AS Malaysians, we know that we can use the utensils provided by the food stall that we order our food from. But a pair of tourists from China were apparently unaware of this during their trip to Singapore and received a shock of their life.
The tourist who posted about the incident on her Xiao Hong Shu account explained that the unfortunate incident occurred on Christmas day.
According to her, she went with her boyfriend to a well known food court in Singapore where they ate a meal from a stall. She wanted a pair of chopsticks and assumed that the stalls in the food court operated in a similar manner as the airport where the disposable tableware could be shared and therefore took the chopsticks from the food stall next door.
To her horror, the hawker of the food stall came over to the couple and angrily requested them to return the disposable chopsticks. The couple who felt embarrassed because they already used the chopsticks offered to buy the two pairs.
The hawker refused the notion and insisted the duo return the chopsticks back to him. She added that the incident happened in the afternoon and there were many folks dining at the food court, so they did not want to cause a scene.
The duo tried another way, they asked the hawker if they could purchase a dish from his stall.
“We thought this was a compromise but we didn’t expect him to be aggressive. He yelled at us in public and pointed at us, saying that he would call the police to catch us for stealing his chopsticks,” she wrote in her post.
The befuddled tourist ended her post by stating that she doesn’t know the laws in Singapore and asked netizens on whether it is illegal to take chopsticks from a food stall.
According to Singaporean media, 8World who reached out to the respective hawker to get his side of the story, he mentioned that the cost needed to restock the disposable chopsticks is why he doesn’t allow customers who don’t patronise his stall to freely use the utensils.
He also added that the tourists never offered to purchase any meal from their stall.
