A Walk in Singapore's Old Chinese Settlement

Singapore, October 15, 2011 (Saturday), in residence at The Fullerton Hotel.

Jerry slept for nearly 12 hours, and both of us are still recovering from jet lag.  An early (6:30am) breakfast at the hotel caused comments by Eloise on the probability of Jerry's survival for the next 30 days.  There were many very nice pastries of varieties unseen in Kona.  Amazing, but a Singapore breakfast of pastries bears no resemblance to an oatmeal breakfast in Kona.

Surprisingly, Singapore does not appear to be a city of early risers, so our walking adventure this morning to what remains of the old "Chinese native quarter"  was conducted along empty streets with closed shops.  Walking along South Canal Road, what should appear but more yard art.

  

Yes, you guessed it.  Henry Moore, inscrutable as ever, but you suspect that the ladies of the WCTU would not approve!  

Just a short distance beyond Henry, you turn left onto South Bridge Road and enter the old Chinese enclave, which appears to be no longer ethnically Chinese.  The buildings consist mainly of restored shop houses, which are used for a vast number of commercial enterprises, many involving food, entertainment and souvenirs -- some might say it is a "tourist trap," but that may be too harsh.

The area is no longer a solely Chinese community, but a vast mixture of Asian cultures, as is witnessed by the Mosque, Hindu temple, and Chinese Buddhist temple standing next to each other along South Bridge Road.

Masjid Jamse Mosque

Sri Mariammen Temple

Buddha Tooth Relic Temple

There may be an object lesson here somewhere, but it eludes me.  Just so any Christian who may be reading this won't feel slighted, there is located close by the Fairfield Methodist Church and a Synagogue Street.  But we never found the synagogue, and after being nearly overrun be an auto, Jerry gave up on photographing the church.

We also visited the Maxwell Road Food Centre, formerly the Maxwell Road Market.  It is interesting because it is an iron building and was probably shipped in pieces from Britain and assembled on site.  Largely empty by Singapore standards at the early morning hour we passed through.

For those of you who were on last year's Irene Croft's Southeast Asian trip, we accidentally ran into, and Jerry has included a photo of, the Scarlet Hotel.  No, it has not (as some of us suspected) returned to its normal use after our departure, appearing to have remained a boutique hotel with a really suggestive name.

By this time, approximately 9:00am, with the sun beating down and the shade diminishing, it was getting very uncomfortable for us to walk, so we returned to the Fullerton to recover in the air conditioned coolness of our room.  How did people survive here before air conditioning?  Gin!