Chinatown

Just two days to go until I depart Singapore.

After coaching my last session yesterday morning, I am devoting the remaining 48 hours of my trip to one of my favourite past-times... Sightseeing.

Thanks to the kind folks at Forest Town School I have an extremely helpful travel guide that gives me plenty of information about the best things to do, see and eat in Singapore.

The size of the country dictates that the options afforded aren't expensive, but having visited several of the locations on the list in the previous three weeks, I am doing my best to cover everything that I'd hoped to visit in my time here.

Courtesy of a late night / early morning combination on Saturday and Sunday, I had a massive long lie in this morning to compensate for 5am and 6am wake-ups over the weekend.

I had agreed to meet Yoshi for dinner later on in Chinatown so I decided to spend some time nearby so that it would be easy to travel from there.

Chinatowns across the world as usually extremely common, but as well as an area devoted to the large community of Chinese people in the country, Singapore also contains an area called Little India.

I decided to spend some of my afternoon taking in the sights, sounds and smells. In terms of visual delights, Little India isn't the best at creating a picturesque location to walk around.

At the moment there is lots of construction taking place, and I followed round the outside of this by snaking my way through narrow, almost clostraphobic streets, where there were plenty of shops and restaurants doing a good trade.

I carried on walking to a location I had seen on the map called Sim Square, and almost immediately I saw sucked in my a little market with lots and lots of little trinket and souvenier shops.

This was actually called Bugis Market, and I spent a good hour in there walking around and looking at everything it had to offer. Packed together as snuggly as possible were independent sellers attempting to ship every piece of souvenier item you can possibly imagine.

Having spent three weeks in rather sterile environments, I soon found myself at the heart of a shopper's paradise, and was enjoying looking through the large number of items that seemed to be on offer.

Navigation was extremely tough, and after backtracking on my self looking for an upper floor, I went upstairs to discover that there were even more clothes, shoes and phone accessories to be had.

This 'real' sense of Asia filled me with great delight as I couldn't help but smile at shop keepers eager to flog you any old tat, pushy sales people following your ever move, and also a personal favourite of mine in this part of the world.... Incorrectly translated clothing items which clearly weren't proofread very well [a bit like this blog :)]

Walking around in all these stores gave me a taste for something I had seen on the Internet, and crossing the road back in the direction I had come from originally I found Singapore's own bustling technological market.

Previous experiences in Asia made me aware of such places, and although this hardly compares to the one that Charlie, Kevin and myself visited on numerous occasions, this seven floored monster was something to be intimidated about entering.

I would suggest that browsing is usually not something that people do when visiting as there are so many stores that sell exactly the same thing, you have to have a good idea of what you are looking for, and then try to get the best deal.

With nothing in mind, I was just impressed by the sheer number of shops. As someone who gets excited when going into PC World or Currys shops, you can imagine my delight at the number of iPads, PS3s and Beats Headphones that were available for 'sampling'.

Getting my fix of technology took some time, but eventually I headed back through the construction-ridden streets, and back to the Station of Little India.

Chinatown is actually only three stops down the MRT track from where I was so it didn't take too long for me to arrive at the correct location. Yoshi was waiting for me near one of the station's five exits, and he explained that we were going to eat at a Chinese restaurant that he used to work at when he first came to Singapore.

As you can well imagine, Chinatown lived up to all the stereotypes you could ever have dreamed of - partly due to a mid-autumn festival taking place which meant that lanterns were hanging across the streets.

Just like in Little India there were more shops than you could ever require, each one of them selling identital items of Singapore merchandise.

Yoshi took me to a restaurant that he used to work at when he first came to Singapore, and he introduced me to his friend Lee, who did his best throughout the evening to perfect his English using my assistance.

I was very predictable with my order of spare ribs, but at $18 this was by far the most expensive meal I have eaten whilst in Singapore!

We ate and chatted before bidding them farewell to discover that they had actually give us all the food and drink for free. I was very humbled by the kindness of people I had only briefly interacted with, yet they were willing to let us off a $50 bill.

I thanked them immensely and we then spent some time walking around the rest of Chinatown. It doesn't span very far, maybe 2-3 streets, but at nightfall each one of them was illuminated by lanterns and street lights.

The area itself fascinated me, and despite ending abrubtly, and returning to 'regular' concrete jungle Singapore, it was an enjoyable, if brief, experience of another element to life in this country. Everything in this area was familiar with the hustle and bustle of life going on around me, plenty of unfamiliar sights and smells causing sensory overload, and even the balance of English-to-Chinese was altered with adverts being almost completely not understood to my ignorant non-chinese knowing self.

Singapore is understandably diverse with people from four or five backgrounds all being arranged into one small space. I felt like it was a good cultural experience for me to see, particularly in one day.

Despite being in the cultural minority it made me want to visit both India, and particularly China even more.

Tomorrow is my last full day in Singapore, and after a month long trip it feels good to firstly have survived, and secondly return to England to share my experiences with friends and family.

As with any of my forrays into foreign lands I feel like I have learned not only a lot about the place I am staying, but also things about my own character and personality.

Singapore is an extremely unique hybrid of big city and country, and I feel like I have experienced a true reflection of life here since arriving in August.

You're dumber than you think I think you are.