I was out and about today and once again, I got asked if I was a local. It amuses me how I often get asked this question in Singapore. For the record, I am a born and raised in Singapore Singaporean from the Chinese ethnic group.

Almost everywhere else in the world, I get mistaken for a local which can be quite useful sometimes; since in some places in Asia, it’s known to have a local price, Asian price and foreigner price.

So today, I decided to hold on to my camera as I walked around to try to pass off as a tourist. Haha. And since I was holding on to the camera, I started taking photos of the places and view as I went about running my errands. Also, it’s something quite worth doing since the landscape in Singapore continually changes. Come back in a few months and it probably looks different again.

The photos from this attempt to pass off as a tourist features select bits of Singapore while walking from City Hall to Chinatown:

The Maxwell Food Centre is a highlight of Chinatown. It’s where you can find lots of relatively cheap and delicious food, assuming that you know which stall that is. This is food/hawker centre is a truly Singaporean place. Worth a look but it’s not for everyone I must add. The heat and mess can be quite off putting for some people. I like the “ham jin peng” (咸煎饼) which you need to help fry and the Lao Ban Beancurd (老伴). Good stuff.

For those of you who are reading this from overseas and want to get to Chinatown, just take the North East Line MRT and get off at the Chinatown station. If you are in the City Hall area, you can take any bus except service 32 from outside the St Andrew’s Cathedral/Opposite the old Capitol Building or Peninsula Plaza. It is the 3rd or 4th bus stop depending on which part of Chinatown you want to get to. Or just walk, it is about 30 minutes, depending on how fast you walk.