Today we set out for a couple more of my childhood sentimental sites after enjoying day two of delicious breakfast soups at our hotel (one waiter even joked that my husband has accidentally left some of the buffet behind, given how much he’s been enjoying it!). To do so, we headed out to explore a couple of Singapore’s incredibly diverse neighborhoods, beginning with Little India.

The neighborhood is vibrant, filled with shops selling everything from flowers and fruits to dry goods and spices to religious items and every piece of clothing or electronic item you could ever want. Interspersed are restaurants with incredible aromas wafting out, from curries to biryani to any variety of specialties from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and beyond. As we wandered, we started to smell manure – and lo and behold, came upon a tent showcasing a farm (it appeared related to an ongoing religious festival).

I was especially captivated by the murals, which were beautiful (and in many cases took up the entire facade of a given building).

We wandered through, stopping at a couple sites of interest along the “Little India Heritage Trail” (there are a variety of Heritage Trails throughout Singapore). The first was the Sri Veeramakaliamman Temple, which was bustling with people as there was a religious festival underway. The temple had the incredibly ornate decor you’d expect and was similarly beautiful inside.

As we continued on, we spotted a couple sites on the Heritage Trail, including the Tan Teng Niah villa, which is the last remaining (and very colorful!) Chinese villa in Little India, constructed in 1900. The builder was a local Chinese business man who worked nearby, and somehow his home was the only one of the style to survive Singapore’s rapid urbanization and changing landscape as the neighborhood developed into today’s Little India.

We also saw the Kampong Kapor Methodist Church, which was one of the first Peranakan (“local” – will share more about this cultural term later!) churches built in Singapore.

After our meandering, we decided to stop for a snack (and of course, a snack ultimately turned into lunch). We actually had planned a multi-stop self-led food tour of three locations (Swee Choon Tim Sum Restaurant, Muthu’s Curry, Sungei Road Laksa) and had decided to add a fourth (Lagnaa…Barefoot Dining, which looked incredible from our walk by and apparently has been Michelin-rated for several years now). Unfortunately (or fortunately!), Swee Choon was closed for the day, Lagnaa wasn’t yet open, and Muthu’s Curry was only a 5 minute walk… so we headed there. On the way, we passed another church on the Heritage Trail.

For a bit of context, Muthu’s Curry (located on Race Course Road, another item on the Heritage Trail) is a sentimental spot from my childhood here in Singapore – one of my treasured childhood photos is a picture of me and my mother at their restaurant, eating rice and cabbage from a banana leaf with a huge pot of fish head curry on the table. This is one of the few things I remember from our time here, since I was so young that most memories are pretty faint. I couldn’t NOT visit while we were so close – and, of course, it was so good that we couldn’t resist just giving in and eating a full lunch and skipping the other items on our “food tour” (hopefully we’ll get back!).

My husband likes to joke that I’m a bit too discerning about my Indian food in the US and I think he finally understands why – everything lived up to my memories exactly, basically only the decor in the restaurant has changed in the past 25 years. I don’t want to hype it up too much given how many incredible restaurants are in the neighborhood (and how many regional styles there are to try!), but we were incredibly impressed. We ordered my family’s standard meal from 25 years ago – aloo ghobi and their famous fish head curry, accompanied by their papadams and a sweet lassi. I was initially sad that I couldn’t find the cabbage that I remembered so well from my childhood on the menu – it turns out that the cabbage and an eggplant dish are both free side dishes; as soon as the waiter came over with the containers, I immediately remembered how this was served!

Frankly, we were so full that we could barely force ourselves to walk after we exited the restaurant.

Since we were so close, we decided to head to Chinatown, which is about a 10 minute walk from Little India. On the way, we stumbled upon the Tekka Centre, which combines both a market and a hawker center in one location. We were especially impressed with the quality of the beautiful crabs and the size of the prawns. There is also a helpful explanation of the history of Little India right outside the center (interestingly, when Mr. Raffles led Singapore’s development back in the 1800s, he didn’t explicitly designate the area as an ethnic enclave).

In Chinatown, we made a couple stops. First was The Apartment, a trendy and very minimalist coffee shop; we also visited a boba tea shop called Feng Shui Tang in the Fortune Center mall (well, actually outside of the mall – we apparently walked by it no less than four times in our attempt to find it, only to be finally assisted by a very kindly security officer who clearly saw our confusion as shops #1-34 were inside and #35-37 were outside).

We also saw another “Singapore is living in the future” item – an umbrella drying station, rather than an umbrella dripping station. What a genius idea!

Also in Chinatown are a couple famed temples, including the Sri Krishnan Temple and the Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple.

From there, we headed to the main attraction of the day, the Intan Museum. Known as the best collection of Peranakan artifacts in Singapore, the museum is also the home of curator Alvin Yapp (who, incidentally, is featured in the current Singapore Airlines safety video, having worked for the airline for a number of years!). Although there wasn’t availability on the booking site, Alvin was super responsive to emails and was able to offer us a private tour of the collection.

We took the subway over to the Geylan neighborhood, which is much more residential than the central Singapore area we’ve been staying in. Alvin is a great host and was fun to get to know, even before the tour began (he previously lived in San Francisco, so we bonded a bit about the locale and joked with him about some of the things we’d noticed in Singapore).

