Chinatown Adventure

We spent an afternoon down in Chinatown last week. Our goal was to go to the Chinatown Heritage Centre and it turned into a really fun outing. 

It is a museum that is located in one of the shop houses in Chinatown. The three story museum illustrates the history of some of Singapore's earliest settlers. The different floors show what life was like for the people. We got to see a tailor shop, where the hawker worked, where the clog maker lived, and where a family of eight lived in a tiny eight by eight room. 

This place has been on my list since we arrived, and time is running out, so we went. It was one of those outing where I thought, "this is going to be really bad, or okay". Kids in museums is tricky. To my astonishment, literally I cannot believe, the kids loved the museum! We had the best outing there. I read as many of the plaques as I could out loud to them. We looked in the living quarters and read about the people who lived there. I really enjoyed the museum, but I am still not sure why the kids loved it. The did, so no complaining from me. My luck continued through the whole outing. 

I was feeling pretty great that we left the Heritage Centre with nothing broken, and everyone happy. I decided to test my luck and we walked down the street to the Sri Marimman Temple, Singapore's oldest Hindu temple. On the way there I told the kids that this temple was going to be really colorful, and to count all the different animal statues we would see. Cosette has some Hindu classmates and has been introduced to some Hindu culture, so this was something that was more meaningful for her. 
Once again, they loved it! The Hindu temples are just incredible. So colorful and completely different from anything where we come from. They liked that we had to take our shoes off and walk around in our bare feet. There was some parts where the ground was a little too hot, and we run to the shade. The older two made up a game where they would walk out into the sunny area as far as they could then once the ground was too hot they would quickly run back to the shade. It was really fun to watch them play. 

Since things were going so great, I pushed my luck farther. We visited the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple. It is pretty amazing. We had just made it inside when my luck started to wain. We quickly made our way through the temple, pointing out the highlights. We made it out with nothing happening. 

We walked one street over to Food Street for dinner. The kids requested chicken rice and noodles. We are going to miss the food here. We found both, ate till we were full and made it home without any tears. It was an outing miracle!




Not sure if he was allowed to sit on it (probably not), but he was so excited. And there was no sign saying not to. 
Chinatown moving picture screen. You would pay some money and watch a short film. 








Everyone's favorite part of the outing: taking photos in the photo booth at the Chinatown Heritage Centre. Wish we could have kept all of the takes. There were so many good ones. 





The best part was having fun with my kids. I have been wanting to show them some of the different temples and talk to them about it. Have mini "field trips" before we leave Singapore, and it happened. It was a success. I got to talk to my kids about different people, races, culture, history. They had learned about some of it in school and were genuinely interested, as much as a 5, 3, and 1 year old can be.  

We do a lot of outings, mostly using public transport. It is not smooth sailing all the time. Actually something is always going wrong. Someone is pinching someone else. People stare, sometimes yell at you, or your kids. Then someone is always hungry, or angry, or tired, all the usual kid stuff. It is a lot to handle. When outings are a success like this one, it is so much sweeter than normal. Outings like this are the days that I will never forget. I am really grateful we had this experience together before we leave.

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