What's going on? How come he is constantly hungry?
Here we are giving Atticus a bath in the sink:
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This morning, we return to Chinatown via MRT (subway). Emerging from the Chinatown MRT, we find difficulty getting to the ground floor & end up carrying the baby + stroller down a long flight of stairs. We stroll along the shopping stalls, making our way to the Buddha Relic Tooth Temple & the Chinese Complex.
Lonely Planet is right: Chinatown does appear to have received a Disneyland makeover. The buildings are obviously old but newly painted on the outside with brightly colored shutters that cover seemingly fake windows. Despite the touristy appearance, there is an air of poverty in this neighborhood. Old Chinese people linger around public parks, trudge along alleyways carrying lots of bags, play Chinese chess in open-air squares. This Chinatown reminds me every Chinatown that I've been to - from San Francisco to Los Angeles to Montreal, Chicago, New York, & Boston. It is occupied by an older Cantonese-speaking generation & it looks like it might have been a lively community thriving on something other than tourism once a long time ago.
The Buddha Tooth Relic Temple looks innocuous from the outside. There's a small display with incense burning in front of it. When we walk past it & a sign that prohibits the wearing of sleeveless, bareback shirts & miniskirts (I cover up appropriately with a proffered shawl), we enter another small room with a golden bodhisattva & a beautiful red & white rug depicting a lotus flower. Beyond that is a large room with hundreds of Buddhas built into the walls. A huge, thin, sitting golden Buddha sits on one end of the room, & facing it are some orange-clad Buddhist monks & many people reading & chanting in unison. Each monk chants into a microphone, with a head monk sitting above & facing everyone, & each person in the congregation (most of them are old people) hold a book full of sutras, I think. They chant in Mandarin, as far as I can tell. The loud, deafening chant has a soothing quality to it, & the sound ebbs from soft to loud like steady breathing. It's very captivating.
The pedestrian street full of food stalls is closed during the day, so we meander along the small streets, looking at the generic Chinese souvenir shops. The alleys remind me of the LA fashion district, where each storefront is an awning with tables of wares - kitschy gold and red decorations, cheap t-shirts, silly magnets, etc. Robby is thirsty so we purchase a cup of grass jelly, apparently a very common drink here, & a cup of soya milo (chocolate soy milk), which tastes even more disgusting than Ovaltine. It's actually a Nestle product. We buy a few delicious pastries at a pastry shop: lau po bing, lotus seed bun,and a BBQ chicken pastry. They are fresh & piping hot. The outer crusts are not greasy but flaky and buttery.
Then we explore the China Complex & find a large hawker food court upstairs. Our first purchase is a failure; the stir-fried rice noodle with shrimp is limp, saucy, & overcooked. Our despair disappears when we buy a few cups of sugar cane juice, freshly squeezed by an old man using a large, strange juicing contraption. The juice is so refreshing and light that our spirits and energy are lifted. 
We wander the food court some more but are too hesitant to order any food after the gross noodles. We see many people eating from large plates of whole boiled or steamed fish. Some people are eating fish head stew. Pretty elaborate dishes for a simple food court.The weather is considerably hot with the sun out. The baby is being pretty patient considering the lower half of his body is suffocating in a diaper. We stumble upon a Hindu temple called Sri Mariamman Temple, pay a small fee to get in, & wander around to look at the colorful statues of gods. Musicians playing loud percussion instruments perform at near the head of the altar, where tourists are prohibited. Thankfully, Atticus doesn't freak out from the clanging cymbals & thumping drum. Actually, he smiles as he looks around at the Hindu followers in colorful attire & make-up.
Later in the afternoon, we take the MRT to Little India, which is packed with Indian people. The streets busy & the sidewalks narrow. We find a large banyan tree on the corner of two streets & walk much of the length of Serangoon Road. I notice that many jewelry shops that sell gold are run by Chinese merchants. There are some glamour-shot studios & beauty salons that offer eyebrow threading. We are too tired & hungry to do the walking tour offered by the Lonely Planet guide, so we find a restaurant to sit and rest. Robby orders a rava masala dosa (spelled "dosai" on the menu), a chili crab masala, & a salty lassi, while I order a masala dosa, plain paratha, & mango lassi. The food is outstanding. I have never had a paratha before, & I fall in love with the texture and taste of it. It is a bread that is spun & stretched to a thin layer, covered in oil, & folded over & placed on a grill. The result is a bread that is both chewy & crunchy.
I'm glad we finally hit up both Chinatown & Little India. Chinatown is definitely more touristy with its brightly painted buildings & souvenir shops (not unlike the ones in San Francisco Chinatown). The facade of Chinatown hardly hides its poverty. We heard that Little India is filled with itinerant workers, but I don't think I saw any today. Little India feels more like a community where Indian Singaporeans reside, not a tourist trap. I'm very happy about our exploration of Sinaporean food. I'm glad to leave the business district for better meals.
Hindu souvenirs
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