Saturday the 5th, Part II: Temples & Urban Renewal

While we were perambulating Chinatown, Yong took us to a non-denominational Chinese temple devoted to the sea goddess. I don't know much about it, but once, a long time ago, the ocean came all the way in front of the temple! Since then, Singapore has done extensive land reclamation to extend their coastline a great ways. I found that pretty crazy. Also, our student guide, Hui Qian, told me that it was a French temple...and I believed her for a second...and then we all laughed a lot.

Isn't it crazy how the skyscrapers loom in the background?

After the sea goddess temple, we did something really awesome. Yong works in the URA - Urban Renewal Authority - which is essentially Singapore's urban planning department. He's a civil engineer (sort of). Anyway, his office building was amazing. Considering Singapore is so small, it's no surprise that they place a lot of emphasis on space-planning. They had lots of really neat models of Singapore displayed, and even interactive computer screens that showed future plans. It was more than impressive.

This was particularly neat - they had a model of the entire island with little cutouts of some of the office workers doing things typical to their areas. This woman likes to shop on Orchard Road, Singapore's equivalent to the Champs Élysées in Paris! Also, if you can see the different colored buildings, each one represents a different stage in the development process - planned, under construction, etc.

The lighting below is bad, but this helps show the scale of the model. Pretty neat, huh?

After the office, we stopped in a hawker center (remember what that is? Kind of like a food court) for some bubble tea! Yum!

After that was the coolest part, the Buddha Tooth temple, but I'm going to save it for later and devote an entire post to it!

After the Buddhist temple, we walked around some more, and then visited a Hindu temple (the largest in Singapore) called Sri Mariamman. Next to it was an alley full of cheap shops, so we did some souvenir/postcard shopping. Here and above are more miscellaneous pictures around Chinatown.

^^ Antique store in Chinatown

Sri Mariamman