CHINATOWN AND COLONIAL DISTRICT

General Raffles designed the city's layout to create separate culturally significant areas for each of the ethnic groups who were in Singapore in 1819. Little India, Chinatown, Arab Street, and the Malay Kampong are all still there and are very interesting cultural experiences for travelers. They are like being able to visit a different country with just a few stops on the MRT. We started with Chinatown with a breakfast at the Maxwell Hawker Center (Popiah, and many types of dumplings and cups of Kopi-o). Joel, having been up the entire night working on PST was heading back to the apartment to sleep, but I took Mum and the boys across to the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple. 

We've been to many Taoist temples but this one is really enormous and has a museum on one floor, a gift store and it's also a busy place filled with monks and people at prayer. 

We did a little bit of exploring the side streets before heading back to rest. Jet-lag had caught up with us. We stopped for Laksa, Nasi Lemak and Fishball Soup on our way. As you do. 

The following day we set out to the Colonial District to visit the National Museum hoping to give the kids a more visual overview of the island's history. It was very well curated as usual and we got exactly what we hoped from the trip. After the museum we had dinner at Din Tai Fung. 

Chinatown & temple tours

We are completely exhausted after a long full day on our feet. The afternoon we hit the pavement and headed down into the Orchard road shopping district (which is just high end mega-malls and has nothing to do with former orchards). We both successfully found running shoes though we woefully realized that we should have purchased them before we left California. Even our friendly shopkeeper informed us that he shops for his running shoes when he travels to to US.

In the evening we met up with our friends for a beer and then a walk around Chinatown where we visited two temples and then had fantastic Tai food at a busy food stall. The first temple we found appeared to be hindu (though I'm not an expert on this and would welcome any other ideas) and we happened upon it right as they were starting a ceremony and a feast.

The next temple was Taoist and in stark contrast to the former temple it was clean, orderly and had mysterious locked chambers where we could hear monks within chanting. In all, a feast for the eyes, amazing day and the most spicy Som Tum salad we have had to date.

Click on the photos above or click here to see the album of pictures we took tonight