Day 76 chinatown, where gods are born, church

Sat 17 march
We had a later start to our day than anticipated as when we came to leave Jono couldn't find his  ezlink card. We had to ruefully concur it was still in his shorts pocket merrily turning around in the washing machine!
Card retrieved slightly later on we visited chinatown, walking through the street market that you emerge into from the MRT. Theres actually a yellow box painted on the floor outside the MRT where no one is supposed to stop, this is because the first reaction as everyone  poured out was to lift their phones and cameras and start snapping,blocking people trying to leave. We were no exception! Our walk through was more of a meander in and out of stalls and shops.

We weren't expecting to be able to visit Sri Mariamman Temple as acording to the internet it was closed that afternoon. It was very much open as we walked past, but it is also a no shorts or bare shoulders temple and I was in shorts, not expecting to be able to go in. It was still interesting to see the outside though.

Chinatown food street was just a little further with stalls set up all down the middle of the street and restaurants down both sides. We wanted somewhere cool to sit, mid 30s temperatures and high humidity means fans or aircon are a must if you stop moving. Food street has this sorted with giant fans overhead suspended from a clear  canopy extending over the whole length of the street. Every few stalls, tables and benches are available for patrons to sit and eat. We walked all the way down one side of the street, being invited in to almost all the restaurants as we passed, and then up the other. There is a bewildering array of foods available. Eventually we just stopped and ordered from the street stall nearest us.

It's not always easy to eat as a vegetarian here and its not easy even as a pescitarian. Food looks like it is right but stray ingredients like pork stock get used. This was also the case in Vietnam and Hong Kong. There is certainly a lot of seafood dishes advertised and there's nearly always a plate of greens of some sort. It just might have a sauce added or be cooked in a fat that's not vegetable based. We enjoyed our pineapple fried rice and mango salad though and Jono also had fishcakes.
Toilets here have the annoying habit of putting toilet paper dispensers outside the toilet so you have to guess how much you might require beforehand, surely this means more gets wasted; no one wants to not have enough once inside!
Around the corner is the Temple Of the Tooth,a large buddhist temple.

Sarongs and shawls are provided if people want to enter the main temple but there's also 3 more floors where dress code isn't  an issue, showing the life of buddha, temple offerings and relics and finally a garden and giant prayer wheel on the top floor.

 As normal we spent a few hours wandering around looking at everything. Quick tourists we are not! I have learnt I knew practically nothing about Buddhism, apart from how the monks dressed, and I can confidently say I am more confused by Buddhism now after being in the temple!

For Christmas I gave Jono an airbnb experience called Where Gods Are Born. It only happens once a month and I'd emailed them asking if their March event could be in this one week we were in Singapore. They had very kindly agreed, so 4pm saw us sat outside a shuttered and padlocked shop with just a simple airbnb sign stuck to the outside. It was a relief that there was another couple waiting there for the event as the outside looked unprepossessing to say the least.

At 4pm we knocked on the outside and a voice called back would we wait 10 minutes. A few minutes later the shutters rolled back and two little girls and their father beckoned us in smiling. The rest of the family was at the back of the shop which was covered with statues of different taoist gods. There were quite a few of us gathered for the experience and the dad introduced us to his family including his 87 year old grandmother.
He showed us different statues and told us the tales connected with them. He was an excellent presenter, getting us to notice small clues that showed who the characters were and then showing us how a statue would have been made and then dedicated. His family have been there for over 120 years and his grandmother worked there from the age of 18 when she married into the family.

At this point Amelia his 7 and a half ( as she told us) year old daughter gave a presentation on what it was like to be an immigrant arriving in Singapore when their family made the journey all those years ago. She was great!

His grandmother then came forward and drew a stylised dragon design that would have been put onto statues. We got to copy it as she drew it again very slowly in a step by step way so we could follow while her grandson explained what each bit represented.

Karen's drawing

She then showed us how she prepared a special paste, flattening it and rolling it to a fine thread that was wound onto a wooden stick and then applied to a statue using the same design we had just drawn but in miniature. This she did despite having a cataract in one eye! The paddle and board she was using were ones she had always used the paddle had a grove that her finger had worn away just from holding it all these years and her marble board had split and been mended.

preparing paste

putting paste on icon

Now it was our turn. We were given small boards, a stick with paste ready wound on it and a tool to apply it with.

It was fiddly and so much fun! We were all totally absorbed in trying to recreate what we had watched. Finally we put gold leaf onto a wooden frame and our masterpieces were framedfor us to take home after being signed on the back with the name of the shop by the grandmother.
We were given a flaky sweet bun and a juice drink of wintermelon tea to refresh us. We had had an excellent time. It was great to be hands on and we had learnt a lot too.

We walked to the bus station on the next street and waited for a bus. Google maps knows when the buses should come but they don't  always run to time and google doesn't  know when they clock off for the day either. Just as we were wondering whether to try and find a different bus and stop, the one we wanted appeared. We went to the edge of little India where Our Lady Of  Lourdes church had a 7:30 English mass. The church was built by the Indian community who had arrived from Ceylon ( Sri Lanka) but has a lot of French influence in the architecture. As we arrived people were pouring out of the church and I wondered if I had got the timing wrong. No, they had two Sat evening masses plus another 4 on Sunday. It's not the only catholic church in Singapore either -there are 31 of them, many with several masses over the weekend.
This church had electronic screens for the mass and hymns like in New Zealand and the collection baskets were on long poles do that they could be extended along the benches without the collector letting go of the basket.

While I was inside Jono visited a nearby shopping centre full of electronics. A lot of the shops had shut but luckily for him one that was still open was showing a keyboard he was excited by and he only just made it back to the church as I came out.
We bused it back to Newton on the 701 which dropped us right by the food centre. This was heaving, full of people eating and talking. We found a spot on the outside to sit, ordered a greens dish from one shop, a prawn dish from another and drinks from a third. I like the lime juice they serve. It's mixed with freshly juiced sugar cane that they push into a machine there and then.
We finished our day by calling into the 7 11 on the walk back home and picking up some tubs of Ben and Jerry's icecream for our freezer. We had to walk quickly, even at almost 10pm the temperature was still in the high 20s /low 30s and very warm!