hokkien mee. However, we were not able to locate it. If there are any kind souls out there, do let us know which fried hokkien mee stall at Cheng San Food Centre this was. It was the dry version (similar to that at ABC Food Centre) and it looked really appealing.

[Update: November 2019]

So 2 years on, we’ve gone back to Cheng San Food Market and checked out the hokkien mee that we’ve missed out previously…

This stall actually sells a mix of local favourites like fried carrot cake and char kway teow. However, the main draw of this stall is its fried hokkien mee! You’ll be able to see some accolades from the various TV channels and newspapers.

The hokkien mee at Cheng San Food Market is the slightly dry version. The noodles has a slightly higher proportion of white noodles that Kate loves and the prawn stock is well absorbed by the noodles itself. We also witnessed the entire frying process where the noodles are “pressure-cooked” with a flat wooden cover while the chef repeatedly presses the noodles to the sides of the wok to attain the “wok-hei”. Definitely a must-try for hokkien mee lovers!

To round up this day trip to Ang Mo Kio, we headed back to AMK Hub. There, we did some shopping and also found a Thai Milk Tea store to be rather delectable…

This time, we tried the Thai Green Milk Tea with Pearl ($3.30) @ Soi 55 Thai Tea & Coffee. Rich, milky and not too sweet. Also, piggy made a debut with a shot with 2bearbear above. Simply adorable!

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In Summary…

Total Expenditure: $35 (for 2 people)
Total Steps Walked: 18,000
Total Time Taken: 6 hours

We hope you have enjoyed our day trip to Ang Mo Kio where we uncovered the things to do in Ang Mo Kio, attractions as well as the food to eat in Ang Mo Kio. If you’re intending to do a day trip to the heartlands, check out our Singapore Travel Series itineraries before you go!

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Singapore Travel Series: Day Trip In Ang Mo Kio Heartlands