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Published: January 15th 2009
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If we just had known it beforehand which world we were stepping into when moving to Singapore. Little India, our new home area was anything else except a disappointment when we arrived, and I still found it as a one of the most exciting, colorful and attractive places to visit and stay in Singapore. We luckily have a chance to live there everyday😉 With this entry I would like to share with you some facts about this area we have been living these months as I realized not so many photos are yet taken or posted from this area.
Basically Little India is, as the name promises, the center for the large Indian community in Singapore. Although I have never been in India, I could suggest that this area here is a rather sanitized version of the real thing..
Our apartment's location could not actually be better, since we are living in one of "the most famous and oldest street in Little India, everyone knows it" as one nice taxi driver told us. For sure there is good and bad sides in that.. Normally people there are just so relaxed looking, huge contrast to busy Singaporeans or hurrying Chinese.
The central streets of Little India are packed with stalls selling all sorts of Indian goods and that music, nowhere else in S'pore it is not played that loud! And those colors in buildings, quarters and everywhere. I'm still stunned and assaulted on the senses. There is always strong, heady scent of spices and jasmine garlands,fish head curry (which is a uniquely Singaporean dish, most stranger-sounding and admittedly stranger-looking dishes around) and other smells.
Sundays are catastrophic days in our precious Little India, which is always vivid and full of people walking, sitting and talking. Every Sundays there is a open air market when all the Singapore's Indian workers turn up in Little India to hang out on their day off and shop those spices and food they can't find everywhere else.Normally these people are always men, women instead, well, they are more staying inside and with the children. Government has even organized buses for those people to come there and it is not one or two buses which are coming, more like 100!! and I'm very serious. Whole the Little India is crowded. First thing our landlady told us when we moved in was " Don't go
out on Sundays" Nowadays we are escaping to somewhere and waiting the evening before coming back.
Couple words about food. The thing to eat in Little India is obviously Indian food. Parathas, Pratas, Chapattis, soups and others, Nams! Food is so cheap even by Singaporean standards, portions are generous and vegetarian food is also served everywhere. One odd habit we faced was that in these authentic Indian places people around us are eating the way Indians do, namely by hand — so we are also digging in. Who could have believed?
We arrived to Little India and Singapore during Deepavali, which is the Indian Hindu Festival of Lights. Whole the area was transformed into a fairyland and decorated with lights.Now I can see it was a nice start for our exchange period. To get to know the Singapore starting from those streets bustling with shoppers and open-air markets that were set up to sell Deepavali goodies.
Approximately two months to go, how come the time has been flying like this?
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