24 April 2025
Numbing spicy fake and cheap
Singapore Chinatown
Tonight it was time to go to Chinatown. I have been to the Singapore Chinatown before. It was not too busy, I suspect it is busier during the day time as a lot of the market stalls were closing.
On that note, a lot of the hawker centre stalls close early, possibly when they run out of food, I suspect they are busiest at lunch time, although there are certainly some that open late too.
The walk to and from Chinatown took me past some big malls and things that I thought were malls and through the CBD and along Boat Quay. There is a lot to see and in a few km a lot of distinctly different areas.
On the corner of this big building it says Adelphi Lifestyle Mall. I thought I would go in and investigate the flying saucer bit. But no, it is not just a mall, it is also the supreme court! Great clouds!
Meanwhile over the road from the Supreme Court, a giant mall, this one has a rock climbing wall (not that unusual) but also a bike lane running through it, a terrible idea, however no one was using it.
Here is the Singapore CBD. From this angle it looks a lot like an Australian city, specifically Perth, who's large companies divert all their income to Singapore to dodge taxes. I suspect BHP and Rio Tinto own some of those buildings.
There are a lot of unusual buildings, this one is a hotel. It not only has trees all over it, but a gap in the mid riff, with giant bird cages. Perhaps at night nude girls dance in the cages?
Here is Chinatown, it is very touristy.
It was not overly busy.
Parts of it are very fake, those windows are just drawn on.
There are a lot of temple looking things around.
This is the Maxwell food centre, it appears busy (I found the busy bit), but as mentioned above, a lot of places were already closing.
The CBD area has some quite tall buildings, not China tall, but still quite tall.
Boat Quay is for westerners looking to drink and watch football. All the places had touts. I hated it.
And so, I went down to basement level 3, and paid more than I thought (about $10, which is still cheap) for ma la tang. It was suitably both ma and la. I like that you can choose lots of vegetables, probably sneezed on, but hopefully the ma la kills off any pathogens.