Thaipusam has been and gone for another year. The photo walk was a great success and enjoyed by all, including me! As usual, the atmosphere was heady with the sights and smells of Little India melting in to a pot of photographer's delight.
If you think you would enjoy a photo tour when you come to Singapore, take a look a Noodle Photography's Stopover Photo Tours. Learn a bit about your camera and Singapore at the same time, it's great fun!
Here are a few of the photos I took of this year's Thaipusam celebrations....
I'd never expected or desired to go to Haw Par Villa. It really didn't look like my kind of thing. But, as we have the in-laws here, all bets are off and my mother-in-law took a fancy to having a look-see. So on Monday morning we went. From all the reports/blog accounts I had read it looked pretty strange, utterly gaudy and totally bizarre. And rest-assured it is! On arrival you are greeted by two life-size Sumo wrestlers who stand guard on the edge of the 'park' (I say park because it's a bit of a struggle to know how to refer to it!). Behind them are some evil looking seals with crazy eyes.
Let's just say it sets the scene for a walk through the fantasy world of the brothers Tiger Balm, Aw Boon Haw and Aw Boon Par(and if you haven't tried their products then you really should!). The park follows the accounts of the Ten Courts of Hell in Chinese mythology involving (amongst many other things) the famous story of "The Journey to the West", also know as the legend of the Monkey King. Now, this particularly caught my attention because, as a child, I spent hours (well, it felt like it) watching the Japanese series, "Monkey Magic," on kids TV. At the time I didn't even realise it was badly dubbed from Japanese to English, much less that it was Chinese mythology based on a true life pilgrimage and the adventures of Triptaka, one of the stars of the TV series. Sufficed to say, the characters portrayed at Haw Par Villa are not quite as friendly looking as their televisual counterparts. For example, this is Pigsy. Scary huh?
Anyway, you can go away and read about this show for yourselves as probably 99% of the readers of this post will never have heard of it! But I loved it and this brought fresh colour to it in no uncertain terms.
Another surprising thing to come out of the visit was that once I had posted my photos of this weird and wonderful place on Flickr, I found that one of Huffington Post's blogs had picked up on a photo I took and had made it photo of the day on Gadling.com (a travel blog)! It's a photo of a series of giant masks that adorn a wall right at the back of the park.
This is the image in question. I must admit, I do quite like it as it seems a pretty good visual representation of everything I saw that morning.....
Well, here we are, finally ensconced in our new home on the East Coast. I believe we are now living in the area of Bedok and very nice it is too. We now have bone fide neighbours, not just people who live above and below us. The house on the end of the street has a swimming pool (note to self, befriend the be-pooled neighbours) and we have space. Lots and lots of space. I say home because actually that's how it feels already. Unlike out previous place which felt kinda temporary this feels right. Right place, right house, right neighbourhood. Having said that we've only been here two nights! Last night the folks at number two had a party (which we weren't invited too!) and the noise was fine. But I realised it was the first time since we've been here were we've had people noisily socialising. Felt kinda good. It also meant that we weren't going to be the first of the street to have a party. Depending on how it goes it could have created a bad first impression. We may still manage that although I think the kids excited 'freedom-to-roam' volume may have painted them a picture already. The kids are well, very, very excited. And I'm not sure if they think we're on holiday or whether we've actually moved here.
So, the move itself went without incident or anything to report which was, frankly, amazing. My opinion of customer service is not exactly, erm, well, I think it's rubbish! But on Thursday, everyone turned up on time or even in one case early (UNBELIEVABLE!), did the job we'd paid them to do and in double quick time too. Removals guys packed and unloaded without a gripe or murmur and in best of spirits. Furniture guys had just arrived at the house when I got there, a full five minutes before their earliest arrival time in the 'time slot' and proceed to get everything unpacked and put together before I knew what had happened. Even StarHub out-did themselves by doing what I asked them to and within hours we had TV and broadband set up. I was, to put it mildly, taken aback. Those of you who live in Singapore will know what a triumph it is to get a tradesman to your house within a couple of days of when they said they would be there. This time...... well, I could go on, but you get the picture. I was, in the vernacular, 'well chuffed'.
Bought the kids a paddling pool yesterday in lieu of having no swimming pool which is pretty much the only thing I think we're going to miss. However, Singapore does provide some exceptional public swimming pools at a great price. As some of you will know, I used to swim in the UK. I used to swim a lot! In a lot of pools. And the quality of facilities here in comparison to the UK leaves the Brits standing. Must be why Singapore is so strong at international swimming! So, the kids are happy with that although our water bills are going to be enormous!
