Day 11 – Shopping and a visit to the Temple of the Six Banyan Trees

December 13 – In the morning, Mama, Aunt Terry and I went to the market to buy more formula for me. We walked five or six blocks through very crowded streets lined with vendors selling everything from shoes and clothing to strange looking food (well, it was strange looking to my mama). It was very noisy with vendors yelling from their stores, bicycle bells and loud music blaring. There were lots of interesting smells as well.

We had to go to the second floor of a large building to reach the market. My mama had a bit of paper with the name of my formula written in Chinese. A very nice shop girl helped find it and we bought one for us and one for Jenny. Jenny and I really like our Chinese formula. Guilan, our guide, says it is very good formula and we were very lucky that we were given it by our orphanage.

On our way out of the grocery store we saw fruit. I LOVE bananas. So we got a bunch for lunch. Mama thought I might like Kiwi fruit (I didn’t), so she bought three. We got up to the checkout and the girl told us that we needed to weigh the fruit first. We went back into the produce area and saw the weighing station. A woman was standing behind a small counter with a scale. She was weighing vegetables. The next woman in line had several brown eggs that needed to be weighed. Then it was our turn. She weighed our fruit, slapped a sticker on it (I also like stickers) and handed the bags back to us. We walked back to the checkout and paid for our purchases.

In the afternoon we visited the Temple of the Six Banyan Trees. The temple is called the Liurong Temple. It has a long and interesting history. I liked the very tall pagoda in the middle. Even though my mama was interested in the cultural relics of the temple, I was more interested in running around the courtyards and climbing up and down the steps. Mama gave up trying to take pictures of the various statues and chased me around with her camera. All of that running made me very tired and I fell asleep on the bus ride back. I was so tired that I didn’t even wake up when Mama put me down for a nap.

In the evening we strolled along the pedestrian street just outside of our hotel. All of the shops we open and the neon signs made the street very colorful. I watched people shopping, eating and taking pictures. I was too full after dinner (steamed egg, rice and noodles: Singapore style) to do much else.