Saturday, December 17, 2011

Singapore Tourists: Dried Ducks, Lizards and Seahorses in Chinatown


Chinatown.
Our paternal grandpa always told us that when he was nine, he ran away from China to Singapore and lived in Singapore’s Chinatown for a few years before he moved to Surabaya, my hometown.  So I was pretty excited to visit Chinatown, I want to see what he saw so many years ago. Obviously a lot of things changed, but still… this was where my grandpa used to live when he was just a boy.

I guess Chinatown was just like how I imagined it would be. Tons of mini stores selling random Asian things. Some stores sell modern touristy souvenirs and some stores sell red Chinese ornaments. The color red definitely stood out in Chinatown. Chinese culture believes that the color red symbolizes many positive things, such as happiness, courage, prosperity, fortunes, etc. Thus, there are a lot of reds in Chinese celebrations. Here's some interesting things they sell in Chinatown:



Some dried lizards.
Dried Seahorses.
Ducks. I have no idea what they did to it, they were selling it with the pork sausages.


Chinese Snake Wine. I have no idea what they use it for. But it looks scary.

One of stores that I really liked is The Tintin Shop. For y’all that don’t know who Tintin is, he’s a very famous European cartoon character that always has interesting adventures around the world (and yeap, the movie just came out recently on the theaters). Yes, Tintin is anything but Asian, so I have no idea why it's in Chinatown. However, my siblings and I grew up reading Tintin comics, so we really enjoyed walking around this tiny shop.





Then, KL and our friend DC decided they wanted to go into the Chinatown Heritage Centre. Big Bro and I didn’t go because we thought it wasn’t worth it, the ticket costs $10/person for a tiny museum. Later, KL told me that the museum was really scary because it looks so real. It looks exactly how Chinatown would be a century ago. Here are a couple of pictures KL took when she was inside with DC:


I guess I have to make Day 2 Part 3 post. Not only that this post is long enough, but I would like to cover on the food that I ate after I did all these sight seeing. I just thought y'all wont be able to enjoy my pictures on food that much if I put it right after what y'all just saw: the things they sell in Chinatown.

So, I'll talk to y'all in a bit :)

1 comment:

  1. wow! Chinatown looks so interesting! I would like to go there someday! :)

    ReplyDelete