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This photo-blog is designed to work either as a standard blog with images or - by clicking any image - a photo-album. To see an image in full resolution in the 2006 journey, click to the left or right of an image in blog mode.

Saturday, December 3, 2011

Singapore: Little India and Chinatown

Masjid Abdul Gaffoor, Dunlop Street, within Little India off Jalan Besar.

2006-8-29 Singapore was a one night transition stop for us on the way to Bangkok and then on to Calcutta where our journey proper begins. We will fly out again from here after making a ten country intrepid overland through the Himalayas and back through South East Asia.

We had an incredibly delayed flight because half the cyclists from a championship race had to load their 80 bikes on and then the loading gantry got stuck in the hold. The flight otherwise was good with lots of movies on the LCD screens. I saw the Da Vinci Code which I was nearly going to buy the book of at the airport and Sinbad and Terms of Endearment and then settled for two subtitled French comedies because I didn't have to blast my ears out to hear the dialogue.

We easily made it through the metro but then had to spend about half an hour in the middle of the night trapesing our luggage round little India until we found a slightly scungy Chinese hotel with a windowless air-con room for around $45 Singapore for the two of us, because the good cheap backpackers were all full up. We had a bit of a restless night with going to bed at 4 am our time but it was quiet and cool. The sleeping bags were great as light covers to keep the bed away from us.

It`s a sunny morning here and were are out to photograph Little India and have some breakfast. Flight to Bangkok confirmed at 3 in the afternoon.







Sri Veeramakaliamman Temple (Tamil: ஸ்ரீ வீரமாகாளியம்மன் கோவில்; Chinese: 维拉马卡卡拉曼庙) is dedicated to the Hindu goddess Kali, fierce embodiment of Shakti and the god Shiva's wife, Parvati. Kali has always been popular in Bengal, the birthplace of the labourers who built this temple in 1881. Images of Kali within the temple show her wearing a garland of skulls and ripping out the insides of her victims, and Kali sharing more peaceful family moments with her sons Ganesha and Murugan.






Fearsome Kali















Little India Arcade in Serangoon Rd. Always a good cheap place to eat.


Chinatown complex









Just leaving Singapore. This is a free internet terminal in the departure lounge. Walked around Little India and a bit of Chinatown. Had an amazing race to the airport to catch the next flight because we spent a bit too much time in town and then found we had to change metros 3 times and then got to the airport and found Air Asia was at another terminal we had to take a sky train to get too!

Phoned India Airlines from the hotel on a long-shot, to bring our booking forward a day to tomorrow, so we can spend a day in Calcutta without freaking that we might miss our evening train connection, and because cause we will come back to Bangkok and found they had no booking for us at all to India. By a stroke of luck they still had free seats for tomorrow so we can actually get to India (we hope).

On the way to the airport






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