This is the goddess of the sea. When people were first coming to Singapore usually only one third of a ship's occupants made it because the conditions were worse than animals. So when they made it to dry ground they would thank her. This temple was right on the beach where they would first get off.

HUGE Buddha

Dried lizards and fish gills to boil and drink for health. (and we thought mom was crazy) just kidding mom. he...he..

Big mama Buddha and little baby Buddhas. This is a monastery where people send their kids for monk hood or just meditation classes. I think I'm going to take one.

Remodeled death houses. Turned now into businesses, shops and restaurants. My tour guide used to work in the second one up and she said that they were all very haunted. Ohhhhh......

I went on the most amazing tour today. I found out about these walking tours, where you meet up at a spot and someone who knows their stuff just walks you around to all the cool un-touristy spots and tells you all the history and info. So I went to the China town subway stop and there were only 4 other people along with the guide who was a native Singaporean lady. She took us to this awesome temple that accommodated 4 different religions and explained them all. She took us to a Chinese medicine/ herb shop (you would have loved it mom) and had us drink this herbal tea for energy on our walk and cleansing. She is really into plants and herbs so she taught us all kinds of remedies and talked about reading eyes and balancing your chi or inner energy. And all along the tour she would stop and rip off leaves of things and have us smell them or try the berries or fruit. Cinnamon trees, nutmeg trees, wolf berries, pandang leaves. Then she brought us to this serious wet market where they had tanks and tanks just full of all kinds of snakes, frogs, turtles, fish (not a pet store, for eating) and they had this whole huge fruit market where she bought us all of her favorite fruits to try. Some were awesome, some pretty crazy. Then we went to this paper death store. Yes, a paper death store. When people die, in the Taoist religion they send them off with things that they loved or just used, when they die. Kind of like when the Egyptians used to put food and thing in the graves of the Pharaohs. So, but instead of wasting real stuff (because Confucius said that it was stupid that they would feed the dead when they couldn't even feed all of the living) they have these death stores where they can buy paper items such as paper food, paper money, paper cars, or clothes, denchers, TVs. anything you can think of that your loved ones might want on the other side. I even saw Louis vitton purses made out of paper, and paper fake passports and credit cards. Crazy huh? So every once in a while you buy this stuff and just burn it to get it to dead relatives. And people think that Mormons are crazy?

Then we went to the death houses street. The Chinese think that it is very bad to have someone die in your house, so they used to when someone was dying, send them to death houses where they would live out the rest of their lives on a tiny slat of wood no longer than a body and sometimes if you were poor you would even share that space. Then you would just wait to die. And the only way you got taken care of was if you had family to come and feed and care for you, no doctors. They kind of wanted people to die fast for the space. If things got too crowded they would even lay people who were closer to death in open coffins! Sometimes people would be in there for months! These death streets and houses were only outlawed in 1986! So crazy and so sad. Here they treat them like crap before death and then they literally worship them after. Ancestor worship is an actual religion.

Andrew’s first internship went really well. They really liked him and he learned a lot. We went to this night safari the other night with his boss, she is really nice. It was pretty cool but kind of hard to see the animals. Gabe would have loved the fire dancers. She even gave us tickets to go to Singapore’s national day with her and her family next week. Tickets are nearly impossible to get. People enter this drawing for years and years and never get them, but her husband is in the military and does security for it. So we feel pretty lucky. We’ll let you know how it is. Love you tons!

Tiff J