{"id":470,"date":"2013-02-02T21:26:36","date_gmt":"2013-02-02T13:26:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.joel.net.au\/?p=470"},"modified":"2026-09-22T09:06:30","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T01:06:30","slug":"photogenic-chinatown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/day.lat\/lon\/2013\/02\/02\/photogenic-chinatown\/","title":{"rendered":"Photogenic Chinatown"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Heritage
Heritage Shophouses and Modern Development in Singapore<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Decided to head for Chinatown for a bit of a revisit around one of my favourite, most interesting and colourful places to photograph. It is a very cool part of town, full of old colonial-style buildings from the early 20th century with hints of high water, and very high curbs and sidewalks that run indented from the street, protected under the second floor of the buildings. It is a very photogenic area that I can spend hours snooping around. <\/p>\n

\"Chinese
Chinese New Year street markets in Singapore<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Chinese
Chinese New Year street markets in Singapore<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

You could call it a touristy part of town, but if it is, 99.9% of those tourists are Chinese anyway, so it doesn’t feel all that touristy to me. Chinatown was getting all spruced up for the upcoming Chinese New Year with lots of hanging lanterns and special items for sale in the markets. Some shops also had ungodly long lines of Chinese consumers waiting their turn to purchase special pork dishes for the occasion.<\/p>\n

\"Bak
Bak Kwa Stall, Chinatown, Singapore<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Some of my work colleagues who travel to Southeast Asia regularly can be quick to dismiss Singapore for its lack of grittiness compared to places like Kuala Lumpur, but it does have quite a few things going for it. Singapore is one of the safest places to visit that I can think of, which is great for pulling out expensive cameras and lenses. We have had female Singaporean students tell us they feel perfectly safe catching subways home at 2 am all by themselves. <\/p>\n

\"Mass
Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) in Singapore<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Singapore is also very friendly to tourists (in most cases). Nobody really seems to mind you shooting pictures on their streets or in their markets. One Buddhist temple usher even came out to insist I come inside to photograph the service they had running. There is also bare minimal targeting\/harassing of tourists for sales gimmicks, unlike a lot of other Asian countries.<\/p>\n

\"Buddhist
Buddhist Service, Buddha Tooth Relic Temple, Singapore.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Singapore is also known for its great food. I’ve managed to already have 2 great Korean feeds and one nice Japanese feed at various markets and hawker huts. Singapore is mostly Chinese, but it also has substantial populations of Indians, Indonesians, Malaysians, and many other cultures (including a fair few expat Westerners), giving it a nice multicultural flavour. There are quite a few trendy bars and cafes these days. I even found a hip little coffee place upstairs in Chinatown called “Group Therapy” this morning that even knew how to make a proper flat white (which I haven’t been able to find anywhere else in Singapore).<\/p>\n

\"Preparing
Preparing Steamed Buns (Bao), Singapore<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Singapore is a small place. A city-state that actually has a national park service (including one with wild monkeys), a wide range of sporting activities and facilities, and a proud tradition of volunteerism and community involvement – but probably a bit too much emphasis on shopping. There are endless shopping centres everywhere, and Singaporeans seem to have no interest in them, since they always seem packed.<\/p>\n

\"Shopping
Shopping Mall Amusements in Singapore<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The subways are great and probably among the best in the world. I believe there are a few new lines here since the last time I visited. They are very clean, very safe, very frequent, run all over the island, and very easy to navigate, with high-tech onboard signage that shows your precise location relative to the rest of the rail network (an idea they stole from Hong Kong’s subway, I think).<\/p>\n

\"Mass
Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) in Singapore<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Mass
Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) map illuminating location in subway car in Singapore<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Decided to head for Chinatown for a bit of a revisit around one of my favourite, most interesting and colourful places to photograph. It is a very cool part of town, full of old colonial-style buildings from the early 20th century with hints of high water, and very high curbs and sidewalks that run indented… Continue reading Photogenic Chinatown<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-singapore","without-featured-image"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3sHuW-7A","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/day.lat\/lon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/day.lat\/lon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/day.lat\/lon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/day.lat\/lon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/day.lat\/lon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=470"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/day.lat\/lon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7325,"href":"https:\/\/day.lat\/lon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470\/revisions\/7325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/day.lat\/lon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/day.lat\/lon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/day.lat\/lon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}