Chinatown and Clarke Key

Gill's notebook:

Woke up OK., 9.00ish. Kept waking in the night. Breakfast in lobby - ok, but nothing special. Walked to park, blisters - new shoes, back to hotel - elastoplasts. 

Walked to Chinatown, good food on Smith St. - sizzling beef with black pepper and ginger & rice. Looked at 3 temples - Taoist, 'Brokentooth' Buddhist, Hindi. Back to hotel. Evening, out to to Boat Key & Clarke Key - snack & beer for dinner.

We both had a disturbed night. I seemed to be destined to wake first, so I emailed the kids to update them on our progress. I've illustrated it with a photo or two.

"I have just woken up on day two in Singapore, Mum is still snoring quietly - we have not quite entirely shaken off the effects of jet lag. The flight was ok, I was looking forward to flying in a A380 as it's the world's biggest airliner - it is indeed of monstrous size, but bigger does not extend to the legroom, so far as passengers are concerned it is simply a jumbo-sized sardine can. We were well zombified by the time we landed

Nevertheless, we managed to walk about 11km. yesterday despite 35° heat and hairdryer humidity. We took a stroll in the morning around the nearby Fort Canning Park which was the site of the main British garrison before independence. Now it is a hilly green space with tropical hardwoods and a spice garden. You get a good view of the city which is part a forest of corporate skyscrapers of quirky design interspersed with lower rise buildings from the colonial era, including some very nice art decor architecture.

The CBD from Fort Canning Park

Reputed to be the burial place of Shrine of Sultan Iskandar Syah, the king who ruled Singapore in the 14th century.

There are some interesting attempts at 'hanging gardens' on some of the high-rise.

Art Deco facades in Chinatown.

Chinatown where we had lunch is a mixture of 30s style commercial buildings and traditional Chinese wooden buildings. Smith Street is closed to traffic and is full of stalls selling street food. We had a delicious sizzled beef dish and another which consisted of rice and egg with deep fried anchovies. It was quite substantial. 

Chinatown was gearing up for the New Year - the year of the dog

Pre-war the area was a seedy mix of opium dens and brothels - re-invented as a 'food street'.

Lively and thronging - with seriously delicious food served from the booths

The sizzling beef with black pepper and ginger proved to be one of the stand-out dishes of the whole trip.

Singapore prides itself on being the most religiously diverse country in the world. So in the space of a couple of blocks we visited a spectacularly garish Hindi shrine, a Taoist temple and a huge Buddhist complex which included the man himself's tooth. It had a lovely peaceful roof garden full of orchids.

The Hindi temple was a joyous, colouful and noisy place - no hallowed cloisters here!

In contrast the Buddhist temple exuded calm

a haven of tranquility among the bustling city

Equally peaceful - the Taoist temple

After a late afternoon snooze we had a light evening snack in a micro brewery at nearby Clarke Quay. This area of old warehouses on the banks of the Singapore river has been redeveloped as a centre for bars and restaurants next to an up-market shopping mall. On Saturday evening it was buzzing. The bridges and buildings are floodlit in changing colours and the streets are covered in giant meshed mushroom shaped umbrellas similarly illuminated. The covers are essential as you can never quite predict when the next tropical deluge might occur.

Evenings are a little cooler, lots of bars and restaurants line the river - crowded and buzzing with life after dark.

The giant canopies constantly change colour 

We are enjoying Singapore, it's super-cool, very orderly, people are polite, but warm and friendly. It exudes optimism. You have to admire the society that has been developed in one generation from a place with a third world economy, wracked by racial and ethnic tensions with low levels a literacy and shocking poverty. Of course it's not a beacon of liberal democracy, or liberal anything for that matter. I suppose if Mr. Rees Mogg is looking for blueprint for new era of enterprise, social harmony and trickle down economics he could do worse than here. The problem is it's never going to work in Byker or Stoke-on-Trent because the natives there are never going to mind their Ps & Qs and no amount of threatened physical violence is going to dissuade them from tossing their Big Mac carton into the nearest shrubbery.

On that note, it's goodbye from the not quite upside down ones. We are heading to Little India today, and possibly Raffles Hotel.

Love to all

Dad and Mum (who has now woken)

xxx"

Pick of the pics

The old warehouses on the river have been converted into bars, restaurants and designer shopping malls.

Old and new Singapore - the colonial city was low rise, looking at the skyline today it is difficult to believe that the first high rise building was completed in 1974 little more than 40years ago.

Marina Bay Resort, Singapore's newest iconic structure, it may look peculiar at first glance - but it is striking.

Among the bustle and cacophony of the Hindi temple this woman seemed quietly self absorbed