Lion City

(this picture was in a cab we took in singapore. luckily I had left my Durian at home so it wasn't a problem) (for those of you who don't know, Durian is a large, spikey, extremly smelly fruit)

This morning I said goodbye to my Mom at 3 am when she left for the airport to fly home, and then a few hours later I got on a plane to Denpasar airport in Bali, Indonesia. The airport is a little old, but I was happy to find that it was air conditioned. After going through customs, however, I was immediately ejected, first into a huge line of money changers waving and yelling at me, and then straight outside where I was bombarded by taxi drivers. This posed a bit of a problem since I’m waiting here for 4 hours for Tara’s plane to come in, so I awkwardly pushed through them and darted towards a little café that I saw a few yards away. Seeing that most of the customers were airport workers and locals, I tried to quietly buy a bottle of water, ended up knocking over a chair with my backpack and scaring the crap out of everyone else, and then finally sitting down a bit flustered. So here I am, slightly roasting outside, but happily hydrated at least, and ready to tell you about Singapore.



I have to start out by saying, that if you are afraid of traveling in Asia and want the most cushioned, Western introduction possible, Singapore is your place. Not only are the bathrooms mostly western style and generally clean, pretty much everyone speaks English, and most shocking of all: the tap water is drinkable! The name Singapore comes from a story of a Sumatran king who came to the island and saw a Lion. SInga means Lion, so he named it Lion city -> Singapura and thus now we have Singapore. Although it was involved in some China and India trade through the centuries, it was mostly a smallish fishing village until Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles arrived in 1819 and decided it would be a great coastal city to help British trade in SE Asia. The British planned out the Island and developed it, and many people moved in from Southern China. After WWII, it was part of the Malay Federation, until it was kicked out in 1965. At this point, most people thought there was no way the little island city could make it as its own country, but a Chinese guy named Lee Kuan Yew, leader of the socialist People’s Action Party, took over and set strict regulations on social behavior and started an intense industrialization plan. He’s why Singapore is known for having tons of ridiculous rules and fines for things like chewing gum, spitting, smoking, drugs (for smaller offenses you get flogged), etc. On the upside, the government has done a lot of things like building tons of condos and subsidizing them such that pretty much everyone owns their own property. It is very rare to see an extremely poor person in Singapore. There aren’t really people selling cheapy trinkets or fruit on the street (except for in little shops), and you don’t see beggars, and unlike China, it’s not because they bus them out to the countryside periodically to clean up. Anyway, now Lee Kuan Yew’s son is in charge, and he’s apparently much more tolerant and a little less strict with his policies. The population is mostly Chinese (~75%) and the rest are mostly Malay or Indian. The country has four national languages, one of which is English, and children are encouraged to maintain the language and culture of their family, as well as learn English from an early age and take university classes in English. When you’re walking around you hear a lot of different languages and dialects, but pretty much anyone you stop on the street will be able to speak to you in accented, but fluent English.



Singapore is basically a huge city on a little island, with a little sub island that has casinos and beaches on it for the tourists, and a bit of fringe forest and less populated area. We stayed in a hotel right in the heart of the city. It’s a great walking city, with huge clean sidewalks, orderly street crossing (gasp, in Asia??), and lots of greenery. Also, there are still a lot of colonial style old buildings mixed in with the modern skyscrapers. We arrived in the morning, so after hitting up an AMAZING Indian lunch buffet we walked around the old colonial parts of town. We ended up walking into the Asian Civilizations Museum, which was really interesting and in depth. It covered SE Asian artifacts, culture and history in detail, along with China and West Asia. It has so many floors and displays that we only ended up scratching the surface before we got tired and decided to head out early. After that we walked a bit more, but it was so hot that we decided to head over to the famous Raffles Hotel for their signature drink the “Singapore Sling.” They have a lot of places to eat and drink there, but the famous one is called the Long Bar, which is kind of an old fashioned setting, where you crack peanuts and throw their shells on the ground as you enjoy your drinks. We had eaten so much for lunch at the buffet, and then so many peanuts that we decided to skip dinner and take a swim instead that night. The air is so thick and hot and humid that constantly being close to air conditioning or a pool is important.



