A Side Street Stroll in Singapore

Sights on the Walks of Our Lives tour included temples and religious monuments — and even the city’s red-light district. (JG Photo/Liz Sinclair)

Desmond was waiting for us at 9 a.m. in the lobby of the Little Red Dot Hostel in Singapore, which sponsors Walks of Our Lives. Four other hostel guests, all female had signed up for the Little India walking tour.

I blinked in amazement. The neat tourism college graduate in pants and shirt I met the night before behind the reception desk had disappeared, and instead we were greeted by a youngster in navy athletic shorts, a white tank top, wearing a big smile and a white dishcloth with red stitching slung over his right shoulder.

The change should not have surprised me: as I was to learn about Singapore, one thing interacts easily with another.

“Call me ‘ kopi boy,’ ” he said.

A “kopi boy,” he explained, is the youth in a coffee shop who takes the orders. All over Singapore, said Desmond, you see old men sitting in coffee shops, yelling for the kopi boy to bring them coffee or tea and breakfast. It’s almost a Singapore stereotype, Desmond said.

But it’s also a dying tradition. Modern Singaporeans don’t have time to sit in coffee shops; they are too busy working. Takeaway coffees are becoming popular, and the old men who haunt the coffee shops are slowly disappearing.

Our first stop was on Lavender Street, where the hostel was located. The road has a rather perverse history. Originally a dirt track on the outskirts of the rapidly growing city of Singapore, the surrounding fields were used as a dumping ground for “night soil,” or human waste.

The reek from the fields prompted one British colonial to name the nearby street after a fragrant flower.

Our next stop was a Tibetan temple near Lavender Street. In Singapore, people are free to worship as they choose, so Hindu and Buddhist temples stand near mosques and churches.

The temple, called Thekchen Choling, has an enormous golden prayer wheel outside, known as a Mani wheel, which Desmond advised us to spin three times to get rid of negative karma. Each time the wheel completes a cycle, a bell rings.

Shoes removed, we proceeded inside to look at the altars, one of which contains a life-size picture of the Dalai Lama. While Desmond was busy explaining to the group how they can obtain a Guanyin (Goddess of Mercy) fortune amulet, blessed by a priest, I slunk over to the Dalai Lama to take a photo with him.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a blur of yellow and a rather large monk appeared suddenly at my side. Considering how quickly he moved, I assumed that my attempt to take a photo with the Dalai Lama was common for tourists. But the monk frowned at me and shook his head.

“It’s not allowed to go up on the altar,” he told me sternly. So with that I quickly returned to the group, to collect my amulet, which was a long strip of paper gaily printed in red, yellow and gold.

(JG Photo/Liz Sinclair)

Our next stop, a few blocks away on Serangoon Road, was a traditional coffee shop. Desmond ordered samples of Singapore breakfast foods for us to try. We began with kopi peng , or iced coffee.

“Even in our food,” exlained Desmond, “you can see how the cultures live together. Kopi is Malay for coffee, while peng is Chinese for ice. Each time a Singaporean orders this drink, we are reminded that our heritage is a mix of Chinese and Malay.”

We tried Teh C, which is a hot, sweet, milky tea. I like plain tea, so Desmond ordered me a teh O kosong , or empty tea: no sugar, no milk, just black.

Desmond also ordered food to sample: roti prata (grilled bread with savory toppings), otak otak (ground fish with spices — and it is very spicy), and kaya toast.

The tour continued on to a Chinese Buddhist temple, Leong San See Temple. Brightly painted in yellow and red, with a large dragon incense bowl in the front yard, it is very hard to miss.

Chinese Buddhists come here, explained Desmond, to ask the deities for a fortune know as Qiu Qian, the ancient Chinese art of divination.

Desmond asked if any of us wanted to have our fortunes read.

One of the girls on the tour, who’d had a series of misfortunes lately, volunteered, to see if things may be turning around for her.

A temple guide gave the girl a pack of fortune sticks in a red tube and told her to shake a single one out. The guide then consulted a huge book with the chosen stick and advised the girl that her life would settle down soon.

As we walked on, Desmond stopped in front of a row of old shop houses, with iron grillwork doors on the front, black-and-white checkered stone floors, and colorful pastel tiles on the facade.

Desmond explained that once a merchant and his family would have lived here, above their street-level shop.

Today, the old shops have disappeared and have been renovated into stylish townhouses.

“This is about a million-dollar property now,” Desmond said.

Leaving the shop houses, we crossed a small park. Desmond stopped and gestured across the small street to an alleyway that ran perpendicular to us. Normally, he told us, his tour groups walked down the alley to get to our next destination, but today we would take a detour around the area.

(JG Photo/Liz Sinclair)

“Today, the group is all women,” said Desmond, “so I don’t want to offend anyone.”

We all looked over into the alley. Indian, Chinese and a few African men were standing, smoking and walking into, or out of, various doorways. I looked at one of the other women and she looked at me. We tried not to laugh. I looked around at the others. We’d all figured out what this place was.

Far from being offended, we were curious. We urged Desmond to cross the street, but he repeated that he didn’t wish to offend us.

“Why?” I asked. “Because you’re worried that seeing a red-light district will bother us?”

Desmond looked relieved. “Oh, so you figured out what this place is,” he said.

Brothels are legal in Singapore, although prostitutes are required to have regular health checks and HIV screening. Desmond reluctantly shepherded us across the road. The alley backed onto the rear of a row of bland-looking buildings, with no signs or business names. I peered inside as we went past the buildings.

Each consisted of a long hallway, with many doors, some open, some closed. The walls were covered with health posters. Some stated, “You wouldn’t go into a cave without proper equipment. Why have sex without a condom?” and others warned about HIV infection. Some of the men stared at us; some turned their heads away as we went past.

Our next stop was the Buddhist Sakya Muni Buddha Gaya Temple, popularly known as “The Temple of 1,000 Lights.”

Inside is a huge statue of the seated Buddha, some 15 meters tall and weighing 300 tons.

This is no ordinary temple: during the Japanese Occupation in World War II, British prisoners of war were forced to perform manual labor nearby and would stop into the temple to give notes and letters to the monks, who then smuggled the missives out of Singapore to England.

This way, British prisoners were secretly able to pass and receive information from their own government, even at the height of the war.

The last stop on the tour, in Little India, was at the Sri Srinivasa Perumal Temple, dedicated to the Hindu god Vishnu, the creator and destroyer.

Desmond told us the history behind some of the Hindu deities, and we watched a daily ritual at noon, when the poor (and a few tourists) get a free Indian lunch from the temple kitchens.

Desmond said he drew inspiration from simple Singaporean experiences, such as the traditional breakfast, and he loved to introduce foreigners to Singapore, showing off a side of the city that they might miss if they weren’t shown around by a local.

As Desmond walked us back to Lavender Street, the city didn’t seem so strange; in fact, it almost seemed a bit familiar. Perhaps it was because I had walked Singapore’s streets by the side of a kopi boy.

 

Find Walks Of Our Life on Facebook or visit www.journeys.com/sg/singaporewalks.

A Side Street Stroll in Singapore