Mixed Singapore spice

Jim Eagles rubs the belly of a Buddha in a bid for good health.

A small green parrot told my fortune when I visited Singapore's Little India.

For just S$2 ($1.76) he nipped out of his cage and picked out a card depicting a goddess whose smiling face decreed I had a very good mind, would live to 92, have excellent health and make much money.

For another S$2 the parrot chose a card for my wife which showed a sacred cow. This, according the bird's human assistant, meant she would live to only 91 - he knew who was going to make the big money - enjoy good health and have a happy family.

Not far off, at the Imperial Herbal Garden, a traditional Chinese doctor was eager to examine my eyes in order to work out which of the delicacies on sale - including yummy deep-fried scorpions - would restore my yin and yang to top condition.

I regret to say I didn't take his advice. Instead I rubbed the bulging belly of the huge happy Buddha in Waterloo St and asked him for good health, free of charge.

And just down the road at the temple of Kuang Yin, the Chinese Goddess of Mercy, we both burned three joss sticks and asked her to give good fortune to our family.

All of that is a long way from the usual image of Singapore: the sophisticated shopping in Orchard Rd or the displays of the latest electronic devices in the huge Sim Lim IT Centre.

But it is a useful reminder that as well as being South-East Asia's commercial hub, Singapore is also a meeting place for the region's many races, cultures and religions. In fact, if you can only visit one country in Asia, Singapore is probably the best place to get a taste of the whole of that vast, diverse continent.

Long before Sir Stamford Raffles founded the British trading settlement which became the modern Singapore, geography made the island at the end of the Malay Peninsula a crossroads for Malays and Thais, Burmese and Chinese, Arabs and Indonesians.

The history of all those cultures is brilliantly brought together at Singapore's Asian Civilisations Museum (there are actually two of them but this is the one in Empress St).

There's everything from the twisted swords and golden Garuda crowns of Java to Ming Dynasty ceramics and textiles, and from the stone carvings and ferocious gods of Cambodian temples to the flowing calligraphy of the Koran.

But as well as displays of the lifestyles and religions, weapons and empires, of culture the museum also shows how they came together in the anchorage formed by the Singapore River to create an energetic new multi-racial nation.

Indeed, when you emerge from the air-conditioned cool of the museum into the humid heat of the modern city, you can see most of those cultures still functioning in their own special districts.

The Government has, for instance, put a huge effort into preserving the tiny terraced homes originally built to house the Chinese coolies imported in the early 1800s as labourers. They now form the centrepiece of a Chinatown district bustling with markets, food stalls and restaurants, traditional healers, temples and shrines.

The Chinatown Heritage Centre, a restored tailor's shop where migrants could rent tiny rooms, gives a poignant picture of the harsh life of the early Chinese migrants.

But the vibrant commercial activity all around, with modern tailors and other entrepreneurs plying their wares, tells a much happier tale of the new life they built for themselves.

Kuang Yin's temple is not actually in Chinatown but it's probably the best place to go to see their traditional Daoist/Buddhist religion in action.

Outside the temple the street is aglow with flower and fruit stalls where devotees buy offerings for the goddess.

At the entrance you burn joss sticks - usually three, never four, because the word for four sounds like death - to ask for help. Inside, kneeling on a carpet before the figure of Kuang Yin, hundreds of supplicants are shaking containers full of marked and numbered sticks.

"You go there if you have a question to ask the goddess; maybe whether you should change your job, maybe whether you should buy an apartment," explained a young woman from whom I bought a small figure of Kuang Lin. "You shake the stick until one falls out."

Then, to check if the stick is the right one, you cast two red crescents on the floor. "If they fall like an open book the goddess says this is the stick for you," said my informant. "Otherwise it is not right."

Having found the right stick, the supplicant takes it to a priest who supplies a matching slip of paper bearing a saying from the goddess.

The sayings are, apparently, a little obscure but obviously the message does get through: one man we were watching broke into a huge smile as he read his paper and left, still grinning from ear to ear.

The temple warns devotees about being taken in by fortune tellers "who will try to cheat you".

The oldest Hindu temple in Singapore, the Sri Mariamman built in 1827, is in Chinatown because the first Indians initially also settled there.

But the best place to get a taste of India is the Tekka District which is also known as Little India.

Here too the quaint little original houses are being preserved and the narrow streets are thronged with stalls and shops where you can buy anything: from opulent gold jewellery and magnificently coloured saris to cheap clothes - I got a superb leather belt for S$2 - and reconditioned appliances.

This is also a great place for cheap accommodation (I saw bed-and-breakfast places for as little as S$18 a day) and meals (we went into a restaurant offering a set meal for S$4.90 and the stalls are even cheaper).

With the air full of rich smells from the spice mills grinding up mountains of garam marsala, the streets echoing with the haunting tunes of Indian music and the pavements thronged with sari-clad women, you could easily imagine you were in India.

Plus, of course, there was that fortune-telling parrot, not to mention henna painting, ayervedic massage and several temples with their distinctive brightly coloured figures of men, gods and animals.

For Malay culture you can head out of the city to Geylang Serai, on the eastern edge of the island, with its model Malay Village.

Or, in the heart of the city, there's the Malay Heritage Centre, Kampong Taman Warisan, with its replica Buris prahu, or trading vessel, and performances of traditional dancing, music, arts and crafts.

Right next door is the marvellous Sultan Mosque - with one of the more mellifluous museins I've heard - forming the heart of the Arab St area.

There aren't many Arabs in Singapore these days but the memory of their exploits as early traders is kept alive in the Islamic influence; cafes selling the strong, sweet arabic coffee, Middle Eastern food and waterpipes filled with fruit tobaccos.

The shops are filled with carpets, exotic fabrics, baskets, fez hats, and, in one case, belly-dancing gear.

All those cultures are, of course, found around the world but Peranakan society, a blending of the cultures of Chinese settlers and Malays, is unique to the Straits of Malacca.

The second of the Asian Civilisations Museums (in Armenian St) is dedicated to Peranakan life including the flowery kebayas (or blouses), jewellery and porcelain. You can also see the ornate Peranakan architecture, with its beautiful tiling and elaborate enamelled wrought-iron work, can be seen on houses in several parts of the city, especially Joo Chiat.

This is another area being preserved as a living cultural community, where you can eat the wonderfully spicy Peranakan food or buy the ornate crafts, especially embroidery, beadwork and porcelain.

Of course, British colonial culture is everywhere, too, with statues of Sir Stamford, the marvellous hotel named after him, grand government buildings, a cricket ground and several war museums.

And if after all that you're hankering for a bit of New Zealand, well, Singapore has that too.

Head for the nearest food court and you'll almost certainly find a New Zealand Naturally shop selling delicious ice creams.

"Very good," Amy Ang, director of marketing at the Swissotel Merchant Court assured us.

Perhaps try the kiwifruit flavour - cool and with a nice bittersweet taste - just like home.


* Jim Eagles visited Singapore as a guest of House of Travel, Air New Zealand and the Singapore Tourism Board.


Getting there
Air New Zealand flies direct to Singapore daily from Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.

Accommodation
Singapore offers a fantastic range of accommodation from three to five star-plus across the city.
House of Travel has packages to Singapore from $1295 per person share twin inclusive of fuel and insurance surcharges, plus airport and government costs of $28 per person. It includes return airfares, four nights accommodation at the Albert Court Hotel in Singapore with airport transfers and breakfast daily, plus, as a bonus, an exclusive upgrade to a deluxe room and a late checkout to 3pm.
Conditions apply to this offer so contact House of Travel for more information on 0800 838 747 or visit their website (link below).