Tally-Ho: The Hot Crustacean Band

Tally-Ho is a semi-regular column of my adventures with the Adventure Crew (and sometimes other people). We figured that Singapore can’t be all that boring, and are determined to show other folks how fun Singapore can be… if you know where to look.

I like seafood. Or, rather, I like eating seafood. And, as they say, the taste of victory is sweet – and what’s sweeter than really fresh prawns?

So it was on a drizzly Saturday afternoon that I met several members of the Adventure Crew — Mintea, Avariel and Sarah — to head to Bottle Tree Park for prawning!

Because, you see, when you go out and catch fish, it’s called fishing. When you go out to catch prawns, it’s called prawning. The logic, it hurts my brain!

We were heading to Bottle Tree Park, which is a rather large activity park of sorts. It’s at Yishun, but it’s only a 10-minute walk from Khatib mrt station.

The only experienced prawner among our little motley crew was Avariel, whose sister had taught her how to prawn. I believe she usually goes to Pasir Ris, so it was her first time there too.

It’s quite large; its front is dominated by the main fishing pond. You can also do the couple swan paddle-boat thing too! But it was rainy that day, plus the main fishing pond was closed for a corporate event.

The prawning ponds are easy to find if you keep left and head towards the Japanese restaurant. There are two prawning ponds: one is for normal prawning, and the other is for children. The children’s pond is for ‘longkang fishing’ (longkang = drain), where they use nets to catch small fish like guppies.

Prawning is $14.50/hour at the main pond, rod and bait included. You head to the counter and pay for your hour, collect your bait and rod, and then find a spot by the pond to settle down.

We’re not sure what the bait is, but we think it’s fish insides. They’re raw and kind of slimy though, which may be enough to put people off. But not the brave and somewhat ick-resistant (except for insects of the crawling, wriggly and flying persuasion) Adventure Crew!

So what you do is you take a piece of chopped bait and poke your prawning hook through it, pick a patch of water, and throw your hook in. There’s this floating thing that will, er, float. And then you settle down to wait.

And wait.

And wait.

This is why they charge you by the hour. Most of the prawning expedition was spent waiting for a prawn to take the bait.

When you feel a tug on your rod and your floater thing bobs up and down, that means a prawn has decided your bait looks yummy!

Then comes the tricky part. You’re supposed to kind of flick your rod upwards to get the hook into the prawn, but that doesn’t always work. And then you kind of wave your rod madly to get the end back to you (there is no winder, like in a fishing rod) while fighting the prawn.

And the prawn will fight. During our hour there, we saw some rather impressive rod-bending action. Mintea actually got one heck of a fighter, but it got away ):

Once you get the prawn up onto land, they have this very long blue-black pincer. It looks a bit like a black-blue twig, but I’m told that they can cause injury. So you have to remove the pincher by stepping on it and pulling the prawn away from said pincer. We had to get Avariel to do it, since she had boots on and was the only one who knew how to de-pincer the prawns.

First to catch a prawn was Sarah.

And then, very soon after that, Avariel caught a prawn.

Mintea caught the third. She nearly caught another one, but it got away; to be fair, it was a very large prawn with two pincers.

And I… didn’t catch any. ):

MEANWHILE, a group of Chinese tourists on the other side of the pond were catching prawns willy-nilly! They caught at least five or six while we were there. Clearly, prawns do not like me. ):

What do you do with the prawns you’ve caught? You cook them! (Evil laughter completely optional.)

So after our hour was up, we took our de-pincered prawns to the small grill they had there. The bait man — who kept talking to us in Chinese, despite our collective lack of understanding — helped us poke satay sticks into the prawns. And then onto the grill they went.

It’s a bit creepy to see your prawns twitching on the heat; they are, after all, still alive. All I can say is that they died before they were cooked through, which was a bit of a relief. I generally like my food to be unconscious when it’s being cooked, but I don’t think you can knock out prawns.

I basically sulked at the side for my lack of prawns, but you can eat the prawns there and then. These are probably the freshest prawns any of us have eaten; the brains are a bright, yolk yellow, which I’ve never seen before. And I bet they (the prawns, not necessarily the brains) were sweet.

After that we walked around the grounds for a bit, exploring some of the interesting items on the lawn – there is the eponymous bottle tree, as well as a fake giant ribcage.

As mentioned before, Bottle Tree Park has got other activities too. They actually have a zipline and a paintball park.

The zipline was closed, and looked semi-abandoned, but I’m told it can’t compare to Megazip.

We headed to the paintball park next. Red Dynasty Paintball Park is a bit hard to find, but basically go back to the entrance and, instead of walking away from the small access road, follow the road all the way up the slight slope.

Red Dynasty Paintball Park has a few courses, including a shooting gallery. We didn’t have the minimum six people to have a match, so the shooting range it was! It’s $10 for 30 paintballs.

The staff there briefed us on the masks, how to use a paintball gun, and safety. The paintballs travel at something like 90 meters a second; while it won’t kill you, you can lose an eye. And then it’s fun and games without depth perception.

But seriously, it can be dangerous stuff. But listen to their warnings and don’t be an idiot, and you’ll be fine.

I wear glasses, but the Halo-esque paintball mask goes over the entire face and glasses. It isn’t too uncomfortable, even with glasses on, but it does fog up very quickly.

I was the second to put on the mask. By the time we were led into the shooting gallery some thirty seconds later, I couldn’t actually see anything but big colored shapes.

Which is a bit of a pity, because I was basically shooting blind.

The paintball guns use canisters of compressed air so there wasn’t much recoil. The guns are a bit heavy, though you can adjust your stance to compensate.

It was over very quickly, alas. Within about ten minutes all of us had exhausted our ammo.

It’s fun though! Especially if you get the chance to shoot at other people, heh. As we left, we saw a group of guys duking it out at one of their courses. That particular course is big enough to move about with and take cover, but not big enough that you feel like a sniper waiting for your target to come into view.

Although, with the way the mask fogs up, you might never see your target.

At any rate, by then it was noon! So off to lunch we went. It’s a short bus ride to Yishun Interchange, where Northpoint mall is.

Because we lead such interesting lives, the minute we walked in we saw interesting stilt-walkers who looked right out of Carnevale. They waved hello, and we waved back – professional courtesy, as it were.

And then to lunch proper. I got my revenge for my lack of caught prawns by eating the famous, delicious, nom-worthy flaming prawns at Manhattan Fish Market. Bwahahaha.

So yes, it was a very seafoody day. Not that I’m complaining! I like seafood, I like prawns, and I really really like Manhattan Fish Market – and, most of all, I love hanging out with the Adventure Crew.