Chinatown

I guess we decided that one far away adventure wasn't enough for us and the day after MacRitchie we got back on public transportation and headed down to Chinatown. They have it all decorated for Chinese New Year which is in a few weeks. This year will be the year of the goat so there were goats everywhere! As we were walking from the MRT stop to Chinatown I was talking to Tatum to try to keep her distracted from the fact that she was walking which generally leads to whinning. When we started to see some decorations I was telling her it was for a holiday and then I said how it was the same day as grandma's birthday. Big mistake. She has become fixated on it. Now anytime she sees decorations (which are pretty much everywhere now. They have even put some up at the guard stations at our complex.) she points out that they still have decorations for grandma's birthday. And she pretty much thinks that every day is grandma's birthday. Which means that everyday I am asked if we can go to grandma's birthday party and have cake with her. So sad that I have to say no. :(

I don't want to place blame so I won't name names or anything;) but someone sort of led us astray after we got off the MRT and we ended up hiking up the biggest, steepest hill through a park that only seemed to have stairs to get down the other side and we had a stroller. It was sort of an evenful beginning to our day. The walk took us so long that we ended up stopping in the park to eat the lunch we brought. We hadn't really planned on eating before we even got to Chinatown haha.

Tatum looking cool in her shades eating her PB&J.

Chinese New Year decorations.

We took a little break from the heat in an air conditioned building. They had a huge model of Singapore. It was kind of fun to look at it.

And destory, in Declan's case.

Tatum loved having me show her where we live and where the park is that we go to and other familiar things.

We heard that the red dot museum was worth seeing and free! Can't beat that. We decided that would be our last thing and we would do it quickly. We walked down to it only to find out it was like 10 bucks a person for the kids too, who totally weren't going to appreciate the art or the fact that they couldn't touch it. So we had to miss out this time. Maybe one day...

We had a good visit to Chinatown. I'm definitely glad we went during some of the New Year hullabaloo. It was fun to check out the shops. We may have thought they were selling little Chinese outfits for dolls and almost bought one for Tatum before we realized that they were wine bottle covers. :) There were lots of different temples to see which brought up some interesting and unexpected conversations with Tatum. Someone gave us a sample, of what I couldn't tell you, all I can say is that it was like trying to chew raw bread dough and it was disgusting. There was a bank with some sort of Chinaman mascot-character-dress-up-thing. He tried to say hi to Declan which resulted in screams of terror. And can I just say that the lack of public restrooms and drinking fountains here drives me crazy!!! Brennan had to go down five flights of stairs to take Tatum to the bathroom. Five floors underground is the nearest restroom?! And drinking fountains are non existent as I have mentioned before. I have seen ONE so far, in all the places we have gone. It gave us a good excuse to try some lime juice while we were in Chinatown though and it was refreshingly delicious.