Singapore - Day 5

Awoke to a very rainy day (sorry that most of our pictures are so dark.)

We caught the hop-on, hop-off airconditioned (yea!) bus. First stop, the Little India area. Lots of arcades of touristy type shops.

We passed by the hindu Sri Verramakaiamman Temple dedicated to the goddess Kali (Hindus who worship here leave with red ash smeared on their foreheads, white ash is for male deities.)

After seeing more of the city from the bus, we stopped in Chinatown. The Sri Mariamman Temple is at the entrance to the shopping arcades. It is Singapore's oldest Hindu place of worship. The shopping arcades had touristy things in the streets but as you went deeper into a stall, you could find some really nice stuff. We came upon the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple which is decorated inside with lots of bright red-laquered wood and, of course, has a relic from Buddha.







We walked over a few blocks to see the Thian Hock Keng Temple which is Singapore's oldest Chinese temple dedicated to the goddess Ma Zu who laid down her life to give seafarers a safe passage. On the way back to the hotel, we passed by the Civilian War Memorial. It has four 229-ft white columns representing the four main groups of people here, Chinese, Hindu, Indian and minorities.

Speaking of the people, we learned there is virtually no unemployment with 90% home-ownership. This leads to everyone being part of what we would call a middle class except they do not have a lower class. That explains why there is so much shopping available since everyone can afford to buy!





(Jeff writes)This was our first full day of using the maps and guidebooks that Ronnie had painstakingly put together to make sure we maximized our time when walking around this great city. What the maps and guidebooks failed to mention is that this city appears to be under constant renovations as well as massive construction projects. Thus when the map said go right, many times right was a huge pit or a new foundation for yet another skyscraper. Many right turns turned into left turns and vice versa. Because of this, we walked into neighborhoods we never would have seen and they were great. We followed signs that repeated for blocks that said pedestrians this way and would have arrows pointed in at least 2 different directions.
Ron took pity on me and would find a bench for me to sit on while he explored which direction was the one we needed to reach the next temple. Between the construction projects, the rain and the humidity, we decided to call it a day mid- afternoon and headed back to our hotel.

(Ron writes)We wanted to go to the dim-sum extravaganza at the hotel. They have two seating’s, both of which we were told were sold-out. But this never stops our Jeff. He somehow met the executive in charge of food and beverage for the hotel and magically the dim-sum doors opened. The manager of the restaurant personally waited on us, selecting all the items we were to eat. I’ve never had better food; each item was so unusual I’m not even sure what they were. To top it off, when we asked for what we were expecting to be at least a $200 check, we were told that the head of food and beverage had picked up our tab!