I hope you’re celebrating the Lunar New Year holiday visiting friends and family for the traditional open houses, or enjoying free entry at the museums. If you were at Chinatown catching the countdown to the Year of the Tiger over the weekend, or even if you weren’t, here’s another view of the countdown – not in the bustling streets of Chinatown, but in the temples of Chinatown.

chinatown boy managed to visit some of the temples in Chinatown to see how devotees spend the first moments of the new year with prayers and offerings:

As with each Chinese New Year eve, the Chinese temples in Singapore await to welcome the New Year. And so is this year. As the heart of Chinatown was filled with lights, music and fun, in the other parts of the greater Chinatown, temples were filled with devotees who went to offer their first joss sticks to the Deities.

Catch some of the temple festivities in bullockcartwater.