The Buddha Tooth Relic Temple (Singapore)

 

From my diary (August 2007)

On the second Friday of the month, I’m off to Singapore. First on my motorbike, from my house in the outskirts of Bandar Seri Begawan, the tiny capital of Brunei, to the airport; then by air from Brunei to Changi International Airport in Singapore, a two-hour flight; and then by underground to reach the hostel I have booked online.

Relieved to have arrived at the hostel without much ado, the moment I set foot in it I realise it is no more than a small apartment that has been converted into a hostel. The living room has been turned into a lobby; of the two bedrooms, one is now a double room, and the other a dorm with six bunk beds lumped together; while the kitchen, too, has been converted into yet another bedroom with two bunk beds. At least the bathroom looks OK. The manager, a plump Chinese man with a baby face, wants me to stay in the twelve-people room. In the end, I manage to convince him to let me stay in the room with the two bunk beds, paying for the entire room. This proves fortuitous as, the following day, I find out from two other guests staying in the large room that the manager, sharing their room, snored through the night as, I imagine, a rhino might…

It is three in the afternoon and I have four hours at my disposal before meeting up with Martella, an Italian friend working in Singapore whom I first met a few months earlier on the plane from Milan, and two Italian friends of hers; the plan is to have dinner together before they leave for a long weekend in Bangkok.

I begin my visit, starting from the colonial centre next to the estuary of the Singapore River, where the founder of the city, the British Governor Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, first landed in 1819. At the time, Singapore was no more than a sparsely populated island covered in jungle. Hard to believe, considering what the place looks like today...

The Buddha Tooth Relic Temple

Maitreya Buddha within the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple

The roof of the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple