Chinatown

On the weekends our little apartment becomes unbearable. Since the sofa is too small for both of us to sit comfortably on it and the only other sitting option is my computer chair or the kitchen / dining table chairs, we try to go out and stay OUT as much as we can. Last weekend we went to Bali. I wish we could go to Bali every weekend... But we ALL know it's not possible, and yes, I still keep asking myself "but why"... So in view of the unfavourable development of NOT being able to go to Bali (or a similar nice destination) every weekend, we try to organize entertainment for ourselves locally. Intent on discovering as much of Singapore as it's possible before we leave, I've read through all three guide books we have on Singapore (two little ones, one courtesy of Elif and Alfonso, the other one our own and a big thick book on South East Asia on a Shoestring - somehow they included Singapore in the book on Asia on a SHOESTRING - which I find hard to believe...) and I have decided that THE place to go is Chinatown. All excited, I wanted to explore. You know, culture, origins, 80% of inhabitants of Singapore being Chinese and all that kind of stuff made me think that Chinatown is the place to go. The guidebooks list it as one of the places on the to-do list in Singapore. Well, it was a disappointment... The ONLY thing worth seeing in Chinatown was the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple and Museum. It has the largest stupa in Asia, made of more than 400 kg of pure gold, adorned with hundreds rubies and other precious stones... Inside rests a TOOTH of Buddha. The ground floor of the temple hosts an ABUNDANCE of Buddhas. There are hundreds of ornamental boxes lining up the walls that are at least 8 meters high and in each box there is a Buddha, a different statute of Buddha, surrounded by little statues of Buddhas... The number of Buddhas gives you an involuntary nystagmus, there is just sooo many of them. Everything around is red and golden. We discover that different images of Buddhas are meant to protect people born in different years of the Chinese calendar, e.g. Bryan who was born in the year of a sheep (which, incidentally, is also the year of the MONKEY - how hilarious is that?) is protected by a Buddha called VATROCANA and me, born in the year of the Tiger - I am protected by a Buddha with a very complex name of AVASAGARBHA. We go up to the fourth floor of the temple to admire the TOOTH. The inner chamber housing the tooth is closed but you can see it through a glass wall and you can also admire THE TOOTH on a video streaming from inside the chamber, showing the TOOTH. We respectfully walk around, admire the gold and the germs and the intricate ornaments and even buy a gold-plated coin, put our names on it and deposit it in a special box - soon it will line up the wall or the floor of the chamber we are not sure what but it's for good luck and we could never have too much of that. On the rooftop of the temple is a nice tropical garden and a huge prayer wheel that you walk around as it turns and every time you make it around there is a chime to indicate it. So I walk around the prayer wheel - again, no such thing as too much luck... From there we descend down the staircase, hitting the Buddhism history museum on the way, where we look at even more statues of Buddha and we leave the building. A very nice experience in general. A very impressive temple. But the rest of the Chinatown - not so much. We walk around but other than an ornamental top of the Sri Mariamman temple - the oldest Indian temple in Singapore - there is nothing to see. We walk into the Maxwell Food Centre - one of the most famous hawker stand centres in Singapore. I had alrealy sworn off hawker centre food and had Bryan promise we would never eat hawker centre food again but he gets a banana fritter (claiming that it's a perfect snack - well, it IS fried and it IS a banana and he IS from Louisiana so most probably he is being honest) so I get a cup of iced lychee. We are tired, hot and sweaty - it's a surprisingly clear, sunny day and we have been walking for some hours now. So we decide to get back on the train (underground, called MTR here, is a very clean and effective way of getting around) and head out to get some dinner somewhere else. On the way to the station we are lured into a restaurant by a waitress promising us cheap BIG bottles of beer. And this goes into the Chinatown plus column - the bottles WERE big (620 ml) and the beer was cheap - the cheapest we've had in Singapore so far - 6.20 S$ per BIG bottle. Nice, chilled Becks hits the right spot. We snack on some chicken satay sticks and our day in Chinatown ends on a high note.