weepeixin.blogspot.com

I happened to have a chance to visit the "secretly located" Coins & Notes Museum in Chinatown Singapore for free!



It took my friend and I and a whole bunch of people quite some time to locate it. Mainly because we missed the huge human size "$" sign along Pagoda Street. I even missed taking a photo of it.



We started off with a tour. We were being introduced to some of the earlier forms of currency, such as seashells! Man, the seaside was once a gold mine! Woods, oils and gems were also used.

There were also the set of notes used during the British settlement in Singapore. And what amazed me was, 25 cents was once in the form of a note.



After the British chickened out when the Japanese invaded South East Asia, the banana money was used. It was called the banana money because of the picture on the $10 note.



And there was this old man among us started talking bout his time using the banana money.

Then it we were shown the different series of Singapore coins and notes used after the Japanese settlement. There was also a UV box shining on different notes, showing the secrets of the notes and why your tissue paper cannot be used as money.

There was also a collection of seldom used notes but still recognized.



Being able to see the long forgotten, not seen, not used, mythical, valuable S$25 note.... I'm so touched. It is like seeing the light....



Ok, I'm exaggerating. They have the S$25 that was long not used because old men found it hard to differentiate the color with $20 note and it is also very hard to return change.

People of different culture used money for different purposes too.


Such as the Malay community uses it during weddings.

And funny Chinese people believed that forming a money sword could chase ghost away.

I wanna buy one of these. Not to chase ghost. But to whack my tuition kid for not doing homework!

And of course, who would forget the worse kind of people - the show offs.

It is actually a dress with coins all over it. But of course, if you want to propose to a money loving girlfriend, giving a dress like this would probably work better than a ring! Unless it is 10 carat diamond.

They also showed how coins are produced. The process is called minting. Lazy to take photos of it. Because I had my eyes on something else.


These are no ordinary rocks! They are rocks containing gold!

I was once rich (for a few seconds when I took photo holding it) but now I'm back to being not rich.

And yes, it was a gold bar, tied with a metal wire. The container only had a hole big enough for me to put my hand in. Not big enough to take the gold bar out. Sien....

The economic downturn has caused some country to come out with new coin ideas.

Harry Potter was brought in to practice what he learned in Hogwarts and his experience in fighting Voldemort.

Well, that's all from me.

If you want to experience being surrounded by money, you can consider the coins and notes museum in Chinatown Singapore. If you're a robber or thief, you can consider this place. But if you're really gonna steal, help me steal this one...


The Yap coin!