Buddha's and incense

I woke this morning to a chilly 32 degrees outside of my hotel, and blazing sun with not a cloud in the sky - another day in paradise haha.
I joined the mad commuter rush and caught the train to chinatown, to check out the local culture and some Buddhist temples.Chinatown is a world of its own, full of pungent smells and completely different buildings to the colonial district/CBD where I am staying.
The temple below are is called the 'Buddha tooth relic temple and museum'  It has floors full of buddhist artifacts, the prime piece being the 'actual buddha tooth', however it is only on display for 5 days of the year so the best I got to see was a photo of it, and then I was not allowed to take a photo of the photo, apparently its 'flash sensitive' ?? And on the ground floor there is a Buddhist temple.

Temple from the outside (5 floors+ rooftop garden)

Sleeping buddha

Temple Inside

What you can't hear from the photos is the prayers they are all singing, quite loud and all the words are completely incomprehensible.
By the time I got out of the temple the sun was in full force and I felt like a vampire walking along the footpath, following everyone else and keeping to the shadows. Then when it comes time to cross the road, everyone sprints so they don't vaporize.

I then made my way to the harbour front, and for a moment I thought I was in auckland central city, because abour one third of the people were european, and the other two thirds were asian. Apparently this is where all the white folk come to work, in banks and other nondescript hi rise buildings.

Harbour Front

'Central'

It just happened to be an empty intersection right when I took the photo

Asian Boy racer

Asian Grandad racer

Flying saucer??

  

   

 

After this I walked around for about an hour, only PRETENDING to be lost, and eventually found my way back to the nearest MRT station. While I was waiting for the train an armed police officer (they all carry guns apparently) came over to me with a stern look on his face........ to ask where I was from and if I'm enjoying singapore! What a releif that was, I thought I had done something horribly wrong.

I spent the rest of the day eating, cooling off in the pool and then relaxing in a park, until I realised there were 5 ants the size of small dogs on my shoe, which caused me to shout loudly calmly remove them and relocate to a different park bench.

Tomorrow morning I will be getting up before the sun and flying to Siem Reip, not sure when my next entry will be.