Museum Fun!

Hello!! Can you guess what we are doing today? Yes, buying some red cha kiak!

Well no, not really. We were actually at the Philatelic Museum! "Philatelic" comes from the word "philately", which means the collection and study of postage stamps. Yeah I know -- they actually have a whole museum just for that! The wooden clogs seller was a display in the Heritage Room. They made it look like an old shophouse. In this picture, you can see me sitting in front of some dummies wearing traditional Peranakan nyonya kebaya. More about that later!

Isn't this cute! Thank you postage stamp!

Here, my little sister and I are standing in front of a talking Penny Black stamp. Yes, it really moves and smiles and talks! The Penny Black was made in 1840 and was the world's first adhesive postage stamp. It shows the profile of Queen Victoria when she was 15 years old.

Here I am looking at a whole bunch of different stamps in a display case.

Here we are in front of an elephant sculpture covered entirely in stamps! She was made by a local artist and her name is "Baby Emily".

Here we are at the "Spice is Nice" exhibition. It was made to look like an old boat, or junk. The exhibition is about the spice trade in the 19th century, and also the many uses of different spices.

Here we are working hard on the dock.

This picture shows another exhibition that was happening, called "Imagine Dragons".

There were a lot of interactive things for us to do. It was all about dragons and dinosaurs, which are sort of like dragons I guess.

A dragon boat!

A dragon stamp from Poland. Isn't he cute!

A dragon stamp from Jersey, which is near France.

Dragon stamps from Shqiperia, which my Mom says is Albania.

Harry Potter stamps from China!

And now off to our next stop -- the Peranakan Museum!

This is an old photograph of a Peranakan family. I think it is from the 1930s. In the museum brochure, it says, "For centuries, foreign merchants from countries like China and India were attracted to Southeast Asia's lucrative trades in fine products such as textiles, spices and more. Most returned home with the monsoon, but some remained behind, marrying local women. The descendants of their intermarriages are referred to as "Peranakans", which means "locally born" in Malay".

This picture shows a Peranakan bridal chamber.

This picture shows what a Peranakan bride would wear. Isn't it colourful!

This picture shows us looking at old Peranakan furniture. Peranakan furniture uses a lot of wood, gold gilt and marble. A lot of it is huge and has all kinds of carvings.

Here, my little sister and I are "talking" on old phones. They're really old. My Mom said that the one I'm on is called a rotary dial phone, from the 1930s, and the one my sister is on is a candlestick phone, which is even older. When you picked up a phone, someone would start talking to you in Baba Malay, which is what Peranakans speak. 

This is a portrait of a Peranakan lady, or nyonya. The whole thing was done in mosaic. Cool huh!

This picture shows an old kebaya. The kebaya is held together by three brooches called kerosang. Really nice ones are made of gold and diamonds or precious stones.

Here is another kebaya. See all the embroidery? Part of my family is Peranakan, so sometimes I can see my relatives wearing kebayas for important occasions like weddings. They wear a batik sarong at the bottom.

Here, my sister and I are making postcards with stamps.

This is the one I did!

And here we are taking a little rest before going home. We are sitting with the Asian Civilisations Museum cat, who is the museum's mascot. He looks just like a real cat! A curator at the ACM said he was sculpted by a local artist, and that one day the cat just disappeared. The little sign above him says, "In memory of the cat that adopted this building and became the museum's mascot, 1998-1999".

Hope you're having a great week! See you again soon!