It is 2am on Saturday morning, and party animals in Singapore are just getting into the swing of things.

Meanwhile, I am trying to stay awake in the middle of a vast auction hall filled with vegetables of all kinds.

Fork lifts chug past me politely, bearing fresh produce. Stall-owners stand proudly behind their wares, like lecturers behind their lecterns. And buyers get solemnly down to the task of selecting and loading their greens onto nearby trucks with idling engines.

Welcome to the Pasir Panjang Wholesale Centre, where it’s business as usual at Singapore’s famed vegetable night market.

Opened in 1983, the 7-ha wholesale centre encompasses vegetable, fruits and dried foods wholesalers, and cold storage facilities. The vegetable importers’ belt, which takes up blocks 6 to 13, spans 0.5km.

The auction hall, which is 430m-long, is able to house 300 wholesale merchants at once.

Drawing its core crowd of wet market hawkers and restaurant-owners, the wholesale centre is operational 24 hours a day, closing only on the first day of Chinese New Year. In the day, people arrive to buy and sell fruits in bulk. Night market vendors arrive to set up their stalls from 7pm onwards, but the busiest window is from 2am to 4am.

As I stand like a dreamer in the night market, the crisp early morning air brings with it the slightly acrid smell of earth clinging to vegetable roots, the refreshing tang of limes, and occasional whiffs of cigarette smoke.

The displayed stock range from the common-place (bestsellers are kai lan, kang kong, chye sim and chili), to the weird (a peony-like green bloom called fugui cai or carpet vegetable).

My guide, Mr Chia Chong Peow, who is the vice-president of the Pasir Panjang Wholesale Association, points out that the wholesale centre has experienced its fair share of drama and changes over the years. It weathered a temporary closure during the Sars epidemic and quarantine in 2003, and has bounced back since then.

“We’re very united here,” says Mr Chia. “Whenever anything happens, news spreads very fast. So it’s very easy to mobilise everybody, as was the case during the Sars outbreak.”

Indeed, the community spirit around the centre is so high that a wholesaler employer reportedly once paid thousands of dollars in order to help her bachelor employee find a Vietnamese bride - with scores of well-wishing co-workers at the wedding.

And ever since the murder of eight-year-old Huang Na in one of the centre’s warehouses in 2004, rules governing the goings-on in the compound have been tightened.

Acting as a visual deterrent, five security guys keep watch from their station in the middle of the hall, and patrol the area on bicycles.

A less morbid change at the market is the new forms of packaging that goods get shipped around in. Sacks and baskets have been replaced by neatly stacked, printed cardboard boxes; delicate vegetables are individually wrapped in plastic, styrofoam sleeves or blister packs.

COLOURFUL CHARACTERS
The vegetables are not the only stars of the night market show.

You won’t be able to miss Mr Law Song Nan, 58. He sits next to a tower full of karaoke audio-visual equipment, blasting Hokkien disco music. Multi-coloured LED lights twinkle next to his work counter, which holds both an abacus and the modern calculator.

Says the veteran: “It was hard when we first moved here from our old premises in town. Everything was empty and we had to renovate from scratch.”

He plonked down $120,000 back then to set up three shops and an office.

Nowadays, when business is good, takings can be upwards of $30,000 a night. But business has paled — unlike the past when he can shift 10 tons of merchandise during Chinese New Year, the figure is now about four tons.

He says: “I always tell the stall holders that they must keep things tidy and clean around here. The aunties who go marketing now wear shoes that cost hundreds of dollars. If your floor is dirty, they’re not coming.”

A few stalls away from Mr Law, two ladies make up a formidable team at another outfit.

Madam Lim Chin Koon — a youthful-looking 63-year-old who works alongside her daughter-in-law, Joanne Tan - says: “Nobody wants to work in this line anymore. Your life is upside down, being awake when others are sleeping. When I first started, I found the hours very tough. Now I’m used to it.”

She recounts the frustration of having to throw away perfectly good vegetables on days of incessant rain.

Still, there is always a silver lining. Says Ms Tan, 40, who holds a day job as a purchaser but helps out at the stall occasionally: “People here are simpler. There’s no office politics.”

WINDING DOWN
Around 4.30am, the hustle-and-bustle starts to die down.

Wholesalers tally up their sales for the morning, and quietly pack up the remainder. Some of the leftover produce may be stored in the cold storage rooms, humming at 2ºC.

I am determined to buy something, even though I have no bulk-purchasing power.

Bargaining isn’t exactly rampant around these parts, says Mr Chia. With profit margins shaved low, the stall-owners rarely pay attention to stray hagglers.

However, with closing-time looming, entrepreneurs eager to get rid of scraps would be more amenable. I stop at a stall and gingerly scrutinise crates of tomatoes, cucumbers and string beans. I pick out two packets of enoki mushrooms for 50 cents each, a head of lettuce, and a packet of sweet peas.

In the end, the very nice boss lets me have the lot for $2. Chuffed with my veggie haul, I drive home on deserted roads, vowing to return soon.