We continued our roaming along the alleys of Chinatown in Singapore, then we stumbled upon this gorgeous building, the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple. There is almost always an outer gate around temples such as this one, which blocks the inner square right in front of the temple from the street outside. There was a lot of things to absorb as soon as I passed through the gate; the predominantly red colours everywhere just hit you straight in the eyes, the thick smell of the incense burning, and the constant sound of people’s chanting from inside the temple. After a couple of minutes to process everything in, I began to focus on little things, and started to wander around the temple.
The Buddha Tooth Relic Temple is definitely worth seeing when you are in Singapore. There’s something about listening to all the chanting while I was looking around the temple. I did not get one single word, but I found it very calming and it almost made me forget the feeling of having imaginary insects crawling on my arms from the communal robe.
Before you entered the temple, I was asked to put on a robe to cover myself (I was wearing shorts and no-sleeve top) for show of respect in the house of worship. I forgot that most temples in Asia that open for public usually require this, I did not bring my own sarong + cardigan with me, so I took the one they provided there for free, while trying to be cool and not thinking about the fact that hundreds of sweaty people had worn the robe before me.
There were people praying inside, lead by one person standing near the altar. I wanted to take pictures but I decided not to out of respect. I focused instead on the details (non-people praying details) inside the temples. If you could see incense burning outside, the inside was all about burning candles. There were rows upon rows of these pretty little bowls with flowers around them inside the temple.
I felt quite peaceful as I left the temple.
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