I love Indian culture. Even though it meant putting one too many pieces into a tight jigsaw puzzle, I squeezed a trip to Singapore's Little India neighborhood into the last day of our trip, June 25, 2016. It was early morning when we visited. Even without the crowds and open shops, we knew we were in the right place as soon as we saw the cardboard statue of a holy cow and the brilliantly colored flower leis ready to be taken to the Hindu temple.
There were posters on the walls of buildings, advertising Indian festivals and concerts.
We wandered through Tekka Mall, in the heart of Little India, where immigrants from Bangalore to Calcutta were eating biryani, chopping up meat with cleavers, or selling exotic Oriental vegetables in the "wet market." We also visited a shop whose business was selling computer paper-sized banana leaves, ready-made for wrapping foods to steam-cook.
We stopped in a grocery/specialty store, selling everything from mint chutney to aspirin to temple leis to brass statues of Indian gods.
Lee, the father of Singapore, recently died, and handbills announced memorial services for him.
We passed a "Remittance Center" where Indian immigrants to Singapore sent back money to their relatives in India. A sign on the door said the Center was sponsored by the Indian government. For the Philippines, Indonesia, and other third world countries with large expat populations, remittances are a major source of funds for the economy.
I was also intrigued with this sign advertising the "Cheapest Store in Singapore" and offering to match any price on anything.
Granted, the photo below is too busy and lacks focus, but it also illustrates the way Indian temples, with their wildly exotic architecture, are shoe-horned in among modern buildings. To think that the residents of Boston made such a fuss over having a Mormon temple with a statue of Moroni in their midst!
Our Lonely Planet Guidebook for Singapore said the city's #1 attraction is the "hawker food" sold in little shops. I couldn't face the food at Tekka Mall in Little India, after my mother lectured me throughout my childhood not to eat anywhere in third world countries other than in western-style hotels. Dave and I gingerly tried the food at this Chinese restaurant on the outskirts of Singapore, where we took a taxi for our Changi tour. It was just OK.
We spent three hours in the Changi section of Singapore, touring WWII sites. Changi is now the location of Singapore's ultra-modern airport, but during the Japanese occupation from 1942 to 1945, it was the site of the largest Japanese prison camp in Asia, where many prisoners died and many more were shipped to sites like the River Kwai in Thailand, where they built a railroad to transport Japanese troops.
This was one of several sites where the Japanese murdered 15,000 Chinese after taking over Singapore. They killed anyone who seemed educated, since they didn't want political activists. The Japanese had occupied China during the 1930s, and there was great hatred between the Japanese and Chinese, as well as a strong geurilla movement in China. Our guide told us how her university-educated Chinese father was released because he had "rough hands" and so was considered illiterate and not a threat. Her illiterate grandfather was kept because his hands were smooth. He survived only through a fellow villager going to the Japanese guards and begging them to let the grandfather go because he was just a poor, uneducated farmer.
We walked through undergrowth to see one of the five "monster guns" that Churchill and the British were sure could protect Singapore. The outmoded British planes were decimated by the new Japanese Zeros, the two British warships were sunk by the Japanese, and by the time 100,000 Japanese soldiers were on the beaches of Singapore, five monster guns couldn't keep them out. I was fascinated by the WWII posters and photographs of the Singapore battle in the mini-museum near the monster gun.
A shell for the monster gun.
Our Chinese guide, whose father and grandfather nearly died at the hands of the Japanese.
British soldiers lined up on the monster gun to show how huge it was.
During the afternoon and evening, Dave and I visited three world class zoos--the Singapore Zoo, the River Safari, and the Night Safari. As Dave grumbled, I assured him, "Think how much you'll enjoy telling people that your wife forced you to see three zoos in one day." Each zoo was spectacular. The Singapore zoo had many animals I had never seen before, as well as amazing tropical plants.
The animal below is a babirusa, perfectly camouflaged by the mud it wallows in.
The Singapore Zoo has a collection of rare, white tigers.
This creature was just strange.
We passed a huge colony of monkeys, including one old fellow who jumped up and down on his hind legs until a tourist threw him a treat. He'd then eat the treat, stand up again, and jump for another treat!
This type of East Asian monkeys revives memories of Ethiopia, where our floors were covered with black and white monkey rugs.
The zoo had several komodo dragons--huge lizards. They come from Komodo Island in Indonesia, which is near Bali.
In the evening, we visited the River Safari, which featured displays of fish, amphibians, and mammals from each of the world's foremost river systems--the Amazon, the Nile, the Mekong, the Yangtze, and the Mississippi.
My favorite exhibit was of giant panda bears. We finished the evening at the Night Safari, where we took a half hour tram ride past enclosures of animals which were sleepy during the day but perked up at night. Another time, we'll allocate several hours to the Night Safari and hike all the trails.
