Buddha Teeth and Bonobos

October 23rd 2016

First item on our agenda today is the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple, the most important temple of Singapore, which houses a tooth of Buddha. Just like the mosque in Abu Dhabi, the temple is quite new — opened in 2007 — and equipped appropriately with air conditioning and elevators.
The scent of the incense lit in prayer here is already wafting around us before we enter the temple proper.
Behind the temple doors waits a large golden Buddha, flanked by two protectors, in a just as golden room. Almost all walls in the temple are filled with thousands of Buddha figures in various sizes (the fourth floor is home to the gallery of ten thousand Buddhas) — it is said that everybody who displays a figure of the Buddha will be freed of greed, hate and fear.
Among others, we find statues of the 'eight great Bodhisattvas' in the large hall on the ground floor, each of which is assigned one of the Chinese zodiac signs, watching over all those born under their sign.
From the air conditioned temple we head on out trough the streets of Chinatown with its lanterns, traditional medicine and all sorts of street vendors.
Here, we also visit the Chinatown Heritage Centre, which tells the story of the first inhabitants of the district and their living conditions. Back then, it was the norm in some places to share a room with 4-5 other workers that I would guess to be no more than 5m² large. Also an entire business emerged from kidnapping and selling new arrivals fleeing the famine in China that survived the journey to Singapore — and all that happened just about 60 years ago.

While the Heritage Centre was not entirely uninteresting, I had to catch myself briefly closing my eyes, catching up on precious seconds of sleep. — Jan is a bit unmotivated for museums sometimes — forgive him.

In a fit of wanderlust, we head on to the Southern Ridges afterwards — a trail through several connecting parks ('parks' being code for 'jungle with paths' in Singapore) to the south of the city. Unfortunately we don't find any wild monkeys here that the signs warn us about, but we do find two very pretty bridges and the 'forest walk', which takes about a kilometre through the forest on treetop-level. The incline, humidity, and heat make for a straining trip despite the well-built pathways — but the great view at some spots makes up for it.
After we have hiked across a good three quarters of the Southern Ridges, we return on the verge of exhaustion to Chinatown, where Jan has marked a street with promising lunch opportunities on his phone.
It will take just about 45 minutes and five "I think the street is up there" until we arrive somewhere entirely different — but at least somewhere with food.

I thought I would be able to remember the location — turns out I was wrong...

After a quick rest with food-intake, our legs just barely carry us a little further to the Marina Bay Sands, where we visit the viewing platform on the 56th floor, taking in the beautiful view of night-time Singapore and taking some neat pictures.
Despite walking an awful lot today, we still haven't broken our step-record from Dubai — but we were close.

Zoomania — the next morning

Almost a tourist must-see in Singapore is the large zoo of the city — and rightly so: In the usual Singaporean landscape you'll find white tigers here as well as all sorts of monkeys, elephants and more.
In addition to the well-kept animal enclosures, there are also some wild monkeys swinging freely through the forest.
Mostly by chance we stumble upon a horde of photographers on our way trough the park, all of them apparently stalking a small bird somewhere in the bushes with their tripods and huge zoom lenses.
I have no idea why that bird is so special and desirable but if it gets that much attention I better take a picture as well.
We still feel the strains of yesterday with its hike in our bones, so we use every available opportunity to take a seat and relax for a while — like at the polar bear pen, for example.
The host at the feeding of the polar bears asks the audience what endangers the bears — "GLOBAL WARMING" the audience shouts back. Like a Buddhist mantra, the words "reduce, reuse, recycle" are called to our attention again and again before two trained otters demonstrate how to properly dispose of plastic bottles — and that after we got our four bakery items in five plastic bags just this morning.
But raising awareness is a first step at least.

We already noticed the plastic bag problem back in Dubai. Sustainability does not seem to be as much of a priority in all countries.

Questions, questions, questions

While we are waiting for the washing machine in our apartment, Stacy brews some tea for Davon and us and we take a seat on the couch together — some Singapore-drama flickers across the TV, interrupted by commercials, some more, some less funny.
We have a long talk about Singapore, Germany, travelling and lots more before we eventually hang our socks to dry on the balcony — they will take about two days to dry in the tropical climate.
Over the course of our conversation, we ask each of them a question from our book as well:

Stacy picks question #444 — "Who did you last have a good conversation with?" — and remembers a woman from Canada who has lived here for a couple of days before moving on to Australia.

Davon masterfully uses question #172 — "What is the best advice you have ever gotten?" — for a quick compliment: His piece of advice, "Work smart, not hard", came from none other than Stacy herself.

While we are having lunch in Chinatown Patrick, a businessman from Hong Kong in Singapore for the first time, joins our table and chooses question #800: "Is it easy for you to tell another person that you love them?" — Yes, but only if it's his wife or son.