I traveled on Sunday and Monday to southeast Asia to visit my Aunt Lo. We hadn’t seen each other for years so it is such a treat for me to visit Singapore and get to know her better. She has been a great tour guide.

The first day we went downtown and had lunch in Little India. Then we visited two Hindu temples and a Buddhist temple. They were all along the same road, which was festively decorated.

I’m pretty sure I hadn’t ever been to any Hindu or Buddhist temples so this was really new for me. I had a bit of trouble taking a picture of our first temple, the Sri Veeramakaliamman Temple, but hopefully you can get an idea of how amazing it is. I zoomed in on the goddess Durga riding a lion with her trident. So cool.

Here is the gopuram (temple gatehouse-tower) of the Sri Srinivasa Perumal Temple, a temple dedicated to the god Vishnu. Even more statues! And it’s so colorful and inviting.

Our last temple was Buddhist, the Long San See Temple. The number and variety of Buddhas or perhaps Buddha-like figures is always surprising to me. This temple was built around a statue of Kwan Yin, the Bodhisatva of Compassion. She’s from China, I think.

Guided by google maps (which doesn’t necessarily walk you through the most scenic route…perhaps they should add that as a feature), we made our way to Arab Street and the Masjid Sultan or the Sultan Mosque. I didn’t take any pictures inside because of respect, but there were some interesting panels talking about Islam as a religion of peace and its views on women. It’s like a mosque straight out of a dream.

Today we went to a nature preserve in the middle of Singapore and walked the Tree top walk, a lovely path that contains a bridge over the preserve. It was beautiful and tropical. We saw lots of wildlife, including these long tailed macaques that you see below. They blend in well with the path so you’ll have to look closely.

I really had been waiting for my entire life to see monkeys in the wild. I was over the moon and took a thousand pictures. The monkeys above let us pass quickly in peace, so I thought I had a decent handle on the relationship between monkey and human in this context. I was feeling confident.

When we got to the suspension bridge over the jungle, we were warned about a couple monkeys on the bridge that might steal some stuff from us if we weren’t careful with our bags. So we zipped everything up and put our backpacks in front. Then we started boldly across the bridge.

When we got about halfway there, we noticed that the monkeys weren’t moving away from us, but just sort of sitting there staring at us, like prehensile cats.

And then to our horror they started moving towards us on the bridge, along the railing, pausing every so often to show us disrespect and contempt.

They really had us at a disadvantage. We were terrified; Aunt Lo even forgot she was afraid of heights, she was so scared of the macaques. What’s 25 meters in the air compared to spiteful, imminent monkeys?

There were two other people who came up behind us. One of them boldly just walked right past the monkeys–she was young and had no fear of mortality–and the other stood frozen just like us. Inspired by youthful bravery, I raced past the monkeys!  And then I realized that I had left my Aunt Lo behind, like a jerk. So I hesitated a bit, shouting encouragement, but then the monkeys started coming for me; I forgot all my noble sentiments and ran away like a coward. Eventually, the guard of the bridge noticed our screeching and distress and came to save us with a wand and some sort of spray. We made it. But I have not been as scared as that in a long time. It was singular.

We also saw awesome fig trees that can only be pollinated by specific types of wasps. Yay evolution! Those fruit on the side are figs!

This fig tree has tall buttress roots.

I am going to Thailand tomorrow and won’t post for a few days.