Trip to Chinatown - Singapore Style

Last Saturday I took a trip to Singapore's Chinatown. This was also my first Singapore subway trip, so I looked up the route and hit the subway (called the MRT here). Luckily there's an entrance to the MRT across from my hotel:


The Singapore MRT handles tickets different from other subways I've used. Here they have a vending machine that issues you a temporary card credited with the amount you put in plus a deposit. Here's the machine:

and here's the ticket:


The ticket has an RFID in it to buzz you through the gates, then you return it at your destination to get your deposit back.

A couple of stops and a line transfer later, I emerged in Chinatown - and I really mean emerged. The escalator from the MRT comes right out into the middle of hundreds of little shops. Here's what you see when you first come out:


One thing this picture doesn't communicate is how hot it was. Not only was the air sticky and thick with the near 100% humidity, but the sky was clear, allowing the sun to stoke the air into a furnace.... it was really really hot :P

Oh, and here's a vid:

Once you get into the shops a bit (where those yellow and red umbrellas are in the picture), the shops get very crowded. It's elbow to elbow from one shop overlapping the next, and little space from one side of the street to the other. It may sound terrible, but it was fun - you could really lose yourself in the crowd and just take it in.

I spent quite a bit of time browsing the shops, and I bought a few things for the family. For Amanda, I bought a jade ring and a tiger eye quartz bracelet because they're the color of her eyes! ^_^