Today, I’ll bring you to see one of the best and finest museums in Singapore, a must-visit destination for you.
You can take MRT (North-South and/or East-West lines) and alight at Raffles Place station. From there, cross the Singapore River by crossing the Cavenagh Bridge. There you’ll arrived at the museum.
Details of visitor information is at the end of this post.
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The journey begins at the second storey. Before you enter the main galleries, there are exhibitions about ancient medical appliances (for surgery purposes) on display as well as artefacts of Singapore history.
During the early days of Singapore, Chinese coolies arrived in search for better future. This is how the situation would look like hundreds of years ago.
The ships that brought them (the migrants) to Singapore, one medium-sized vessel and one boat. ‘Boat’ as in the Sri Lankan boat people trying to enter Australia as assylum seekers.
Then, I entered the main galleries. The road to the galleries consisted of videos of Asian civilisations (that’s how they got their name) projected to a large screen.
The first gallery is the Southeast Asian gallery. There are two galleries for Southeast Asia, one in the second floor and one in the third floor. Unfortunately, I didn’t go to the gallery at the third level as I was scared (well, as traditional Indonesians I still believe in superstitious things and the statues there scared me enough especially the statues at the China gallery).
Artefacts of early Southeast Asian civilisations
They briefly described the wet rice cultivation done in Southeast Asian countries (all except two very tiny nations in the region, you-know-who). There were two Buddhist statues as well at the left hand side of this picture.
Indonesia has more than ‘Batik’ fabric. This is the proof. These fabrics originated from Minangkabau (now known as the province of West Sumatra) in Sumatra. Onde mande, how could it be in Singapore now? Fellow Indonesians, do you still remember the case of counterfeit artefacts at National Museum in Jakarta and temples (Hindu and Buddhist) in Central Java?
Horas! This one from the land of the Batak people (now known as the province of North Sumatra).
The roof of the Batak houses, somehow it seems difficult for me to differentiate between the Batak and Minahasa (Sulawesi) roofs apart.
This one should be from Nias island, off North Sumatran west coast.
I know this originated from the Sumatra area but I forgot whether it comes from the Batak or the Nias.
For sure this statue comes from Nias
The Minangkabau’s traditional clothing
Moving on to the West Asian gallery,
Some scripts from the holy book for the Muslims, al-Quran
The China gallery
The Emperor’s clothes?
The ‘wayang’ from China
Some statues of Buddha
A dummy of restaurant in China, I guess during the early days of the Communist as the clothing of the people told me so.
Back to the Southeast Asian gallery, here is the Dayak tribes handicrafts.
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As usual, to be continued…
