{"id":79,"date":"2008-03-16T21:24:12","date_gmt":"2008-03-16T10:24:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elyk.com\/blog\/2008\/03\/16\/little-india\/"},"modified":"2008-03-21T18:39:18","modified_gmt":"2008-03-21T07:39:18","slug":"little-india","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elyk.com\/blog\/2008\/03\/16\/little-india\/","title":{"rendered":"Little India"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I got up early and flipped through Adam and Jill&#8217;s Singapore guidebook.  Jill&#8217;s birthday today, so she and Adam were off to a spa on Sentosa Island.  I had some toast with them before they left &#8211; and headed out myself shortly after.<\/p>\n<p>The condo is in a great part of the city, so I had a wide range of places to visit.  Figured I&#8217;d start with Little India.  Took a walk down to Clarke Quay, first, and had a look there.  Other than the Singapore river, there wasn&#8217;t an abundance to see.  It&#8217;s more of a place to go at night, I think.  Adam said there were a couple of markets good for people watching on the way to Little India, but I forgot to find out which way to walk.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3107\/2343461948_e4528878ae.jpg\" class=\"flickrimg\" alt=\"IMG 4219\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Before reaching any markets, I came across Fort Canning Park, which was basically a big hill in the centre of the city.  Had a wander through there, but other than some giant leaves, there wasn&#8217;t much going on.  Tried to get out at a few different places, but ended up in the gated parking lot of a restaurant, so I had to turn around and walk back up the hill.  No fun.  A Buddhist monk approached me and tried to give me a small trinket.  He wanted 10 Singapore dollars for it, which is about 10 Singapore dollars too much.<\/p>\n<p>I ended up stumbling across the Bugis market, which was filled with more of the same stuff I&#8217;d seen in China, but at much higher prices.  Just before I got there it started to rain, so I decided to have a really good wander through, while I waited for the rain to stop.  Welcome to Singapore &#8211; the rain stops when it&#8217;s good and ready.  I dashed across the street to a mall, to see if there was anything interesting there.  They had a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mujionline.co.uk\/\">Muji <\/a>store, which I had heard about.  It was a bit like Caban, back when Caban existed.<\/p>\n<p>The rain finally stopped, so I made my way to Little India.  I had decided to do one of the walks detailed in the Singapore guidebook, but first I wanted to get some food as it was nearly 3pm.  Adam had mentioned a place called Banana Leaf Apolo, where they serve your meal on an actual banana leaf.  The food was great (and I ordered a lot of it), but not really any better than Indian in Canada.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3281\/2342659709_94b098fce0.jpg\" class=\"flickrimg\" alt=\"IMG 4233\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Little India was an interesting experience.  Loads and loads of Indians everywhere, and aside from the lack of smell, I imagine it was pretty similar to the actual India.  The sidewalks were very crowded with people and various stalls, so you were pretty much forced onto the road.  Hasn&#8217;t taken me too long to get used to the left-side driving people this time around.  Took in a few temples and shrines, and made the mistake of going into the Mustafa Market which was a little like Wal-Mart, if Wal-Mart was so busy that you had to press up against someone if you wanted to pass them in the aisle.  I also stopped by the Thieves Market, which was basically a bunch of people selling complete junk.  I imagine if you go often enough you&#8217;ll find a diamond in the rough, but it mostly looked like junk to me.<\/p>\n<p>Headed back to the condo after Little India, and skipped out on dinner since I had a huge and rather late lunch.  Spent the evening reading one of Adam&#8217;s books (&#8220;First They Killed My Father&#8221;) and a few of his guidebooks.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3036\/2342685365_6927a75168.jpg\" class=\"flickrimg\" alt=\"IMG 4243\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I got up early and flipped through Adam and Jill&#8217;s Singapore guidebook. Jill&#8217;s birthday today, so she and Adam were off to a spa on Sentosa Island. I had some toast with them before they left &#8211; and headed out myself shortly after. The condo is in a great part of the city, so I &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/elyk.com\/blog\/2008\/03\/16\/little-india\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Little India&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-singapore"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elyk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elyk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elyk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elyk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elyk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/elyk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elyk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elyk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elyk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}