Join Explore Singapore! for a specially curated Singaporean experience – enjoy traditional Bak Kut Teh with specially blended Chinese tea.

First we will take you to a nearly hundred year old shop which has been blending Chinese tea by hand since 1925. Hear the stories and historical events behind the branding of each blend of tea and watch how the teas are blended using old fashioned equipment.

Then we go for early lunch at a restaurant which sells traditional Bak Kut Teh. Bak Kut Teh literally translates to “meat bone tea”. It is a soup made with pork ribs boiled with garlic and pepper (some versions have Chinese herbs) until tender. The restaurant, with a history of over 50 years, is one of the tea shop’s earliest customers, and still serves its own special blend of tea from the tea shop.

Have you ever wondered how a full set of authentic Javanese gamelan orchestral instruments are played and what they sound like?

Here is a unique opportunity for you to find out! In this workshop you will get to play on them - yes – the actual instruments!  In the process you will also learn about the gamelan’s history, traditions and related cultural activities like wayang kulit (Indonesian shadow puppetry) and Javanese dance. You will also find out that Javanese gamelan is different from Balinese gamelan!     

Our instructors will open your eyes and ears to the delight of gamelan music and teach you to play at least 2 traditional gamelan songs! Hearing gamelan music after this workshop will never be the same again to you!

The area of Bishan, located in the northern most part of the Central Region of Singapore, consists of Government HDB housing and private residences, retail/shopping malls and some light industries. It has a fascinating history of nearly 200 years not known to many young Singaporeans and most foreigners.

All of Bishan today sits on what was once a huge cemetery of nearly 400 acres established by the Cantonese and Hakka immigrants in the 1820s.  Within the cemetery was a village with a thriving community with its own school, market and cinema.  During WW2 a fierce battle between the British and Japanese was fought in the cemetery.

In the late 1970s the government acquired the land for development, the graves were exhumed and the remains moved to a new columbarium specially built for that purpose.

Join our Explore Singapore! tour for a visit to the columbarium and its temples as well as its heritage gallery where you will learn about the history of Bishan and see this unique “condo for the dead”.