Singapore Chinatown

I spent this morning in Singapore’s Chinatown, which is fairly substantial in area. Having said that, a couple of the sights I visited are not Chinese-related, despite being in Chinatown.

Just as an aside, Singapore serves as an outpost for large contingents of a few different Asian heritages and cultures, including Chinese, Indian and Malaysian. When it comes to cuisines, you can add Japanese to them.

But I’ve yet to see a restaurant offering Singaporean food. In its Singapore food specialties section, the guidebook I’m using lists Chinese, Indian, Malaysian, Indonesian, and Peranakan (a fusion of Chinese and Malay ingredients), but nothing native to Singapore.

Yesterday, when I looked online (TripAdvisor and Google Maps) for a restaurant for dinner, I wanted a Singaporean meal because, dammit, I’m in Singapore. I couldn’t find any restaurants offering such a thing.

So I went to the front desk of the hotel and asked for a recommendation for a local cuisine restaurant. The person at the desk asked me, “What kind of local? Chinese? Indian? Japanese?”

I ended up at a Chinese restaurant. I’m beginning to think there’s no such thing as a cuisine originating in and specific to Singapore. Back in North America, I’ve had a dish called “Singapore noodles” many times. I’m now wondering if it indeed is native to Singapore or just a North American name for a dish of unknown origin.

Buddha Tooth Relic Temple

Chinatown’s Buddha Tooth Relic Temple has a stunningly beautiful, predominantly red chapel on the ground floor. There are one hundred small Buddha statues arrayed in niches lining two opposing walls.

The temple has five floors. I visited them in a somewhat haphazard order because, well, reasons. I like to think I’m a moderately rational person, but I realize that I don’t always live up to that standard. Let’s leave it at that. I’ll describe the floors in the order I visited them.

Unlike in many temples, you don’t have to take your shoes off to enter the temple. However, the fourth floor contains a relic room, and you do have to remove your shoes to enter it. The room contains, among other items, the relic for which the temple got its name: the left canine tooth of the Buddha. It was allegedly recovered from a funeral pyre in India. However, there is some debate about whether the tooth is genuine. The tooth resides in a section of the room that tourists can’t get all that close to. It sits in a fairly large golden case that looks like a temple with an open front.

Photos are forbidden in the relics room, so you’ll have to visit it yourself, or maybe look for official or illicit images on the internet.

One floor above the relic, on the fifth-floor rooftop, there’s a beautiful, peaceful garden. It contains flowers, trees, babbling water features, and a small pagoda-style temple. It’s a joy.

On the third floor, there’s a museum of Buddha statues and other Buddhist figures from around the world. This floor also has a relics room within the museum. Unlike the rest of the museum, like the fourth-floor relics room, you can’t take photos there. But, at least don’t have to take your shoes off.

On the second level, walkways on either side of the building overlook the first-floor main chapel. Cases that line the walls of these walkways contain Buddha and other Buddhist mannequins with very lifelike faces.

All and all, the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple made for a nice start for my morning in Chinatown.

Sri Marriaman Temple

Incongruously located in Chinatown, the Sri Marriaman Temple is not related to China or Chinese culture or religion. Instead, it’s the oldest Hindu temple in Singapore, built in 1823. If you’re a big fan of kitsch, you’ll love the Sri Marriaman Temple. A tower out front that narrows to a point at its top is completely adorned with brightly coloured Hindu figures.

The temple is mostly open-air, but there are some covered, but open-fronted prayer areas inside. Despite being open-air, the temple enforces a no-shoes rule and provides shoe shelves out front to accommodate that rule.

Thian Hock Keng Temple

The Thian Hock Keng Temple in Chinatown is Singapore’s oldest and, according to my guidebook, the most important Hokkien temple. Again according to that guidebook, despite its importance, it is often quite tranquil. I guess I visited during one of the rare non-tranquil times. It was quite busy, mainly with tourists (damned tourists!) who didn’t seem to live lives of quiet introspection.

Most of the Thian Hock Keng Temple is open-air.

I found the temple attractive, but not beautiful or of any obvious great note. But that probably relates to my woeful knowledge of the religion.

Telok Ayer Green

Immediately beside the Thian Hock Keng Temple sits a very peaceful small parkette called the Telok Ayer Green. It has some trees and other vegetation, a reflecting pool, and some sculptures. The attractive exterior of the Thian Hock Keng Temple frames a portion of the parkette.

It’s quite a peaceful spot, but the primary reason I mention it here is one of the sculptures. It consists of two men and three children. Three of the figures are holding poles with fish mounted atop them. I thought my most devoted reader would enjoy a picture of that.

Singapore City Gallery

The Singapore City Gallery is in Chinatown, but not of Chinatown. On three levels, it tells the story of Singapore’s history and present. It offers its information mostly through videos, interactive displays, photographs, paintings, old maps, old artifacts from Singapore, and text.

The highlight of the gallery is a three-dimensional model of the central business district of Singapore. The model labels all of the major buildings. There is a large section of the model, beside the Marina Bay Sands, that contains several roughly skyscraper-shaped wooden blocks. That area is planned for future development.

Lunch: Hawker Centre

When I read about food in my guidebook, it had a separate section on hawker centres. It’s a thing you’re supposed to take in before you can say you’ve truly experienced Singapore. Hawker centres are essentially food courts with a large number of independent stalls where food purveyors hawk food they cook to order.

As of today, I can now say I truly experienced Singapore. I had lunch at a hawker centre across the street from the Singapore City Gallery. It, and one other hawker centre I’ve seen are fairly rough and tumble places. The one I ate had three or four aisles lined chock-a-block with vendors. I wandered up and down and chose a Chinese noodle dish.

The tables in hawker centres aren’t assigned to customers of a single vendor, but rather shared by them all. I read that the thing to do is, if you are in a group of two or more people, have at least one person stay and reserve seats at a table while the other(s) order from the chosen vendor(s). According to my guidebook, if you’re alone, the thing to do is to find a seat and then leave something personal there to reserve it. The guidebook said to carry around one of those small packets of facial tissues because that or an umbrella is the most frequent seat reservation marker. I purposely brought a tissue pack for that purposse.

Apparently, in some hawker centres, when you order you tell the vendor the number posted on your table and they bring your order to you. The one I was at had numbers on the tables, but I had to carry my own food to the table.

It was indeed an experience, and the food was very tasty. I don’t think its an experience I want to have every day I’m here, but I am open to enjoying it again before I leave.