We will start with some bookkeeping notes today. Firstly, and most excitingly, China announced its 30-day visa-free access policy (local) for Canadians for the rest of the year yesterday evening. Yay! It had been said to be a thing on the Canadian side, but had not been announced on the Chinese side in an official capacity. There were rumours (told to me by Chinese friends who follow their news) that it was going to be announced on Feb 01, but that did not happen. Then that it had been postponed to around Chinese New Year, and that one apparently was accurate! It was literally announced a day and a few hours before the first day of the Lunar New Year.

I had not booked anything past Feb 21st on this trip because I was hoping for something like this — my backup plan was to go to Shikoku in Japan and travel around there for the latter half of my trip, but I wanted to be flexible in case China opened its doors while I was on vacation, and she did! Now I need to get in touch with Kel, and perhaps Zian if she’s in the country, and figure out a travel plan. I’m probably going to Guangzhou for a few days to stay with Kel and maybe use that as a base to travel to Shenzhen and maybe other nearby cities, but I’d also like to travel to a few further cities while I’m there. Maybe spend like 3-7 days in a city depending on how large it is. We’ll see though. There’s also a small chance that I’ll chicken out and just go to Japan anyway, and plan a China trip for later on this year, despite all this contingency that I did.

Another note is that I’ve been trying to arrange some meetups with Singapore friends while I’m here, and most likely that will happen on the 18th and maybe 19th. Tigey can’t wait to meet his most loyal subjects again.

A third note is that I had reached out to two of my three schools, Peiying Primary and Dunman High, to ask in advance this time if I could visit the schools to watch around. I asked prior to coming on the trip but neither one has answered me yet, so I’m not even sure it’s a Chinese New Year thing, maybe they just don’t check their email? I had also inquired with the government about visiting the old Rosyth School site, this was my primary 4-6 school that has since moved to a completely new location from where it was when I was a student there. Aftre making me fill out a long form, they came back and said that the place was under renovations or something though and so they can’t grant me access to it. Oh well.

Now, back to the travel blog! Today was an exhausting walking day full of malls that I swirled through like a hurricane. Parts of this blog post are going to sound transactional, like “I visited, I took a picture, I moved on.” That’s because there’s so much that I wandered through on the way to other places. My travel path today was 29,578 steps long according to Pikmin Bloom, and it was their monthly Community Day special event where I got 50% bonus step credit towards growing my Pikmin, plus a further bonus if you’re planting flowers at the same time, so I ended up with a lot of bonus step credits on top of that. I had to recharge my phone from empty to full twice but I grew many, many sprouts from the backlog of seeds that I had.

I spent the day walking around the downtown core and visiting a bunch of strata malls. My path today, when I tried plotting it out on the a screenshot of Google Maps with a marker afterwards, looked something like this:

Parts of that trace are approximate. But it was all traversed on foot, with no transportation vehicles involved at all, and took me over 10 hours, including many stops along the way.

I set out a little after 11 am, following Oxley Rise to the east and noting little interesting scenes like a rooster lazing in the grass by the side of the road:

And several people camping out beneath an expressway ramp:

It was Sunday, so I think it was maybe linked to the Filipino maid stuff that I’d noted down before, but I couldn’t be sure. I did see other groups like this here and there through the day, though.

Moving on, I came across the National Museum of Singapore, Here’s a side view of it instead of the traditional frontal shot.

It had started drizzling by this time, so I went inside to seek shelter and hoping to find some pamphlets. The front lobby was very packed with tourists though, and there were no pamphlets to be found, nor was there a gift shop available to explore. It was also like $36 to go in and see the exhibits, and I didn’t have the time or interest for that today, so I moved on once the drizzling subsided. That was the only rain that I encountered all day, thankfully.

There are several university/college-style campuses in the downtown core area, and I passed by one here, bemusedly watching a bunch of people sketch a tree. There were quite a few people on campus, and I mentally linked this to what Debbie had mentioned yesterday — it was open house season at most of the Universities.

I was headed to Albert Centre Food Court for breakfast, and to get there I passed by a few temples that I had come across before — The Sri Krishnan Temple:

And the Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple next to it:

Both were decked out for the Chinese New Year festivities. I did not enter the latter temple this time to pray, like I did the previous time I was here. Instead, I walked down the streets, noting the very familiar “umbrella vendors” (they looked identical to the ones when I came here four years ago) but also noting that this time there were Chinese New Year stalls and such set up along the road that I believe were not here last time too.

