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(To see all pictures from Singapore, click here)
Day 1: The Arrival Saturday, December 16, 2006 Well, we left today on December 15th, and arrived in Singapore early on December 17th. Yeah, the time zones added a bit to that, but it was still one LONG set of flights--something like 18 hours in the air total. The first thing we learned in Singapore was the difference between "limo taxis" and "regular taxis". We learned this the hard way--the former is white, the latter yellow. Also, the former costs about 40% more. It turns out, however, that we got our money's worth: while en route to our hotel, our cabbie (whose name I didn't catch) gave us a great lecture on the state of prostitution in Singapore. According to our knowledgeable host--who graciously offered to drive us there personally whenever we required some pretty ladies--it is state regulated, a truly multicultural experience ("You like Chinese? Thai? Viet? You ask, they have!"), and offers amazing bargains for the region. Our base in Singapore was the Perak Lodge in the Little India district of the city. After arriving we checked in and crashed.
Day 2: Rain, Little India, rain, the Asian Civilizations Museum, more rain. . . Sunday, December 17, 2006 The windy streets of Little India. Passing out for a dozen hours or so did us wonders. We wandered into the city late into cloudy skies with no idea where we were going. It was warm enough to start sweating immediately, and the humidity was like getting smacked in the face with a wet towel. Taking a time out to get our bearings, we had a quick breakfast of steamed pork rolls (Greg had never had these before and became an instant addict) from a market vendor and decided to wander through the Little India district and Arab St. It started to pour rain in buckets as we walked. I don't know how folks in Singapore get used to the monsoon season. It turned out that we were never really dry while in Singapore, which caused Greg's shoes smelled like moldy brie the rest of the trip. Little India is a district in the northwest of Singapore, and true to its name appears to be home to a large number of Indian folks. It was also a lot of fun to wander through. Even soaking wet from the downpour, the grimy multicolored rows of carpet stores (all boasting incredible sales--really, who ever pays marked price for a carpet?) had a kind of kitschy character that reminded me of some of the towns I saw in Europe. The Arab district was sprinkled with some fairly intricate mosques, approximately one million cafes, and two million hookah joints. Unfortunately, the rain soon drove us to head indoors, so we caught Singapore's Mass Transit Rail down to the waterfront to check out the Asian Civilizations Museum. The MTR is a very simple, efficient system--you touch where you want to go on a map of the system and put in money for a transit card. The card is good for a small refund if you return it to a station. Everything is clearly labeled (in several languages), and like the rest of Singapore, painfully clean. The Asian Civilizations Museum had an enormous variety of exhibits--I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn about the region. In addition to picking up info about the history of rice in the region and the various ancient southeast asian civilizations, we saw much on the city of Singapore itself. It turns out that Singapore is a town that has gone through some extremely thorough transformations; reading between the lines, its amazing what an authoritarian government can accomplish when it sets its mind on something. As an example, the government decided to clean up the polluted Singapore river, and in doing so kicked out just about everyone who lived by the water front. This was not an isolated incident; entire peoples have been displaced multiple times throughout Singapore's history because the government wanted them gone. A quick shower and nap later (repeated soakings had us already smelling like old shoes on a rotting corpse), we hit up dinner at a middle eastern cafe in the Arab quarter recommended by our guidebook. The call to prayer echoed hauntingly from Little India's many mosques as we wandered through the streets. The place we ate served several varieties of humus and baba ganoush and offered a pretty tasty spread for the money--anyone who is traveling through Singapore on a budget would be wise to check out some of the cafes tucked away in the back alleys of Arab St. Next up, we decided to check out the bar scene by the Quays and get a drink. This turned out to be a mistake. The Quays at night. . . and in the rain. The Quays is a district that consists wholly of a strip of bars and restaurants lining the far side of the Singapore river. Its a standard tourist setup--each venue has a storefront on once side of the road and a waterfront awning on the other. This forces the unwary visitor to be subjected to a barrage of solicitations from both sides as they traverse what we quickly named "The Gauntlet". And these solicitors . . . Jesus, they were persistent. It was like running the ball through an all-out blitz in the NFL. Greg soon became the lead blocker as we bulled through repeated offers of free food, beer, etc, to get out of the Quays and over to the next area we checked out, Singapore's Esplanade. The Esplanade is the city's primary venue for the performing arts. Resembling a mutant pineapple on the outside, it contains multiple floors of expensive shops, theaters, and studios. We checked it out as a refuge from the (again) driving rain, but quickly decided that it was more interesting to look at than visit and made a run for the MTR home. Visiting Singapore in the monsoon season has to rank as one of the dumber ideas I've ever had. Greg summed it up perfectly via a quote from Gladiator: ". . . If you find yourself riding through green fields with the rain on your face, do not be worried! For you're in Singapore, and you're already wet!"
