Chinatown - CNY spirit

My family and I visited Chinatown to get a sense of the imminent Lunar New Year. I used to remember my parents used to bring my brothers and me to immerse the new year spirit, browsing the many makeshift stalls selling wares and goodies. Now that Chinatown has shrank and modernised (sanitised in my opinion), the atmosphere of old is no longer there, although the streets are cleaner and better laid out.

Here's a photo of the Hong Lim complex which I frequented (almost daily) for lunch when I temp-ed at OCBC after my A-levels. One of my favourite stalls was the dumpling noodle stall. Despite its age, the HDB flats still look rather welcoming. Many of the malls and skyscrapers present now were not present in 1993!

This is Waterloo Street. On the right of this street is Chinatown.

To cater to tourists, one of the streets earlier passable to road traffic has been converted to a padestrians only street, akin to Mongkok in Hongkong. It is called Food Street now but I say don't bet too much on the quality of the food. When we passed by the street in the early afternoon, there were not many people.

But when we passed by it on the way home around 7pm, it was brimming with people. There was even a traffic police officer stationed at the roadside.

This is the recently constructed Buddha Tooth Temple. Even though I am a Buddhist, I cannot concur with the overtly commercialised nature of the temple. But it is still an interesting place to visit, especially for tourists.

See how busy Chinatown is! I recall the streets were even more crowded when I was a young boy. Maybe the day is still young and the crowd will increase as the day wears on.