Explore Singapore Chinatown with Hawthorn International Students

Singapore Chinatown is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Singapore.

What do visitors think of Chinatown and what is unique about Singapore Chinatown?

Let’s find out from a group of international students from Hawthorn Singapore.

Led by teacher Pavel, the EAP class. and several intermediate students, visited six locations in Chinatown. The students were invited to talk about their experiences, and they were videotaped.

The six locations were

Chinatown Garden Bridge
Tai Thong Pastry Shop
Jamae Chulia Mosque
Sri Mariamman Hindu Temple
Tooth Relic Buddhist Monastery
Traditional Chinese Medicine Hall

This was an educational field trip commissioned by Hawthorn Singapore, an English-language school that is part of the TMC Educational Group.

This excursion created a unique opportunity for Hawthorn students to practice their English while exploring Singapore and to encourage confidence in public speaking.

For more information about the Hawthorn program, please visit:   www.hawthornenglish.edu.sg

What Hawthorn students had to say about their Chinatown excursion:

Vishap and Rind:
We are writing an essay about our excursion to Chinatown on 11th of March 2009. In the essay we are going to mention: where did we go? What did we see? And what did we do?

Firstly, we went to different places in Chinatown. Our teacher, Pavel, introduced us to the tour guide who was responsible to take us to all the places in Chinatown.

First, we went to the terrace garden. The tour guide also took a video of us. We also saw a Chinese bakery shop. We had a free “moon cake” which was made of lotus seed. It was very delicious and we ate the cakes together.

Secondly, we went to the Mosque. It is the place where Muslims goes to pray. We met a gentleman in the Mosque who explained us about the Muslim religion. And then, we went to an Indian temple, which is an ancient temple in Singapore. In the temple, we saw a lot of statues of the Indian God.

Finally, after finished our excursion we went to have our lunch together in a Chinese restaurant. We ordered a food call steam boat. We were real hogs—we ate until our stomachs got blasted!

The most exciting and the funniest thing about the tour was the video taping. We had to give our opinions about the things we saw and did. It was the first time for everyone and everyone was excited about giving a speech in front of the camera. We also made fun of the other students’ speech.

In conclusion, it was the most exciting excursion which we had in Singapore. We enjoyed our excursion by moving around Chinatown, learn about the other religion and have a fun on other’s speech.

Sophie and Nicole:
It was an exciting day in Chinatown. The most interesting thing that we saw was the mosque. When we reached there, we saw a nice decoration of the mosque, and what made us impressed was that the mosque’s in-house tour guide comes from USA.

There are several rules we needed to learn before we could enter the mosque: We have to take our shoes off, ladies can't wear short skirts or short sleeves, ladies can’t enter inside the mosque because that is only for men, and we can’t wear shoes to step on the green tiles. We have learnt many things about Muslim culture, for example, that Muslim people have to pray five times a day, and those times are: before 6 am, 10 am, 1:20 pm, 4:20 pm and 8:20pm. Muslims must do fasting every year. This means they can’t eat anything at all in the day time before 7 pm, and they can eat again from 7 pm to 7 am. We did enjoy ourselves at the mosque and we also visited many places such as a Hindu temple, a Chinese temple, and also an original Chinese pastries shop. Before we left Chinatown we had a good lunch at a Chinese restaurant. We promised each others w e would go back to Chinatown again soon.

Kevin and Hai:
On 11 March, our class had a very interesting day. We had a SCOPE excursion to Chinatown.

At 9 am we started the tour. We went to the Chinatown MRT station to meet our tour guide. He was a very nice Singaporean. The first place we visited was the Garden Bridge. There, you can have a great scene of Singapore. Then we walked about one kilometer to a traditional Chinese cake shop. There were a lot of cakes in the shop. We tried a kind of cake that was made of lotus seed. It was delicious and we liked that shop.

After that, we went to a Muslim mosque. An American Muslim told us many things about Islam. We had to take off our shoes and put them outside before entering. The forth place we visited was a Hindu temple, it is one of the oldest temples in Singapore. We were not allowed to get into the temple with our shoes, so we took them off. We spent twenty minutes there.

The next place was a Chinese medical hall. Two of my classmates, Nicole and Song, bought some medicine. It was quite cheap. The last place the tour guide led us was a Chinese pagoda. This is a new and beautiful pagoda. Many people were praying there. Then we said goodbye to the tour guide. Our teacher asked us if we wanted to have lunch. We all were tired so we went to find a restaurant. After ten minutes, we found a Chinese buffet restaurant. All the food was tasty. We liked it very much. When we finished lunch, it was 2:30 pm. That was a very exciting day.

To find out more about Hawthorn English School visit www.hawthornenglish.edu.sg

To arrange for your speical tour, visit:
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