I then arrived at the Albert Centre Market & Food Centre for a very late breakfast/early lunch:

The place was, as expected for it being by a very famous and busy street, packed.

I did not realize it at the time as I don’t plan this sort of thing in advance, but the last time I came here in that blog post above, I apparently ate fried carrot cake (black) from stall #01-59. This time, I ended up eating fried carrot cake (white) at a stall called Shi Dai Feng Wei, stall #01-101. I guess there’s something about the area that makes me crave fried carrot cake (chai tow kway).

This was also $3 — I only ordered a small plate with the idea that I’d leave room to eat other things. I also apparently did this the last time I was here, and that was a funny realization to make while compiling notes back at the hotel at the end of the evening.

Our paths diverged from here though, as this time I had a dessert meal right after — ice kachang, basically a variation of shaved ice (kakigoori in Japanese), for $2.80 to cool down from the heat. It was almost too cold — it left my mouth numb for a bit.

I then went to visit the actual dry goods market upstairs and walked around there for a bit. I loved the smell of all the spices and sweets at this place.

Nothing particularly useful to me as a tourist though, though I could have bought some sweets if I were so inclined. But I wasn’t. I left the area, passing this little quaint plaza called Cheng Yan Court along the way to my next destination:

There was an open space flanked by some narrower corridors and I liked the somewhat liminal feeling here even though the surrounding roads were busy. I also took a picture of this offering altar:

I always wonder what happens to the food and drinks offered to a shrine like this at the end of the offering. Does whoever cleans it up consume it? Or toss it away? Which is ruder? Apparently a quick Google indicates that they’re usually just eaten, and that arguably you could look at it as being blessed food after being offered. Hmm. Looks at Tigey.

I went to the Singapore National Library building after this, a building that I would become very familiar with on the outside as I passed it something like five times on my wandering today. This was the only time I went in though, and although brochures and papers seem to be very rare in Singapore as she seems to be well on her way to becoming a paperless society, I actually did find a couple here:

Mine. I also went down to the basement and looked around at a couple of the themed book exhibits:

I also went up the building to the 10th floor and then took the escalators all the way down to the ground floor again. Then I left, and visited a nearby mall that I had been to before on a previous trip, Bras Basah Complex.

This mall had several shops that sold second hand books, and several of the stores here I actually still recognized from my last trip back in 2024. I ended up picking up two books, a gamebook that I did not have and a weird Raffles Junior College 1998 cohort yearbook-style handbook.. except instead of class photos and clubs and stuff, it contained a list of every graduate and their addresses and phone numbers at the time? What a weird artifact! Nearly all the information is probably now out of date but it will make a great artifact to scan and upload at some point.

My next stop was Gemini-influenced, as I asked it for locations of other second-hand bookstores. The first suggestion it gave me was for a store that had closed down already, but the second one seemed open and nearby, so I ended up walking to Parklane Shopping Mall, which was a strata mall but had an NTUC Fairprice and a McDonalds embedded in it as well. What a weird mix.

I ended up at the shop in question, Book Treasure:

This place was just boxes of books to dig through, and although I did not end up buying anything here, I did enjoy browsing through it very much. Like for example there was a corner in the back where a whole ton of old cookbooks were buried.

I chatted to the Uncle who owned the store for a bit, and I asked him if he had any school-published books or gamebooks around, but he dug around a bit and couldn’t find any. Stock comes and goes, he said. I’ll probably be back here again in the future. Next trip.

I sourced Gemini again, this time to look for a nearby local place in a strata mall to eat at, and it suggested another nearby place that was closed for Chinese New Year. I couldn’t really fault it for that one, I guess, since that’s a seasonal thing that wasn’t listed in the Google Maps shop hours either. It tried again, and led me to Victor’s Kitchen in nearby Sunshine Plaza.

Here, I had their Golden Egg Yolk Lava Buns ($5.90 for 3) as well as some iced milk tea ($3.80). This was very pricey, and really at the end of the day was probably just okay. The hot custard and egg yolk paste inside mixed in a very fluffy way with the outer bao (bun) when I sliced it open and ate it in small pieces, but remained gooey if I just picked up the entire bao and popped it into my mouth. And the way of cooling that drink with ice without actually putting the ice in it, so that there was more actual tea for me to drink, was novel too. Except once the tea content got low, the cup floated up to the top and tilted over against the side of the bowl.

