Quick visit to Chinatown and Marina Bay

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8/6/2013

Not much new going on lately. Finished school registration and immigration details on Tuesday. Tuesday night a few of us wandered down to Marina Bay. Very pretty sky scrapers. Marina Bay is home to the Marina Bay Sands Integrated Resort (hotel/casino). Apparently it was the worlds most expensive resort to build at S$8 billion. Atop the resort is a 150 m infinity pool which sits on the worlds largest public cantilevered platform. Every night there is a laser show near the Sands resort. Aside from the lasers they project images and scenes onto the spray from fountains. The effects they can achieve are impressive.

8/8/2013

Thursday, being the end of Ramadan, is a public holiday in Singapore. A group of about 10 from the university decided to go rock climbing. Evidently I'm not in as good of shape as the last time I went rock climbing. After climbing we all went to the local hawker center for dinner and beers. We all chipped in and a local girl who was with us insisted on running around grabbing dishes she said we just had to try. We ended up with quite the feast.

8/10/2013

Saturday was a fairly busy day. The morning started with a visit to Chinatown. I am told Singapore's Chinatown dates back to the 1820's when immigrants began arriving from Xiamen, China. Before land reclamation in the 1960's the coastline came right up to Chinatown. At present Chinatown sits about 1.5 miles inland from the coast. Chinatown is full of magnificent old shop-houses, exotic food vendors, and tons of shopping. There appears to be about a billion places to grab plastic Buddhas and cheap 'I love Singapore' t-shirts. Mixed among souvenir shops there are places to buy antiques, intricately carved statues, and the like. There are also a number of traditional Chinese medicine shops selling a menagerie of herbal remedies for all kinds of ailments.

A visit to the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple and Museum should be on any visitors list. It is claimed that the relic for which the temple is named was found in 1980 in a collapsed stupa in Myanmar. Despite not being very old (it's Singapore's newest actually) the temple is quite impressive. According to my guide book it houses Asia's largest stupa made from 420 kg of gold and 201 rubies. It is quite touristy which takes away from the experience a bit but still worth the time. The temples six levels house a number of museums dedicated to Buddhist culture and teachings, a rooftop garden, a tea house, and a gift shop.

After the temple I wandered down to the Sri Mariamman Temple. This is Singapore's oldest Indian temple. A wood and thatched temple was created in 1827 and the wildly ornate temple which stands today was finished in the 1860s. The temple is dedicated to Sri Mariamman who is a popular southern Indian deity worshipped for health and prosperity. I wasn't able to do much exploring of the temple because they were having a rather large ceremony and asked tourists to limit their travel. Chinatown is my favorite neighborhood in Singapore at this time and really deserves a more in depth visit than what I provided.

In the evening I headed to the hawker center across from my hostel and grabbed some dinner. On the menu was chai tow kway, or carrot cake. Despite it's name it doesn't actually have any carrot in it. I am told it is known as carrot cake because the word for one of it's main ingredients (no idea which one) can also refer to carrots. It is actually a mixture of radish cake, fried egg, and seasonings. It was delicious and only set me back S$2.80. Back at the hostel about ten of us crammed into the tiny TV lounge and watched Django Unchained.

Most of the students at my hostel are NTU students with me. Our classes begin on Monday. Up until now the hostel has been buzzing with activity as people arrive and settle in. I imagine once classes start it will turn into a ghost town, at least until the rhythm of the semester is found.

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Comments

[Pam]

I am really enjoying the pictures, Ben . Beautiful places! What is a stupa?

[Laswell]

response
Thanks Pam! A stupa is a dome shaped structure which usually houses Buddhist relics. In this case, the relic is purportedly a tooth from Buddha. Visitors were able to see it but there was strictly no photography.

[Richard Deems]

Thanks!
Thanks Ben for your blogs! And your pictures! You are in for a great adventure. And don't forget to study.