Singapore

On 6th January I left the Philippines, en route to East Timor. There are very few flights into and out of this small, troubled country and despite booking weeks earlier, I was ended up spending four days in Singapore waiting for my flight. I actually quite like Singapore and opted to spend the four days there rather than in Manila, of which I am not quite so fond.


I stayed in Chinatown, which was quite fun, as it is only a few days before Chinese New Year and everyone was getting ready for the big celebrations. The photo at the top shows a temporary stall in the process of being set up, to sell CNY decorations.


I visited the main religious sites nearby in Chinatown: the Buddhist Temple of the Holy Relic of Buddha's Tooth (some of the ornate roof shown above, and one of the thousands of statues of Buddha shown at the left); the Hindu Mariamma temple (below) and the Jamae Masjid (too dull to photograph).



Despite the gorgeous decorations of the alternative faiths, I elected to attend an Anglican church on Sunday, St Andrew's Cathedral (exterior left). It looked almost identical to every 19th century British church I had seen in India and Pakistan - a large, pale Gothic structure with lots of ceiling fans.

What else do I like about Singapore, apart from its choice of religions? Well, a lot of the architecture in Chinatown is quite quirky. It's a mixture of 19th century British and 18th century Chinese, with lots of 21st century globalism thrown in. For some reason blogger is not letting me upload photos at the moment, so I'll add some examples later. I like the fact that it is in some ways very Westernised with clean drinking water and loads of educated inhabitants who all speak English to some degree, but in other ways it is so totally Asian, with a wide range of exotic goods for sale and some really strange food and medicines (think of deer tendons and dried whole geckos as appetizers). The range of food is brilliant, and I was able to satisfy my craving for Indian food after eating at many Chinese hawker stalls.

I've got many happy memories of visiting Singapore with my kids years ago too, but now it was time for me to leave. I arrived today in East Timor, and entered another world altogether.