100 Buddhas and Marina Bay

I began Tuesday morning with breakfast by the river. I grabbed a raisin bun and a coffee from the local bakery and sat at the Quay; it was dead silent at that time of the morning - it was beautiful. I still haven't got my body to synch up with Singapore time properly so I'm up at the crack of sparrows. So not too long after sunrise I checked my map over to plan my day.

Chinatown was my first stop.



Before now, I thought that every Chinatown I'd ever been to looked pretty much like the next one but I was wrong; this one in particular, is gorgeous. It was hard to walk and look straight ahead of me, I marvelled at all the quaint buildings that came in all sorts of colours. I knew that I wanted to go to the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple & Museum but I found it by accident whilst looking for something else.

It hadn't occurred to me when I rooted around for clothes as my dorm mates slept to grab something that would cover my shoulders. Now I have always known that you musn't wear vests or shorts/short skirts in a temple but as I say, the thought wasn't there at stupid o'clock in the morning. Luckily, there were pashminas available at the door. I threw one around my shoulders, lit an incense stick and stepped inside.

The buddhist chanting that played throughout the temple was hypnotic, I breathed deeply and smiled. I could really feel the spirit of the place; the energy was light, warm and uplifting.

There are 100 buddhas along two walls of the temple. I chose just one.

I was sad to leave the temple but I had looked around it thoroughly enough and thought I'd better tick off another attraction from my list. So the next stop was the Chinese Heritage Centre, an interesting place indeed. It reflects the emotions of the Chinese that came to Singapore in the hope of escaping poverty but ended up being addicted to opium and catching diseases. It is therefore quite depressing to walk through. It's a sort of London Dungeons type set-up: dark, full of props and sound effects.

I decided not to take any pictures in there.

I ran through the pissing rain to the train station to make my way to the Marina Bay area. I wanted to go and see the ArtScience museum, mainly because the building is shaped like a lotus flower - no, it really is. It apparantly has a waterfall which is caught from rainfall and comes down right in the center of the building. I say apparantly because of course, after the mammoth walk around the bay to get there, it was closed for a private event. Typical. I didn't know what else to do by that point and I was so tired and hot from walking around in circles. But there was some pretty spots along the way...


By the way, you'd think it would be easy to spot the bay from anywhere in that area as you're looking for basically, a bay...with water...and boats.

But it is so tucked in that you would never know it was there. All you see is a crown of skyscrapers surrounding you. Bloody skyscrapers.


But I found it. When I did I wanted to fall down after walking some kind of Labyrinth-style quest. To have David Bowie make it worth my while along the way would have been a treat. And what I had come here to do, I couldn't. So I had an ice cold juice and regained my strength for the way back to the hostel.