Day 27 pt 1 : Boots are made for walking

15:00
We’re out before 08:30, making for Chinatown. We meet our guide, Stephen, and the other guests joining our walking tour. There’s a family - 3 sons, a daughter and mum, and a solo German traveller called Pascal. Stephen walks us around Chinatown for 90 minutes, taking in some of the local sights, and giving us a fascinating insight into the history of this and other ethnic quarters. We stop briefly for a snack in the Chinatown Complex hawker market. They’re called Butterflies, and straddle the line between doughnuts and a kinda sesame seed bread roll. Lovely stuff. Felix and I both have eyes on stalks looking at the other stalls that are here, and decide to head back here later for some dinner. Chinatown is bustling and hectic. There’s something a little addictive about it. We wander past a few Durian stalls - and well, let’s not be coy - they stink. I think the best way to describe the odour is a cross between very ripe mango, and rotting flesh. Not so yum.

From Chinatown, we jump on the subway to head to Little India. The subway is modern, clean, air-conditioned throughout. It makes moving around town a thorough pleasure. Little India is at a markedly slower pace than Chinatown. We wander past some grocers selling some incredible looking produce. We stop for some vadai, another kinda doughnut, this time flecked with curry leaves, cumin, and chilli. Delish. We wash it down with some sugar cane juice mixed with lemon juice, which is very refreshing. When the sun’s out, it’s a HOT day. Happily, it’s fairly overcast, so we’re rarely in the sun’s hot rays.

Our next stop is Malay Town, a little further South, and not far from our hotel. On our way there, we pass through the Atlas building, which has an incredibly cool bar on the ground floor. There’s a gin ‘tower’ - which Stephen tells us used to be staffed by women wearing white fairy outfits, attached to pulleys in the ceiling, to grab the bottles of the very highest shelves. Sadly, no longer - but it must have been quite the sight. Malay Town is a maze of narrow shopping streets. There are some really cool vintage stores, some music shops, and just random tat emporia. We stop briefly at the Sultan Mosque, before putting down roots at a chai shop to end our tour. I’ve done 12,000 steps this morning, in flip-flops.Baca selengkapnya