Shopping Or chid? I choose Art.

3/10/2010

I'm going to have to try to keep these entries MUCH shorter or they'll never happen, so on Wednesday I woke up at a reasonable hour, around 9 a.m. and got moving.  First I went to the market to get something to eat- this time I chose a Popiah, which is a sort of roll with sauce, peanuts, cabbage, spices and some other stuff- it was actually incredible, so I ended up going back again later in the day.  In the morning, I visited a Buddhist temple and a Hindu Temple and the Singapore Art Museum, which was interesting and had some good, fairly recent art from native Singaporeans.

 Buddhist Temple

Hindu Temple

This was one of my favorite pieces of art in the museum because it actually explores the relationship between the artist, the model, and necessarily, the observer (made that much more obvious by my reflection here).

Next, I walked over to Orchard Road, the main shopping drag with thousands of stores and several malls.  Honestly, as much as I enjoy shopping, it really wasn't that interesting because they were all stores we have at home: Forever 21, Zara, Chanel, etc.  I grabbed roast duck and noodles for lunch- though I'm still not entirely convinced that it actually was duck and not chicken.

 One of the malls on Orchard Road

I headed over to the National Botanic Gardens and wandered around there before finding my way to the Orchid Garden.  Entry was only $1 SD since I still have my student card and the inside was phenomenal.  I've never particularly liked orchids, but seeing thousands of them in bloom in one place in literally every color of the rainbow (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet plus brown and pink and white!) was absolutely incredible.  After quite a while there, I walked over to the Reflexology foot path, took off my shoes and tried that- it felt kind of good, but was quite uncomfortable at the same time.  I'd walked so far by this point that I just took a bus back to the hostel and rested for a short while.

Later, at twilight, I headed out to Arab Street, in the Arabic neighborhood.  It was interesting, but nothing was particularly fascinating until I headed down a side street and saw the hipsters.  Somehow, next to the decayed buldings, an authentic hipster enclave had sprung up.  It made for quite a bizarre sight, as I walked from the somewhat dirty streets with arabic lettering on the restaurant signs, to a cleaner street with very chic, modern clothing boutiques inhabited by Singaporeans with overstyled hair, dotted between genuine, broken concrete-and-dirt hovels in the same building.  I imagine it was what all hipsters dream about when they lie down on their 500 thread count hemp sheets.