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! ^_^

Singapore Tidbits: Part 2

While in Singapore, I heard this song. It's a Mongolian Folk style song called "My Three Treasures". It was written by a Mongolian guy in China. He saw how a lot of Mongolians were moving to the large cities in China and the next generation was losing their mother tongue. He wrote this song so that Mongolian kids growing up in the cities would at least know some of their ancestral language through the words to a Mongolian song. The song is about Mother, Father, and Child (the three treasures). The song was extremely popular and stayed at the top of the Mandarin pop charts for over a month. I also saw a show about the little girl singer in the song on the Discovery Channel Asia (the show was called "Mongolian Idol").

Next tidbit. I've been buying a lot of baked goods at a Japanese bakery across the street from my hotel (most of my meals have been from there. oops! ^____^). Here's a picture of my sweet sweet candy:On the left is a curry donut - donut dough with chicken curry inside, fried like a donut. On the bottom is a chocolate and custard bun. On one side it has a vanilla custard inside, on the other side it has a chocolate paste. On the right is a soy bean & cheese roll. Soft bread, soy beans inside, toasted cheese on top. Yuhm Yuhm Yuhm!

Singapore Shrine Hunt

Since it's Sunday today, I figured it would be appropriate to go on a shrine hunt.

I looked up the closest subway station by the shrine and just took off. When I got off at the station (Raffel station I think), I found a couple of vague locality maps that showed the shrine just off of Church Street, but not how to get to Church Street. So I walked in the general area and stopped and asked people for directions.

I did end up finding it and it was pretty interesting. The whole area smelled strongly of incense. The shine was a very old walled structure, right next to high-rise buildings. The contrast was pretty neat.

I had my little camera and snapped some photos, but I also tried to grab some video. Here's my first attempt at adding video to this blog:

Here's an attempt to add some video of the hunt:

Video #2:

Video #3:

Here are some photos of the shrine. From the outside:



On the inside. The spiral things are incense sticks. There were probably 30 or so of them hanging all around and all of them were lit. Check our the details on that roof!

Video #4:

Video #5:

Well, that was my quest for the shrine! I hope you liked it, I did ^^

Singapore Tidbits

Here's a couple random tidbits:

The paper money in Singapore comes in different sizes for the denominations. I don't think I've seen that before. Here's a pic:
Amanda and I have a friend who goes by "Milo" online, so I had to pick up these:


There are just tons and tons of trees everywhere in Singapore, more so than any other large city I've been in. Some of the trees are really striking. I asked some local people about them, and apparently one of the old Prime Ministers had them brought in from overseas. I was told that when they're kids, Singaporeans learn all the names of the trees in the city. I think this one is called "flame of the forest" (maybe, my Singaporean colleagues were a little fuzzy on that ^__^ ). Here's a pic!