RestlessNatives.net NativeGuide to
SINGAPORE
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Deb lived in Singapore during the summer of 1993, when she took some classes at the National University of Singapore and clerked at a local law firm, and some of the information included here is from her Singapore adventures. However, the photos included on this page are from our day-and-a-half stopover on the way home from the Maldives in March 1999, as Deb’s photos are all in storage somewhere in the U.S.
Imagine putting Los Angeles sans Hollywood in Asia – Singapore has the same pitiful architecture, polyglot population and (probably because of the polyglot population) great food. Although Singapore is not likely to be anyone’s primary tourist destination, its varied cultures make it worth visiting as a jumping off point to more exotic Southeast Asian locations. Singapore has for many years been the melting pot of Asia, a mere three and a half million people that boast four national languages (English, Mandarin, Malay and Hindi). These varied peoples (predominantly Chinese, with a healthy smattering of Malaysians, Indians, Arabs and westerners, in that order) have managed to blend together to form a distinctly Singaporean culture while maintaining their own ethnic identities. While not perfect, a lot of places could learn from Singapore.
We have different feelings about Singapore’s reputation for authoritarianism. The place is too controlled for George’s tastes. In some respects, Deb agrees. She once had the opportunity to attend the trial of two drug traffickers who were convicted and sentenced to death in short order, and to visit death row. Regardless of one’s views on the death penalty, the quick work of the police prosecutors in Singapore (the fact that the police are the prosecutors being problematic in and of itself) is somewhat disturbing. Nevertheless, she finds Singapore to be one of the most free places on earth from a personal standpoint. She can go for a run in the park on a warm summer night, walk by a horde of construction workers without so much as a single whistle - little luxuries we learn to live without in "free" societies but that are hard to give up when we return home.
Singapore’s famous cleanliness is relative. It is not, objectively speaking, a clean place, but it is far cleaner than any other city its size.
Ethnic Neighborhoods
On our return from the Maldives, we had only a day and a half in which to enjoy Singapore. In addition to the obligatory stops to see Deb's old haunts, including the "Peace-we're-not-a-brothel-Mansion" where she used to live, we found that a walking tour of the ethnic neighborhoods was just the thing to get the flavor of this polyglot population. In one day we wandered around Arab Street, Little India (lots of cute cats!) and (believe it or not in this Chinese city) Chinatown, where a little sliver of old China survives against a backdrop of gleaming glass office buildings. These areas have great restaurants (check out the Banana Leaf Apollo in Little India, where the food is so hot it bleached Deb’s banana leaf white), great shopping (look for the batiks in Arab Street) and beautiful Hindu, Buddhist and Muslim temples and mosques. Contrast all this with the old colonial government buildings built by the Brits, and we really got a feel for the ethnic contrasts!
Raffles Hotel
It may be a tourist thing, but there is very little better on a hot Singapore afternoon than stepping back into colonial Southeast Asia for a Singapore Sling at the Long Bar. Where else can you sit in a five star hotel and throw peanut shells on the floor?
Orchard Road
Shop ‘til you drop: Orchard Road has about a million shopping malls and – for all of us big foreigners out there – the real treat is not the air conditioning but the fact that the clothes may actually fit us, unlike in any other major city in Asia.
Boat Quay
This place has really changed from Deb’s days in Singapore, when the government had just begun renovating the area. The five or six bars along the river have turned into dozens of bars and restaurants stretching all the way from Boat Quay to Clarke Quay. Deb dragged George to the ever popular Satay Club just off of North Boat Quay, which was during Deb's days, and still is, always good for a tasty, cheap meal. There’s a terrific video game arcade and several tourist shops in this area, as well. Careful of the prices if you look like a tourist, though – Deb heard a shopkeeper offer a piece to a western tourist for one price in English, then turn around and offer the same piece to a Chinese woman, in Mandarin, for a much lower price. (This is nothing new; Deb ran into this on everything from a glass of Coca-Cola to walkmans during her summer in Singapore.) There’s also a great shop selling old toys and Coke cans from all over the world. They even have the giant shogun warrior robots that George believes are the coolest toys ever.
Note: All of the above can be done in a day or two (for instance, on the way back to Hong Kong from the Maldives). The remainder of this page comes from Deb's adventures in 1993.
Living in Singapore
Living in Singapore is just about like living in any other developed city, filled with work, study and running, although trying to get to the subway in a monsoon while keeping my suit neat and tidy was a new and different experience (and a skill which has since been perfected in Hong Kong)!
Another American law student and I rented a room in what appeared to be a fabulous apartment, with cool, white tile floors, a fabulous view of the harbor, a giant kitchen, laundry - everything one could want. We shared the apartment with a Korean family, some Malaysian workers, and a few other dodgy types I never really cared to meet.
The reality became apparent soon after we moved in. It was Southeast Asia, after all, so an insect or two is to be expected. This was no problem in my private little corner, which I liberally sprayed with super-dooper Southeast Asian bug killer. Some of my fellow apartment dwellers objected to dousing the kitchen (apparently bug spray on the food is worse than the bugs), so everything -- even pasta -- had to be stored in the refrigerator. I learned this one lean night when I pulled some dry pasta out of the cupboard, dumped it in a pot of boiling water, and watched in horror as hundreds of little ants floated lifelessly to the top.
