Playing tourist in Singapore

Last week, for the first time since I've been in Singapore, I got to play full-time tourist, as my parents were in town to visit me!  It was lots of fun and I found out a lot more about Singapore - often the places we visited were locations I had frequented before but had not realized the historical significance/cultural value behind them.

My parents arrived late Monday night and I met up with them on Tuesday morning.  After a failed attempt to visit a crocodile farm, we settled for a visit to Arab Street and the Malay Heritage Center.  Arab Street is one of my favorite places in Singapore, for it's chill vibe, good food, and funky shops.  The Malay Heritage Center was somewhat interesting, but I would have liked for it to focus more on the historical areas of Malay influence in Singapore - the present-day exhibits were much less interesting.  For dinner, I introduced my parents to the very common Singaporean dinner location: the mall food-court.  Like an indoor, air conditioned, hawker center, but more crowded.  The extreme crowds made it a bit difficult to navigate, but a friendly Singaporean family ended up sharing their table with us - everyone here is so much nicer to me when I'm with my family (more on this later)!

The next day, my dad had to fly to Jakarata for business, so my mom and I headed to Chinatown.  We visited a really cool Taoist temple - the first in Singapore, built in 1826.  Here's a picture of the inside of the Yueh Hai Ching Temple (Temple of the Calm Sea):

 The temple was built by the Teochew community of Singapore (one of the main Chinese groups during those times) to thank the gods for safe passages over the ocean, as the Teochew were historically sailors and fishermen. Besides the main shrine, there were lots of other shrines that I'm sure had very interesting stories behind them, such as this one (especially the guy on the right):

The next day, my mom and I headed to Little India, another very interesting neighborhood in Singapore.  I like Little India because it provides a glimpse of what Singapore was like in the past - like this spice mill in a sundry goods shop:

The whole shop smelled delicious and barrels of ground spices were stacked along the walls:

We also checked out a Hindu temple, the Sri Veeramakaliamman Temple.  Like most Hindu temples, this one was gaudily decorated and had a tall tower, called a gopuram, which is similar to a church tower in that it is designed to help pilgrims find their way to the temple.   Taking a break, we ate some kulfi, which is the Indian version of ice cream.  It's slightly thicker than normal ice cream and flavored with all sorts of nuts.  Seriously, if you ever get a chance to try it, do so!  It was madly delicious.  Finally, we rounded out our Little India explorations with a trip to Mustafa's department store, a 24-hour madhouse full of all sorts of cheap merchandise.

The next day, we decided to explore the British influence in Singapore by visiting the civic district and the waterfront.  (Apparently, this is also the point at which I stopped taking pictures for several days - sorry!)  The massive, stately government buildings look quite out of place against the lush, tropical background of Singapore.  We also visited the Philatelic Museum, which, for a museum about stamps, was pretty great!  Surprising, I know.

On our last day in Singapore, my parents and I went to the National Museum.  I had never been there before and it was probably the most extensive and through museum I've ever been to.  The exhibits in the Singapore history gallery were accompanied by an audio/visual "companion" that gave you audio snippets about historical events in Singapore's past.  After listening to these general snippets, you could choose to read more about specific artifacts, listen to discussions by various historians, or hear first-hand accounts of the (more recent) events in question.  I think our visit took about 3 hours - but we could have spent all day there! 

That night, we went to the Night Safari at the Singapore Zoo.  This is a special nighttime exhibit that features nocturnal animals.  It was really cool!  The prize for most adorably cute animal goes to the Lesser Mouse Deer.  Here's a picture (not mine): 

Seriously, how retardedly cute is that?!?  (For a scale reference, their max height is about 18 inches, their mature weight is under 5 lbs.)  The award for most bad-ass animal goes to the Malayan Flying Fox, which was a large bat about one foot long.  Part of the Night Safari contained a walk-in bat cage, which was a very very large cage that you could walk through and be up close and personal with the bats.  It was so cool being only feet away from these huge bats!  Observe (again, not my picture - my camera sucks at night shots):

 The next day, we woke up super early to get to the airport to catch our flight to Borneo - but I'll save that for another blog entry.

Overall, seeing Singapore from a completely tourist perspective was interesting.  Seeing all the things that surprised my parents made me realize all the little differences that I've adapted to in the past four months.  I think that what made the biggest impression upon me was how polite other people were to us - no pushing to get on the bus, offering their seats on the train, helping with locating various places.  I don't really know why this is - my only theory is that Asians are always kind of confused when a single woman is travelling alone, so maybe when I had my family with me, we seemed more like tourists.  Anyways, I enjoyed it while it lasted!

So, that about sums up the Singapore visit.  Next time: our trip to Borneo and my awesome German Christmas lunch.