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Published: October 5th 2009
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Chinatown
Interesting Foods. Day Three October 4, 2009
We awoke at 7:30am which is very early for us especially on a Sunday. Of course the first thing I thought about was that one of our kids may be trying to reach us via skype so we turned on our computer and sure enough hooked up with Jared and Laura who are celebrating their one year anniversary in Puerto Rico. We had a great conversation with them, skype is amazing if any of you are looking for a free way to communicate over the Internet with voice and picture.
We enjoyed breakfast in the lobby and decided that we would head to Chinatown for the morning. Chinatown is a very large area of Singapore with shops and stalls through out the area. Restaurants, and food markets selling foods that we were not sure would ever be digested by our very “American” stomachs. We had some fun bartering with the local merchants and walked away with what we felt were some bargains.
One of the most interesting things we came upon was a store that looked to be a pharmacy with some very strange items behind glass shelves, dried chicken feet, dried sea
Chinatown
"Doctor" preparing his medicines horses etc. In the back of the store was a medical clinic. We actually got to see a “doctor” mixing up the many elements from the glass case weighing them very precisely and then grinding them into potions. As you can imagine Rich wants to go back and see what kinds of potions he can get!
As we continued down the streets we starting seeing shoes lined up along the sidewalks for probably two to three blocks as we got closer we realized we had come upon a Temple holding Sunday Service. The Temple took up one entire city block the music coming from the Temple was amazing. We saw many worshipers lined up barefooted just to get in. Babies in arms, young children, elderly needing assistance. Truly an amazing site.
Since it was getting very warm we decided to catch a cab to take in a local tourist attraction called the Singapore Flyer. It is basically a very large Ferris Wheel type ride although each “car” is an enclosed capsule that gives you the ability to see for miles. You are given a guided tour of Singapore. It is truly an amazing city, once again seeing all
Chinatown Streets
Street with stalls the construction from this height is astounding. They are in the process of building a mini Las Vegas type strip with Casinos, hotels, restaurants etc. All this in hopes to build a larger economy and make Singapore a destination City. We were also told Universal Studios is heading this way. It is hard not to question progress but they estimate this will bring upwards of 40,000 jobs to Singapore. I surely hope they do not push out some of the local charm that makes Singapore so wonderful.
We then headed back to our hotel for our afternoon Siesta....actually Rich has work to do before tomorrow when he heads to the Singaporean office.
After my rest and Richard completed his preparation for tomorrow we headed out for our planned evening. By the way...Rich was amazed that I found the equivalent of Asian HGTV..with English sub titles!
We meet our tour guide in our hotel lobby and headed out to the Night Safari this is a rather touristy thing to do but does allow you to take a tram through the dark to see the nocturnal animals in their own habitat..no walls, cages just moats and berms to keep
them from the trams. It was quite good although it was a long evening made even longer because three participants decided to disregard the time to be on the bus! Poor Rich he had to be up and in the lobby for a Business Breakfast at 7:30am.
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Arden
non-member comment
Great pictures!
This reads like a book! Sounds like you are having a great time and sewing your writing oats.