Haw Par Villa

One thing I remembered as a kid in Singapore, was the strange garden of concrete statues called "Haw Par Villa" or "Tiger Balm Gardens". It's quite funny to imagine the effort that would have gone into creating such a park.



I thought we should all see this park again, and see how run down it has become. It was just as I remember, with less (almost nobody) there, and the cabbie on the way there mentioned it will be closing down soon.

Mack, one for not letting signs tell him how to live his life, had no drama sitting on, or touching any of the statues.



A highlight for me, was that there was a series of statues dedicated to the Monkey King, and his journey west with a boy priest, pig monster/angel and sea monster...... To any Aussie kid who grew up in the 80's would remeber this as the Monkey! tv series shown on the ABC. It turnes out that this is actually based on a legend/book in chinese literature called "Journey to the West" that is almost 500 years old.


One of the statues in the park


And a pic from the old TV series