A spread of satay, bak kut teh (pork rib soup) and fried oyster omelette and drinks at a hawker center in Singpaore is seen in this photo taken in December 2025. Courtesy of Kim Ji-soo

Traveling overseas is a rare opportunity these days due to affordability issues. But when bones are chilled by the cold, people jump at the smallest opportunity — and when one such opportunity arrived for me, I took it.

Ever the "one-plus-one-plus-one" traveler, this trip was a chance to reunite with friends, feast on local delicacies and find similarities between the city-state of Singapore and my life in Korea through a homestay program.

Landing in a place where the temperature was around 30 degrees Celsius awakened my near-frozen senses, and with that my first stop was East Coast Lagoon Food Village. The numerous hawker stalls featured local delicacies like bak kut teh (a pork soup similar to Korean gukbap), stingray meat, skewers of satay and fried oyster omelettes. This distinctively Singaporean quality helped bring hawker culture to greater acclaim, including designation as a UNESCO Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2020. Experience a few hawker centers, and........

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