Wednesday, March 17

east 

guess what? i went to visit more temples today!

took the express bus 506 again, but not to bedok. i stopped at bedok reservoir road that is nearer to eunos to visit yu huang dian yu hai tsang guan ying tang. yeap its sounds lengthy. its a toaist temple with some buddhist influence. the place is quite well maintained and for a small temple, its quite elegant. i pass by the temple a few times when Philip was living in that area as i sometimes send him back when i had a company van to drive in my old job.

from eunos, i took bus no 8 to tampines, and realized that it travels from toa payoh to tampines. went to the only temple in tampines estate proper. all the temples during the kampong days merged to form this mega temple with each of them occupying an altar so it looks neat and quite spacious. the architecture of the temple building is normal but there are two dragons on top of the outer walls which is rather unique as most of the time, dragons are placed on the roof top.

its only about noon time when i got back to the interchange. didn't go for lunch as i was not really hungry so took bus 81 wanting to go to old tampines road. but the bus travels on a new route and does not goes into old tampines road, i had to stop, cross the road to take bus 72 into old tampines road which ironically also originates from tampines.

went to a temple located in a shophouse first but can't really remember the name, then carried on to jiu xian gong, the temple of the bai clan. the lion dance troupe of this temple is quite famous and if i remembered correctly, they ever represented singapore in the regional lion dance contest. the next temple is xian tang gong, a temple originally normal praying one that went on to promote the way of toa. they even have some toaist chanting classes on sundays.

i spent quite a while at the next temple cause its still under construction. took the opportunity to explore the place and think its quite well designed for a joint temple, guess they did a lot of research. it will consist of bao an gong, which i visited once with my ex lion dance troupe members when it was in east coast, the special thing about this temple is that they pray to five qi tian da shen; jiu tiao chiao xin ba na du tan, which was in ang mo kio, i always attend their festive celebrations when i was still staying in shunfu and tian de gong which i never heard before. ha ha, i will be going to see their jing gong ceremony in may as its really a rare opportunity.

then i went on to xian gu dian, dedicated to he xian gu. saw a lot of pictures of he xian gu's medium pasted on the wall and remembered reading sometimes back in the newspapers that she is he xian gu reincarnated. the lady mending the counter even gave me some holy water for me to take home and kept on asking me to attend their festive celebrations for da ye bo in may! think they have really good pr skill.

the last temple i went into is tian gong miao but i stayed only a little while as the place has really become a real big mess with idols and stuff all over the place. i remembered that when they first rebuilt it, it was really elegant and well kept, then i guess sometime when hay wired and ended up in this pathetic state. really feel sorry for it.

for those who have been in that area before might be wondering why i did not visit the two buddhit temple there; for those who know me will know that i have been to most buddhist temples and know them inside out so i didn't really need to visit them. besides, i just want to see the non buddhist temples while i still have the freedom to do so, partly influenced by all the discussions about chinese deities in the forum.

i went to hougang mall to have fried carrot cake for lunch at about 4 pm. haha, real late lunch.

|

andi at 22:46