Which leaves us to explore the area. Mostly food oriented as things tend to be in Singapore, but there's some good looking places catering to pretty much the whim of locals and expats alike. Reckon we could eat out every night for a year and still only cover a quarter of a mile of the road we live on. Quite fancy getting out and down to Joo Chiat later to see what's what. Food of course, but also the old shop-houses being used as originally intended. And actually places to shop. Speaking of which, we decided we quite like the idea of having a hawker style table on our front terrace just for general use (I'm sitting at it at the moment). Now, we had less than no idea where to find, especially as we'd just moved. So, of course, I Facebook'd the question. Almost instantly I got a reply from another blogger Leone Fabre who pointed us in the direction of the Kitchen Mart (read Leone's blog post) in Eunos. Now, bearing in mind she lives over on the West Coast (which in Singaporean terms is absolutely miles away from us), I have no idea how she knew this place existed. But I'm glad she did. It is the proverbial Aladdin's Cave of cookware! Value for money (a rarity in Sing) and stacked with all manor of good stuff. From the food centre style of crockery (i.e. orange) to the most gigantic cooking vats, you could fit in two small children to stew with room to spare, and the suitably massive masher with which to mash them with. I like to cook so it was a revelation to find (be directed to) this place. Sufficed to say we went in for a table and came out with quite a lot more. We will be back.
Right, away to Joo Chiat! I get the feeling my next post may be rather foodie oriented!
Yesterday was probably about the most dramatic day, visually and spiritually speaking, I have experienced. Not just here but almost anywhere I have been. Those who know me will know I'm not really given over to the use of superlatives and gushing about about experiences I've had. But this was both awesome (I rarely, if ever, use that word outside of sarcasm) and spectacular in the extreme.
Thaipusam is the Hindu Festival celebrated on the day of full moon during Thai, the Tamil month of January/February. It is celebrated in the main by Tamils and brings the whole community together. I could go on to tell you exactly what they are celebrating and why and how etc. But I am wholly unqualified and would just be copy and pasting from various websites which I believe is known as plagiarism (so I shan't be doing that). There are numerous links to find the information out there so you can find out yourselves what leads to this magnificent celebration of body and soul.
This is the official website of the two temples used to host this extraordinary event. I would say if you want a reliable source of information (especially surrounding the Singaporean festival) then this would be it. There was even an advert for it inside the Temple itself.
What I offer here is just reflection on what I saw, heard and smelt during the day. I should explain to the uninitiated (as I pretty much was), the day involves the men and women of the faith carrying 'Kavadi' over what turned out to be a pretty long walk between two temples. It is a sign of their devotion and what a sign it is. Having walked the course from start to finish it is a wonder anyone makes it, it is very long (and very hot, yesterday was sunny and easily in the 30s). But they all do. I didn't see one casualty the whole time. This is obviously down to their faith. But also a lot of help comes from the massive entourage that some of these guys have. Family and friends chanting, talking, singing and in some cases arguing with and shouting their charges to the finish. There are various forms of Kavadi and basically I think it is a case of 'more pain, more gain' (from God).
They can range from this.
To something like this.
Pulling one of these!
These guys are seriously devoted and the previous example was by no means the exception and most likely the rule. Probably the most well know image of the Thaipusam and certainly the one I had seen on various NatGeo programs was along the lines of this.
Again, by no means the exception. A truly amazing sight. Colourful, noisy, incense burning and the smell of food cooking on the side of the road through Little India and down the Serangoon Road. The ceremony was entirely public and these guys wanted everyone to see what they were doing. Possibly a little intimidating at first due to the nature of what they are doing to their bodies this turned out to be one of the friendliest festivals I've been to. I think as a Westerner with no clue about their faith my natural instinct is that anyone do this to themselves has to be working on testosterone and therefore they and there entourage should not be approached. Nothing could have been further from the truth. A very warm, friendly, family day from babies in buggies to elderly family members being wheeled down the road in their wheelchairs. The aroma of food, of course, hung in the air. Free food and water were handed out along the route to both participants and just the lazy commoners (like myself). I even felt guilty about accepting it. Very persuasive these Indians though, so it didn't last long (hey, it's food, what am I going to do??). And very nice (and needed) it was too.
The Kadavi apart from being huge, were also extremely ornate. I would imagine that either they are made by individuals (which would require some serious craftsmanship) or (more likely), someone is doing a raging business in ornaments and metal work for these creations.
Towards the end of the route you get to dividing area where in one direction you can go to the Temple and in the other you can go to a general area with (free) food and drink again being forced upon the unfortunate souls lucky enough to wander in that direction. We decided that obviously although it had been very friendly and all, that the kindly partcipants weere hardly likely to welcome us into their inner sanctum and refuge from the madness. Wrong! We proceeded to the temple following these huge Kadavis down the road along with all the dancing and singing.
The route soon became congested with all and sundry bustling to get into the temple and then all of a sudden through the drum banging, ushering and shouting we were in. And we were greeted by the extraordinary sight of one of the Kadavi bearers having finished his walk, dancing in front of everyone before being led away to be 'dismantled'!
Remarkable scenes all around of dancing, singing, clapping, praying and offering.
As is traditional many were shaven headed. Some of the children were also getting their hair shaved off (which I believe is a rites of passage) and then coated with yellow (good luck for Hindis I think). Much merriment and enjoyment being had by all but at the same time with a very sombre and deep meaningful backdrop.
And so to the 'dismantling' area where some very relieved and tired men were being 'serviced' by their entourage. Very quickly and effectively they set about removing and dismantling the Kavadis with surprisingly little blood-letting. I witnessed four men lifting off one of the contraptions and frankly struggling under the cumbersome weight. Amazing! So off come the screws, out come the pins and the metal to reveal a very ordinary tired looking man underneath. No applause or anything like that and today he's probably back at work like normal.
