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MULTICULTURAL SHOPPING 5

Little India offers all sorts of small finds, especially throughout Little India Arcade (48 Serangoon Rd.) and just across the street on Campbell Lane at Kuna's, #3 Campbell Lane ( 65/6294-2700). Here you can buy inexpensive Indian costume jewelry like bangles, earrings, and necklaces in exotic designs, and a wide assortment of decorative dots (called pottu in Tamil) to grace your lurehead. Indian handicrafts include brass work, wood carvings, dyed tapestries, woven cotton household linens, small curio items, very inexpensive incense, colorful pictures of Hindu gods, and other ceremonial items. Look here also for Indian cooking pots and household items. If after you pick up these items you ,are to try your hand at making your own curry, head for Mannan Impex, 118 Serangoon (65/6299-8424), to peruse all the necessary spices.

Oh, and if you've never seen a Bollywood production, now's your chance. These Indian megahit movies feature amazingly huge music and dance numbers, faboulous costumes, and time-honored stories of danger and romance. At Ragam Video & Colour, 124 Serangoon Rd. (65/6291-5760), shop for the latest releases and old favorites on video CD with English subtitles. (Note: Video CDs-or VCDs-are not technically DVDs, but you can play them on a DVD player.)

A few outdoor markets still exist in Singapore, though it ain't like the old days. At the Bugis MRT station, across from Parco Bugis Junction, a well-established night market (which is also open during the day) delivers overpriced cheap chic, some curio items, accessories, and video compact discs (VCDs) to tourists. In Chinatown, on the corner of South Bridge Road and Cross Street look for the old guys who come out with blankets full of odd merchandise-old watches, coins, jewelry Mao paraphernalia, Peranakan pottery, and local artifacts from decades past. There's not many of these guys there, but for impromptu markets, 1 thought their merchandise was far more imaginative than at Bugis. If you're really desperate for a flea market, you can always head for the field between Little India and Arab Street (just behind the Johor bus terminal), where you'll find about Five times more vendors than at Chinatown, but be warned: The goods are weird. Old nasty shoes, Barry Gibb records, broken radios-the same junk you'd see at garage sales back home, only local style. It could be interesting culturally ... if you're in the mood.
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