But this as just a snack and left me craving for more, so I tasked Gemini with finding another place, giving it a couple of dish options that I wanted to try, and then an instruction that I wanted “something that isn’t A-tier recommended, but rather a high B-tier recommendation. In other words, locally popular without being legendary or Michelin starred.” It correctly interpreted this as “places that are solid, locally respected, and reliable, but haven’t been ruined by TikTok hype or hour-long queues.” It then tried to send me back to Albert Center, but I wasn’t having any of that, so I asked for another choice and it eventually suggested a restaurant about 10-15 minutes aay called Jason Niang Dou Fu, along Beach Road. Sure, that sounded good, so I walked there.

I passed this weird No Entry sign for dogs in a curated plant area at the base of a random hotel or something along the way. It felt very random. Was this really that serious of a problem here?

And I passed this store, which I instantly recognized as somewhere that I had visited with Zixiang and Debbie a couple of years ago. Passing by it this time was entirely serendipitous.

Soon, I found the store that Gemini was pushing me toawrds. It was mostly indoors, which was a nice bonus, although I would find out after I was done that the tray return area was outside for some reason.

Their menu looked like this:

And I ordered a bunch of items and a drink as well.

I did not like the drink, their homemade honey sour plum, at all, but the meal was pretty good.

Nearby to here was another pasar malam (night market) that was going on, so I headed that way, passing by this very succinct zodiac horoscope list along the way.

You and me at the bottom of the totem pole again, Tigey. Although this seems to be one of those places that refuses to ever give out one-star ratings.

The pasar malam here was called Gemilang Kampong Gelam, and was a Hari Raya Puasa/Ramadan-linked one rather than a Chinese New Year one. Due to the theme and the neighbourhood it was in, most of the stalls as well as visitors were Malay, and it was neat to see a different sort of night market. I had just eaten though, so I didn’t end up buying anything here.

In addition to that main tent above, there were a lot of stalls out along the side roads too.

But it was getting late and I was still very far away from my hotel, though I was determined to walk back. So I plotted a route back home, aiming for a couple of strata malls along the way that Gemini highly recommended.

I passed by this street that I snapped a photo of. I liked the brightly lit signs and the contrast between the low houses in the foreground and the tall office buildings in the background. I didn’t actually go down that street though since it would have taken me in the opposite direction from where I needed to go.

I also saw this forlorn-looking fair outside a theatre in the downtown core, and was surprised that it was so empty since the surrounding areas, including the theatre/mall, had tons of people in it.

One of the strata malls Gemini wanted me to visit along the way was called Peninsula Plaza, and I quite liked this place. It apparently contained a lot of Myanmar shops, and was where that community gathered at night.

There was even a Myanmar food court in the basement.

Gemini was hoping that I could find some Myanmar-themed pamphlets or newspapers there, but no such luck. However, the next place it took me to was called Cuppage Plaza, and this one was the same thing, but for the Japanese. And it was far more deserted by the time I reached there.

However, I did find a couple of issues of Singalife, a local print publication for Japanese expats living in Singapore.

I was pretty happy about this, I had actually found the latest edition in Rochester Mall two days ago, and here I found that edition again plus the two previous editions before it. I took the latter two, though they were a bit bulky.

I then popped into a neighbouring mall, Orchard Plaza, which was mostly deserted except for a food stall that had bright yellow signs:

This stall was outdoors but was in a covered foyer so it was mostly covered from the elements, which I thought was interesting. There were multiple self-serve laundromats in the vicinity too, so I guess it as a thing for people living around there to do their laundry and eat at the same time? I wandered into the quiet mall and took this picture, then wandered back out.

It was awfully late by that point and my feet were killing me, but I wanted to reward myself for the day (by giving myself something to look forward to once I reached back to the hotel), so I stopped by a Donki and picked up some random drinks:

Wel, not so random, the two Kirin ones were on sale when bought as a set, and the third, the Sangaria Maroyaka Banana & Milk, was pricey at $2.80, but was a drink that I am familiar with and really like. I crawled home after that, did my laundry and took a nice long shower, then flopped into bed while my feet tingled and ached.