To wrap up our Ancient India Social Studies unit, we planned a visit to the Indian Heritage Centre.

MsC and I took a new exit from the MRT and started our morning by being "lost" in Little India. This meant we discovered a new street, Kerbau Road, and got to explore a bit of the "Arts Belt."

I was focused on the variety of ways the traditional shuttered windows were presented in these heritage buildings, but MsC liked the colours and had her eye out for just the right drinks stall. We passed a number with Iced Chai, Lemonade, and/or Lime juice, but she was looking for Blueberry. It doesn't taste anything like blueberries, more like blue Koolaid.  

We discovered the brightly rainbow coloured house below, called "House of Tan Teng Niah." It's the last surviving Chinese villa in the area. It was built in 1900 when their were still small Chinese run industries in the area, amid the growing Indian community.

The Arts Belt and/or this self-directed Heritage Tour take you past a number of wall murals as well as iconic buildings. We only stayed on long enough to see 2 murals. We wanted to get to the museum before it got too busy as there are caps on capacity and no reservation system for this one.

The streets of Little India are lined by covered walkways with intricately tiled floors. You can't decide if you are in the store or not as you pass along them. MsC likes to stick to them because they are in the shade. It was already very hot among this gardenless area at 10 am.

We did a little shopping, including picking up a shirt for me, some bangles for MsC, and mangoes at a steal of $2.50/mango. We'll eat those at breakfast tomorrow.  

At the Indian Cultural Centre, we registered by signing in with our ID for social tracing, had our temperatures checked and were sent to the 3rd floor to begin. The 4th floor was currently too busy. They were right the 3rd floor was deserted.

We found at a typewriter with both English and Hindi letters on each key. I explained how typewriters worked to MsC. We noticed the Singapore Lion on the police helmet on display; many men in the India community worked as Police.

Up on the 4th floor we completed part of the Museum's Elementary School Discovery Kit that we had downloaded from home: including comparing Buddha statues from different countries and looking at some of the characters from our Indian Stories book depicted in different materials.

We watched a bit of the video. We were the only ones in the theater room, but the

language was in Hindi with English subtitles so we lost the train of the story rather quickly as it was a large very wide screen. The subtitles were at the bottom so you had to choose between looking at the photos or reading the words. I wasn't able to do both.

There were still a few photo opps available, but all of the hands on displays have been removed due to COVID. Most of the seating has been removed also. It also looked like Level 2 was closed. Many places are using this time of only locals to do renovations. This museum was child safe - everything was behind glass, unlike some of the museums we've been to. We went through it pretty fast and I don't think there would have been anything to interest the littler ones (maybe on the 2nd floor?).  It is any easy place to get to though, and has lots of fun street market style shops surrounding it. It's also included in our Friends of Museums annual passes so we will probably be back for small visits.

We also did get MsC her blueberry drink in the end by stopping in the Tekka Hawker Centre on our walk to the MRT. I ate Thosai (similar to a large thinner crepe made from a fermented lentil-rice batter). It's eaten by dipping it with your hands in different curries. MsC even ate it with me, this time.