Day 3: Mt. Faber, Orchard Road, Chinatown, and yet MORE rain. . . Monday, December 18, 2006 Looking out over Singapore from Mt. Faber Today we got up early and had breakfast of toast and tea at the hotel. On our toast we tried a kind of green slime that is apparently local specialty made out of coconuts. It wasn't bad; very sweet. Our big plan for the day was to visit the majestic summit of Mt. Faber, which our guidebook proudly proclaimed to be the highest point in Singapore . . . at 105 meters. An MTR ride to Singapore Bay later and we were on a cable car to the peak, not to mention happily enjoying both our first breezes. Oh, and hordes of Chinese tourists. The views from Mt. Faber alone were worth the trip. All of Singapore was laid out in front of us, while on the other side was the busy port surrounding Singapore Bay. We explored some of paths through the Mt. Faber Park jungle before the heat and oppressive humidity had us scurrying for the cable cars back to the bay. On the way back, and started to rain. Again. Redemption! Now available exclusively on Orchard Road--check our schedule for details. Our next stop was Singapore's famous shopping district, Orchard Road. This famous boulevard is a wide avenue with multiple malls lining it on either side. The shopping venues included everything from the Chanels and Louis Vittons to the HUGE multi-floored labyrinths covered in small stalls packed to the gills with electronics to the. . . well, "House of Condoms." There was just so. much. stuff. And so. many. people. I felt like I was in the middle of some kind of consumer assault; the sheer density of shops and goods made everything hard to take in at once. To make things more fun, we were again continuously besieged by aggressive sales staff, including both polite Chinese electronics clerks and not-so-polite indian tailors solemnly declaring just how much we needed their services. (It didn't help that after white-water rafting through the continuous downpour, they were probably right.) Chinatown as we usually saw it. After a few jarring hours of this, we finally gave up on Orchard and caught the MRT to Singapore's Chinatown district. The station exit in Chinatown leads right into an open-air fruit market. Stalls were clustered throughout the square while Chinese blared from all directions over multiple loudspeakers. A bit disoriented, we hit up some random vendors for lunch (travel tip: avoid "Floss Buns") and headed into the narrow streets of Chinatown. Singapore's Chinatown is very similar--albeit smaller--to San Francisco's Chinatown: multiple streets packed with stalls selling more or less the same kitsch The one difference is, again, the aggressiveness of the merchants. One particular vendor managed to get Greg by the hand, and hung on for a full five minutes before Greg managed to physically extract himself. We spent the afternoon and early evening shopping and checking out the various shrines in the area before heading back to the hotel. After a forgettable dinner at a forgettable bar down in the Quays, we were ready to hit the sack. The constant humidity and rain had by now made our clothes smell like something had died in them. Greg suggested giving our limo cabbie a call to get a prostitute for laundry duty on the cheap, but somehow I doubted they'd go for that.
Day 4: Record Flooding, the Battle Box, Red Dot Design, and our Final Meal Tuesday, December 19, 2006 "Its Tuesday. Did you bring your coat?" --Don Hertzfelt's Rejected Greg considers enlistment. Today we figured that this was what Moses would have felt if the Red Sea had failed to part and he had to walk through it. I shit you not, it was like God plugged the sink and left the water running. We were previously planning to check out Singapore's famed Zoo and Botanical Gardens on our last day in town, but decided that, frankly, we'd had enough of rain and went for museums instead. Our first venue was The Battle Box, a series of exhibits built inside the restored ruins of a British command bunker that was in use before the city fell to the Japanese during WWII. The venue was very interesting--the stone passageways were damp and cramped, and graffiti from the conquering Japanese soldiers (with helpful translations posted nearby) is still vivid on the walls. The constructed exhibits were somewhat hokey--wax robot recreations of British officers and men solemnly played recordings of recreated conversations while the lights flickered on and off. However, our guide made the experience worthwhile. His name was Diaz, and he was 7 years old when the city fell to the Japanese. He remembered it vividly and thoroughly. His impressions of the war, sprinkled with repeats of "never again, war like this", brought home just how horrific the fall of the city and its aftermath really were. Next up, we indulged Greg's design sweet tooth with the Red Dot Museum of Design, which is the headquarters of an apparently prestigious international design reward of the same name. Inside were multiple examples of products that had won the award, along with some working samples. While some of the items on display seemed rather ludicrous, there were a few gems that were actually pretty cool (see pictures). The Singapore River waterfront at night. By now, the clouds had decided to stop messing around and wipe Singapore from the earth completely (we later learned that there was record flooding that day, go figure). We took refuge in Chinatown, wandering through the more interesting shops to find gifts for folks back home. Then, like idiots, we decided to see if we could locate the restaurant we had decided on for the evening to celebrate our last night in Singapore. We got soaked, but found it. A quick dash back to base and a shower later, and we were bulling through the gauntlet of desperate waiters down by the Quays towards dinner. Our final meal in Singapore was at a place famous for its congee, which is a kind of "cream of rice" soup full of various meats and vegetables. Ours had abalone, fish, clams, scallops, and a few things that I didn't recognize. Our guidebook told us that there is ". . .a saying that the only thing with four legs that a Chinese won't eat is a table. Research suggests that the only winged object considered inedible is an airplane, and anything underwater is fair game." Ha ha, right? No, we would later realize that the book wasn't joking. Tomorrow at 4am we check out of the hotel and fly on to Hong Kong. Singapore is an interesting place, and if I return I think I'll know the city well enough to get around with no problems. However, I hope that any future trips to this place are in summer. Or Spring. Or Fall. Just not monsoon season.
The Singapore Top Three Greg and Steve's top takeaways from our Singapore adventure. Greg's Top 3 Between the humidity and the rain, its damn wet here. Cleanliness. Singapore is a very sterile city. I'm not sure that's a good thing. The place is a giant tourist trap. Running the gauntlet of waiters, clerks, and merchants repeatedly got very old. Steve's Top 3 We got stared at. Everywhere. I don't think folks thought we were aliens or anything (we saw caucasian folks--all British--here and there occasionally), we were just considered big and apparently strange. Nobody wanted to talk to us, sit next to us, or even look us in the eye. Very interesting. Of course, it could have been the stench of Greg's shoes. Monsoon season in this area of the world blows. Period. We were never dry. Never-ending frantic shopping abounds in Singapore. Everywhere I looked there were stores, folks carrying shopping bags, and more malls per square foot than I thought possible.
(To see all pictures from Singapore, click here)
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