Category Archives: cities

Our flight landed at 6:00. After a brief bit of immigration (“Where is your next destination?” “I don’t know.” “Well, you have to write something.”), we took the MRT to our stop, Farrer Park. Life Is Too Short had arrived a few days earlier, and we arranged to meet up for dinner in our lobby at 8:30, wandering over to the Lavender Food Plaza, a hawkers plaza with twenty or so different stalls. We’ve returned there for every meal we have had in our neighborhood. Prawn noodles, Beijing lamain, Hainanese chicken rice, chicken Padang, all so good.

Since Luang Prabang, I’ve been longing for strong, rich coffee. Lao coffee is prepared with a large filter like a sock, filled with grounds, that sits immersed in the coffee. You mix the thick, brutally strong resulting coffee with hot water and condensed milk. Coffee in Thailand is often instant, and coffee in Indonesia (Bali Kopi, Lombok Kopi, Java Kopi) is served in a small cup, optionally with sugar but not milk, with the very fine coffee grounds forming a sludge at the bottom. And so, the rich, sweet coffee of Singapore, served just as in Laos, has been wonderful.

On Thursday, we met up with Life Is Too Short to go to the Singapore zoo. The delight with which The Private Eye and Life Is Too Short raced from animal to animal was hard to keep up with at times. By far the best part was an enclosed rainforest exhibit, surrounded by mesh so the butterflies wouldn’t escape. Mouse deer (neither mouse nor deer!) moved in the underbrush, ringtail lemurs sat on the railings, and enormous flying foxes, with wingspans over a meter, swooped above before gnashing on fruit hung 2 feet in front of you. For those who have been to the rainforest enclosure in the California Academy of Sciences, it was much like that, except out of doors and with many more vertebrates, enough that you seemed surrounded by them.

Singapore is a big city, so surely it must have a nightlife. We met up again with Life Is Too Short to find a bar or club. Our part of town has numerous KTV lounges – karaoke. While you can’t see inside any of them, you can hear the singing within. Unfortunately, a bit of research discovered that public KTV lounges (as opposed to private karaoke rooms as in Japan) are where people go to meet friendly members of the opposite sex who work there. Most cater to men, but some cater to women. We tried going into one that billed itself as a pub/disco, but The Private Eye observed it was upstairs from a massage parlor, and we saw the entry has pictures of all of the women who worked there – “Like a menu!” she cried and we backpedalled to the street. At the suggestion of our front desk we went into one that, while it had some very friendly ladies, was very tame and not sleazy. For some reason, the bartender really wanted us to sing Hotel California – enough so the they queued it and assigned it to our table even though we didn’t request it! The Private Eye pulled it off well. But with two beers and a Pepsi being S26 (26 Singapore dollars, about $22) , we only had one round, and we quickly discovered they only put your song request on the queue when you order a drink.

We found out that a huge yearly parade, called Chingay, was on Friday and Saturday evenings. Tickets started at S28, hard to afford when our daily budget for all meals, transport, entertainment, and errands is S100. Talking with some locals, we found out that there’s a large free area, but you want to be early to get a good view. So we wandered downtown, stopped by an outdoor equipemnt store to get some last minute gear for Peru, walked through the colonial district, then the shopping insanity that is Orchard Road until 6 or so, finally making our way via MRT to the parade.

The parade was fantastic. It started with nearly a thousand dancers, had floats, dragons made from recycled plastic bottles, fire breathing, phoenix floats, and lasted for 90 minutes. All for free! The parade started in 1971, when Singapore banned fireworks. Words don’t do it justice:

After the parade, we decided that we walk over to Marina Sands, an enormous hotel/casino complex. It’s the most iconic element of Singapore’s skyline: three huge towers in a slight curve, with an enormous open area, park, club, and pool sitting on all three that looks like a gargantuan ship aground in the sky. Unfortunately we were not up to the club’s dress code, so we wandered to the Marina Gardens, enormous steel structures (20-50m tall) that look like trees and are designed to be like them. They’re powered by solar panels atop them, have vines growing on their structure to perform photosynthesis, and, of course, light up and glow at night. Our feet exhausted from so much walking, we sat on some steps to watch the colors change and ebb, before catching one of the last trains back to Farrer Park.

Today has been a slow day: laundry, hair cuts, some other practical things. The Private Eye and Life Is Too Short are back at the gardens to see them when they’re open; I’m back in the hotel stretching out my back, realigning some vertabrae I screwed up a decade ago. I guess I’m getting old. I had my first experience with the paternalism of Singapore: ibuprofen has to be bought over the counter, and sales are logged, so that a pharmacist can tell you know to take it properly. No matter that the instructions are different than every other place I’ve been. In Europe, you often buy 600mg pills; here, the pharmacist told me to take 1-2 200mg pills AND NO MORE. Oh, and here are the signs you see as you enter the subway:

We’ve booked a flight to Kuala Lumpur on the 25th, and it looks likely we will head to Siem Reap on the 27th, for a few days exploring Angkor Wat. After that, we have a bit under a week before we should return to Bangkok, and right now the top candidate is Hanoi.

— The Professor

Oh, Singapore, you are a welcome home.

We landed in Singapore on the 20th, planning on staying just a few days. But we’ve loved it so much that we are now slated to depart on my birthday, the 25th. I want to copy The Private Eye and have a passport stamp on my birthday.

Singapore, a glittering, urban metropolis where everyone meets in hawkers plazas, food courts serving fantastic street food and dishes from China, Indonesia, India, and more. After 20 days in Bali, Jakarta, and the Gilis, the best Indonesian food I’ve had was here in Singapore. Admittedly, it cost $5 rather than $2, but still, it was vibrant and spicy and sharp in contrast to the comforting but ultimately a bit boring I found in Indonesia.

Singapore, a nation so small and dense that most people do not own a car, and so subway rides across 20 km are $2. Where the primary language is English in theory, but in day to day interactions it’s Chinese and many seem unable to speak much English. There are four official languages: English, Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil. So many signs are big and have three different alphabets on them. It’s illegal to sell chewing gum, spit on the street, or bring a durian into the subway.

Singapore, with an enormous zoo so fantastic it deserves a post of its own. Panda bears quietly napping, red pandas looking down at you from their den, flying foxes soaring above your head, false gurials, orangutans holding hands with keepers, Komodo dragons lazily sunning, and so much more. We arrived at noon, thinking we’d have plenty of time, and were some of the last to be shooed out at 6:30.

Singapore, whose Chingay parade began in response to the banning of firecrackers in 1972 and is now watched by over 1.5 million Singaporeans. Ten thousand participants, stilt walkers, floats, fire breathing dragons, visiting participants from other countries, all under the neon skyline and slowly rotating Singapore Flyer.

It is exhilarating to see Southeast Asia through a lens of ultra-modernity and prosperity.

— The Professor