For amusement in the evenings, I would (i) try to light the stove (the gas stove had to be lit with a "sparker" - good practice for all the youth hostels in Australia I visited later that summer), which invariably led to an exasperated "tsk" from the Korean father, who was convinced I was going to blow him all the way back to his homeland, and (ii) gamely try to convince my roommate's boyfriend, who called regularly from the U.S., that there was a good reason why she wasn't in her bed at 3:00am.
It comes as no surprise, then, that I spent as much time as possible outside of the apartment.
Running
Fort Canning Park is a great place to run in the evenings.
Sentosa
I confess one of my favorite places is Sentosa. Sentosa Island is a fun park with a manmade beach, museums, an Asian village, hiking, bicycling, a new "Kelly Tarleton’s" type underwater world and lots more. It is a great place to bring kids for the day. (Apparently, it was also at one time home to Singapore's only jailed communist dissident - I think imprisoning dissidents in a fun park takes a bit of the edge off of the authoritarian reputation!) Sentosa has been somewhat undeservedly ridiculed by the local westerners. The beach, although manmade, is made of fine sand and is a great spot to sit and watch the distant ships in one of the world's busiest ports. As we all know by now, I never pass up the opportunity to lie on the beach, so I whiled away more than one day here. The most scenic way to get to Sentosa is to take the cable car from Mt. Faber down to the island. I also took buses or ferries to the island -- until I found out that it’s possible to walk across the causeway from the World Trade Center, free of charge (a fact that is not very well advertised by the public transportation authorities!).
Haw Par Villa
One day at work a co-worker bequeathed to me two tickets to the monstrosity known as Haw Par Villa – built by the Tiger Balm folks. Armed with little knowledge and the exhortations of the co-worker that the fun park is one of Singapore's "must see" attractions, I dragged a fellow clerk on a half day of subway and bus rides (which wouldn't have taken quite so long had we not become lost), culminating in quite simply the cheesiest fun park ever erected on the planet. I'm pretty sure that there was a little something extra in the Tiger Balm on the day the park was conceived. It is filled with brightly painted giant concrete-and-plaster statues of mythical Chinese creatures, and there are a variety of magic, slapstick and other shows, plays and skits inspired by Chinese legends. All in all, it was well worth a visit, because I never would have been able to grasp the cheese factor without seeing it in person.
Singapore Zoo and Jurong Bird Park
Although located far from each other, we list these together because they involve one of our favorite topics, animals. If you’ve visited other pages on this site, you’ll know that one of the first things I do in a new country is to visit a zoo, on the theory that any people that take good care of their animals are people worth spending some time with. The Singapore Zoo and the Jurong Bird Park are both excellent. The exhibits are creative, the animals appear to be extremely well-cared for and they both feature a variety of interactive opportunities highlighting the animals’ natural behaviors while keeping both animals and humans entertained. One of the major attractions at the zoo is breakfast with a resident orangutan, which contentedly munched her mango and fed her baby while gamely draping an arm around my shoulders for a photo. When she’s had enough she ambles down the path after the zookeeper to the orangutan exhibit for a nap or a swinging. The Jurong Bird Park has similar interactive animal exhibits – the trained falcons get their daily workout at shows where they demonstrate their fabulous hunting skills by swooping and diving around the audience. There does appear to be a somewhat high level of visitor idiocy, however, and I was smugly satisfied when the obnoxious teenager at the Jurong Bird Park got a good bloody bite from a miffed parrot.
Night Attractions
The rare evenings when I wasn't working, studying, or watching my favorite Mandarin soap opera (I even bumped into the star one day during my lunch hour at Raffles Place), I would visit any one of Singapore's great restaurants, or the usual array of bars, ranging from the yuppie after-work hang-outs along the quays to some more racy affairs. Take a look at some of the "women" primping in the mirrors at some of these latter establishments.... I went to several symphonies in a local park, and there is also an excellent Beach Club on the island, where I fondly recall dancing the evening away on the beach under the stars.
One Final Adventure....
Like every city, Singapore has its share of cagey landlords who are well aware their tenants will soon be leaving the country, and as you might have guessed, mine was one of them. A few days before my departure, the landlord kicked me out, claiming I had told him I was moving out on that day and that he had therefore let the room to someone else. Inasmuch as I had been planning a month long backpacking trip through Australia before returning to school, and I had been in possession of my tickets to Melbourne for quite some time, I'm pretty sure the guy was - for want of a better term - lying his ass off. Worse, when I met the landlord back at the apartment several days later, he gave me back my security deposit, knowing my plane was leaving in three hours, in the form of a check that could only be cashed at a particular branch of a particular bank which happened to be located on the other side of the island. A few wheedles and sniffles at a different branch of the same bank saved the day, but needless to say I have very few fond memories of the place.
A couple of years later, I got an excited phone call from a friend from law school who had just moved to Singapore. "I've found this great apartment!" he said. "The only drawback is that the name of the building sounds a bit like a brothel...."
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