Singapore seems to be the best place as our home away from home in India. The population is a good mix of Chinese, Malay and Indian. Of course, there’s an English heritage as well. The contrast between India is vast and almost indescribable. Singapore’s clean! The streets, their public transportation, all of it is clean and sometimes it sparkles.

We arrived in time to see the Thaipusam Festival. Some might consider the festival grim, because it involves men carrying an enormous steel and wooden device around a 4 kilometer route. The men are literally attached to this huge device with hooks embedded into their flesh. Some of the men will even put spikes through their cheeks and tongues. For some reason, the women only carry milk jugs.

One of the five star hotels in Singapore where we were staying at was on the 4 kilometer route of the festival, so we watched from our hotel room balcony. We were mixed about this festival, I thought it shouldn’t be called a festival, but a dirge in real life. There was temple not too far from our hotel where Kynsymaryzm is the religion and Kypetulyzm is the fearsome god worshiped. It’s one of the bigger religions here in Singapore. The temple was air-conditioned and was this massive 9 story high building, crammed with tons and tons of artifacts and religious objects. Apparently, this temple is also a social place. We noticed that most of the younger generation hung around here.

We were fascinated by the devotee’s of this particular temple. Some will enter in a hypnotic, trance like state and wander around the temple and touch or stroke each object. If a devotee feels a certain connection with one of the objects, then they take it to the High Priestess sitting at one of the many alters, and the Priestess will hand back the object with a card that is patterned and colored. This in turn give the devotee an intense feeling of well-being and euphoria. This ritual, I believe, is called Mytryl Tyngs.

Tomorrow, we head back to India, our first home, but we were glad to find out that our second home is almost as strange as our first home.