Alvin’s house is the traditional Peranakan style – as he explained, Peranakan essentially means “local” – in the case of Singapore, the people who were born to a Chinese father and “local” mother. Specifically, back when Singapore was settled, Chinese male immigrants would come to the Malacca, Malaysia or to what would become Singapore and would begin families with local women (typically Malay, Indonesian or from what was not yet Singapore). From ~1850-1942, the Peranakan culture grew, mixing a variety of European, southeast Asian and Chinese cultural elements.

Alvin showcased his collection for us (unfortunately, photos of the collection aren’t allowed), sharing a couple amusing anecdotes and interesting cultural observations:

• Peranakan culture took elements from a variety of influences, both cultural and religious (and, often the line between both was relatively porous); while many Peranakan women converted to Christianity, they continued to honor Chinese religious traditions for events such as weddings and holidays
• Peranakan-style homes follow the typical Dutch-influenced design, in which windows were taxed; therefore, the homes are relatively narrow and long, with only a few windows at the front and back
• To divide rooms in these long, narrow houses, Peranakans adopted the Chinese tradition of using woven ceiling hangings to denote a new “room”; however, in keeping with the mix of influences, they replaced the traditional dangling tassels with a beaded hem
• While the designs on the collected artifacts (teapots, shoes, textiles, clothing items, betel nut spittoons, dish carriers) look European or Chinese, many artifacts are specific to Peranakan culture – for example, the Peranakans would commission French porcelain for teapots or teacups designed in both a European and a Chinese style; the coloring and patterns on both would be distinctly Perakan in nature
• Similarly, Peranakans decorated their clothing in a variety of distinct ways – while many women continued to wear kebaya and batik sarongs, they would embroider the edges with European-inspired motifs; shoes were often woven with French beads in local styles (the older the shoe, the lower the heel, traditionally)
• Most families had a “matriarch” who would run the household – he showed us multiple photos of such women (and joked that one had her feet on a pillow “like Queen Victoria!”)
• Photographs from the turn of the 20th century showcased the cultural changes underway – one in particular showed the father dressed in Chinese clothing, the mother in her traditional southeast Asian clothing, and children in western clothing; interestingly, the fact that they took a photo at all suggested that they were a relatively “westernized” family
• Recipes for food and tea are highly prized secrets – Alvin was joking that a Peranakan woman should always be making a loud noise on the mortar and pestle in the kitchen at the back of the house, lest a future mother-in-law or matchmaker walk by and worry that she isn’t a good cook!

After the tour was over, Alvin invited us to try a couple Peranakan snacks, including a more European-style custard and coconut jelly, a glutinous rice jelly, and a multi-colored (but all same flavor!) jelly. He also poured us a delicious green tea but wouldn’t share where it was from (I suppose it’s a Peranakan secret!). Overall, The Intan was an incredible museum and we’d highly recommend it to anyone.

After that, we decided to see a couple more sights in the Geylan neighborhood before heading back to the hotel. Of course, we needed a coffee to revive ourselves and stopped at the hyper-trendy Common Man Coffee Roasters (they have a couple locations throughout Singapore).

Then, it was on to the remaining sites. First up were the Peranakan houses, which are colorful and ornate (we also saw one that appeared to be unrestored and relatively dilapidated a couple blocks before, which was an interesting contrast).

Much of the neighborhood had similar design, although with more obvious commercial appeal.

Since Singapore has a significant colonial history with the United Kingdom, one of the questions we asked Alvin was around whether or not British men who began families with local women could be considered “Peranakan” as well, since their offspring would technically also be “locally born”. Interestingly, the offspring of British and local women were referred to as Eurasian, and are treated as a different ethnic group here. So, to learn more, we visited the Eurasian Heritage Gallery.

While a relatively small museum (it seems), the Eurasian Heritage Gallery was well presented (and the kind gentleman at the front desk offered us a variety of souvenirs, including a temporary tattoo and a couple pens. The Gallery contains several exhibits, including an overview of the different Europeans most represented in the Eurasian culture (Portuguese and British) as well as their participation in important Singaporean history (war heroes, famous doctors and nurses, scientists, etc.). Most interestingly, they also showcased a variety of Eurasian cultural elements – many of these were pretty similar to what we saw at The Intan (e.g., similar styles of kabaya, conversion to Christianity, adoption of European food and cultural traditions mixed with local influences). That being said, it was a great collection and well worth the visit.

For dinner, we decided to continue our theme to Peranakan exploration and visit Indocafe, a restaurant we’d passed on our way to Bar Kakure yesterday. On the Michelin guide, the restaurant features a variety of meat, seafood and rice / noodle dishes. To start, they provided a sampler of pickles, sambal and a sweet sauce with some rice crackers. Compared with Indonesian sambal, sambal here appears to be more of a sour / fermented flavor, and almost a paste (at the Eurasian museum, we saw that a traditional snack is a sambal sandwich!).

For our mains, we tried a few dishes including the Kari Kapitan, a chicken curry in coconut broth, the Wagyu Beef Rendang (a dish that I’ve most commonly had living in Indonesia and making at home!) and the Buah Keluak Fried Rice, which includes prawn and crab. For dessert, we had a dessert made of glutinous rice cooked with blue pea flower, pandan custard and a delicious coconut ice cream.

Everything was well prepared, although the chicken curry and the dessert were definite standouts. The fried rice was colored black by the keluak, which is a nut that is fairly common in southeast Asian cuisine (we’re excited to try a soup made from this in Surabaya!).

Overall, a packed but fun day in Singapore – and, dare I say – we’re starting to acclimate more to the heat!