When my mom graduated from college, she came straight out to Singapore to live for two years, study Chinese and teach English. The school where she taught was called Nanyang University, and has since been almost completely reconstructed and renamed Nanyang Technical University. It’s a little ways outside the city, and the next morning we hired a cab to take us there and drive around a bit. My mom didn’t really recognize much except the old administration building, but she found the hill where her old apartment had been. Coincidentally, in its place is now a massive Computer Engineering building. After that, we headed over to the zoo, which sounds hokey, but it was actually really cool. It uses this new “open concept” layout, where basically it mostly feels like you’re walking on a pathway through the jungle, and you look over the railings and see the animals. They are actually enclosed in their areas somehow, but the settings are very natural and large. The most impressive display is that of the Orang-tans, which is a system of trees, ropes, and ledges where they can freely swing and wander over the heads of the people watching them. The zoo also has public feeding times for each of the animals, where they either bring the animals close to the windows or fences to feed them, or actually allow people to pay and feed them themselves. Obviously that doesn’t work for animals with sharp teeth, but for white rhinos and the Orang-utans its fine. The sign there said that the local people had originally thought the Orang-utans were another tribe of people in the jungle, so the name literally means “Man of the Jungle.” It must have been surprising to try to trade or communicate with them and figure out they were much smaller, hairier, and oranger than expected.



That night we went to this newish, classy bar and restaurant scene called Clark Quay for dinner. The river that runs through the city used to be filled with little boats and waste and was extremely dirty, but also part of the sea trade personality of the city. In the late 70s, they decided to start a ten year clean-up program and have the river be clean enough to swim in by the end of the time. They cleared out all the boats and waste from the river, and lined it with walls, walkways, and a food and nightlife area. I guess people were pretty upset, but it is really nice now (for tourists at least). The future plan is to turn it into a fresh water supply that will make it so Singapore is no longer dependent on Malaysia for their water.
The next day we walked along Orchard Road, which is the main shopping street in the city. It’s mostly designer now, with huge malls and Gucci, Prada, D&G etc. I swear each mall has the same stores, and none of them are really even worth going into. As you get down the street, it gets a little more reasonable with stores like Aldo and Banana Republic, and then way down it turns into cheap souvenir shops (more my budget). For lunch we went to Din Tai Feng, which is an amazing Taiwanese soup dumpling restaurant (they actually have one in LA), and for dinner we went to this cool little complex called “Chijmes” that looks like it used to be some sort of Church with a school or something attached. It’s all nice restaurants now though.



So that was Singapore. There’s also a Chinatown and Little India that are recommended that I didn’t check out. On the plane ride here I was reading my Southeast Asia on a Shoestring book and it kept talking about how there’s bird flu in Indonesia and how recently the local airlines have had planes falling out of the sky, so I’m feeling a little nervous about this, but I think it’ll be a lot of fun. I’m very excited for Tara to get here, mostly to see her, but also because there’s sweat dripping down my back and I’m kind of missing that nice cool hotel in Singapore. We’re getting picked up by someone from our hotel, which is called Taman Harum and is in Ubud, up in the hills of Bali. Ubud is known for being kind of a cultural center of Bali, which is the only Hindu island left in Indonesia (the rest are Muslim). Kuta beach is where most tourists come for clubs and surfing, and I didn’t really plan that into the schedule at all, but now I’m kind of wishing there was time to check it out and see what all the hype is about. Maybe in the next few days we’ll find time. Well, I guess I’m kind of rambling now to avoid the stares I’m getting for furiously typing on a tiny computer, but maybe a better answer is to put it away.

As always, I love to get comments and email updates! Talk soon.