Woman Claimed a Cup of Iced Water Cost $1.40 in Amoy Street Food Centre

With the sweltering heat this month, I’m sure many of us have found ourselves in a situation where all we crave is a cup of ice-cold water.

Yet, this supposedly comes at quite an unexpected price in Amoy Street Food Centre. A woman claimed a cup of iced water from a particular stall in the popular CBD lunch haunt costs $1.40.

A Cup of Iced Water for $1.40 at Amoy Street Food Centre: Daylight Robbery?

On Friday (12 May), a post by a user named Kong MaLa surfaced on the Facebook group COMPLAINT SINGAPORE, sharing her two cents on the cost of iced water at Amoy Street Food Centre. Or, to put it directly, complaining about the cost of iced water at the food centre.

Apparently, this ordinary cup of iced water you’re looking at now costs $1.40. The user had given the uncle $2 and received $0.60 worth of change.

Hopefully the water was extra crisp and refreshing or tasted like truffle. The user didn’t give a review of her “ice kosong”—we’ll never know.

The post shared that before COVID-19, the ballpark figure for a cup of iced water ranged between $0.30 to $0.50.

Well, all we can say is that this user seems like an iced water connoisseur.

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Maybe the breakdown for the $1.40 cup of iced water is more like this: $0.50 for iced water and the remaining $0.90 for, perhaps, the red straw.

Or maybe the price of the iced water can be explained by inflation and the high rental prices at Amoy Street Food Centre.

The user even posted an image of the stall alongside her complaint, sharing that this $1.40 cup of iced water was purchased from stall #01-67 at the two-storey hawker centre.

Honestly, the uncle at the stall is also looking quite dulan—tough iced water crowd at the hawker centre, I suppose.

Why is A Cup of Iced Water this Expensive?

The post has seen some netizens swooping in to defend the drinks store’s uncle, raising the possibility that the uncle might have given the wrong amount of change to the user.

However, other netizens were more sceptical, sharing that the uncle may have taken the opportunity to hike up iced water prices, knowing that Singaporeans have been battling the heat recently.

Yet, according to an interview conducted by Shin Min Daily News with staff at the stall in question, the stall doesn’t even sell iced water.

The stall only sells either a cup of ice or a bottle of mineral water. A cup of ice would cost $0.20, while a bottle of mineral water costs $1.

Either way, it doesn’t add up to $1.40.

The maths isn’t math-ing. Make it make sense.

This is the first complaint the stall has received in its 60 years of business, of which 30 years was in Amoy Street Food Centre.

I guess there’s a first time for everything. The question is, is this first complaint even a legitimate one?

A Uniquely Singaporean Feat: A Facebook Group Just for Complaints

Complaining seems to be a favourite pastime for many Singaporeans—from a user complaining about the price of iced water to an influencer complaining about non-science majors.

It’s become so commonplace that we even have a Facebook group to complain about minor inconveniences in our daily lives.

We start with $1.40 iced water, but scrolling deeper into the Facebook group, we find essays about chicken rice, urine stains in staircases, and a detailed breakdown of the components in a $9.20 fish soup.

Ah… Singaporeans.

While it doesn’t seem like the stopper will be put on this uniquely Singaporean culture of complaining anytime soon, let us remember not to make false complaints unnecessarily implicating parties who have done no wrong.

And for the rest of us reading these complaints for fun, don’t believe everything you read online.