Singapore. Feb. 17, 2016

---

Singapore. Feb. 17.

A thoroughly modern city, with many public spaces and sculptures, fantastic architecture and it looks just awesome at night, punctuated by creative illumination of threes, sculptures and buildings, and laser light shows from the heights of the iconic Marina Bay Sands Hotel. Very high- end yachts hanging about.

The first order of business was to get online and caught up on email, bank accounts and the blog. Cruise terminal wifi sucks pretty much everywhere we have visited on cruise ships, even in high-tech Singapore, so we found the nearest Starbucks, steps from passport control.

Very strict immigration here, we have to go through passport control to just get on and off the ship. Actually, very strict everything.

They call Singapore the fine city. There are fines for jaywalking, for unleashed dogs, for smoking in public, for spitting, for not flushing public toilets (up to $500, presumably levied by degree of offense), for pornography, for gambling - the list is long and expensive. Yet, they have casinos (closed to local citizens), and prostitution is legal and regulated. An older four-story building downtown has been a brothel for decades, and is affectionately known by locals as, "four floors of whores." Homosexuality remains ostensibly illegal (although tourist couples seemed to roam unmolested) and my visa bears the warning that the penalty for drug smuggling is death.

The toilet fine worried me the most, as the squatter toilets rather unnerve me, like Stephen Leacock's short story about his panic in banks. Opening one stall door, and then in dismay, the next, I was relieved to find that at least some of Singapore's public toilets have both types, complete with instructions to not squat over the western toilet.

I sent an email to our contact in Mumbai. Reviewing my notes, I thought perhaps there had been an error, and asked him if his cost was per person or per couple, as compared to other available tours, it seemed high.

A text message from staff confirmed that the price was per person. However, the next email from the young boss claimed that I was questioning his integrity and that he would not take us on the tour if I thought I was paying too much. I replied that I had meant no offense, that I was just verifying. No, I had poisoned the relationship after two months of email contact, he had been up front since the beginning (he had, it was my misunderstanding) and he refused to accept that I was willing to pay the asking price in return for what promised to be an immersive experience. We were unceremoniously given the boot. I never expected to be fired as a client in India, waving cash US dollars.

Most disappointing, as he is the #2 rated private tour on Trip Advisor, and goddamn annoying that he would not accept my booking and is forcing me to make other arrangements while in transit. Very difficult with undependable wifi, and Indonesia is notorious for poor internet. This will not be straightforward, but I really don't want to pay ship prices when we have an overnight, meaning no urgency to get back to the ship and when there are so many options.

So, sent emails to four other tour operators, hoping that Pranav has not blacklisted me, although he did give me the email address for the #3 rated private tour in Mumbai. We shall see.

Updated the blog to Kochi and checked on bank and family. Then off to the subway station, a convenient short walk from the terminal.

Wow. I mean wow. Easy to use, almost impossible to get lost, clean, safe, waiting platforms with free wifi, and amazingly polite travelers. We bought round trip tickets for Little India, a straight shot up one line, no transfers.

The stations are clean and brightly lit, and sets of doors separated by panels of advertising line the platform so that there is no access to the tracks. The doors only open once the train has automatically stopped, lining up the train doors with the station doors. Signs on the walls and red and green lines and footprints on the floor make it clear that you wait over here until passengers have disembarked, THEN you get on, other signs urging you to move inward and make room for those behind you.

Several signs indicate drawings of banned items, one of which was a durian fruit. An open durian has a distinctive and pervasive odour which most people find distasteful to the point of intolerable, although those who dare to get it past their noses find the taste to be delicate and delightful. A common phrase in the region is, "Tastes like heaven, smells like hell."

A fellow traveller got in a cab and the driver asked, "Where to?" Instead of replying, she demanded, "Where's the durian?" After some denial, the driver sheepishly admitted the there was one in a container in the trunk.

Little India feels like downtown Mangalore, only much nicer and cleaner and no overhead knitting bag tangle of phone and hydro lines. Narrow shops line each side of the street, in varying states of repair and quality of goods. Most sold spices and snacks and saris. We found a high-end shop of gorgeous Indian artwork - bronze statues, stone carvings, jewelry and beautiful Hindu and Buddhist shrines for yard or business. Pawn shops were everywhere, dealing almost exclusively in gold and jewels.

We found an large amazingly decorated house, immaculately kept and painted in bright, vibrant colours. An ornate Hindu temple rivaled the one we saw in Mangalore, with intricately painted animals, and deities and their attendants placed all around the building, sparing only the ornately carved wooden doors and window shutters. We discovered a beautiful mosque, the gold-domed Masjid Sultan on the edge of the area, and we wandered around after removing shoes. We did not go inside as Jane had no head covering, but I peeked inside to see the men at prayer. I was glared at as I had not removed my socks, a requirement of the more conservative flavours of Islam, but here not an offense worth an actual scolding.

We headed south, into the bank buildings, western-style 4-star hotels, all types of restaurants, and office towers. The variety of architecture approaches the modern grandeur of Dubai, with buildings that twist, roll and lean out over the streets. Many incorporate gardens on the roof and on staggered patios sticking out here and there. Some have plants climbing up the walls from all the way to the top floor. Others have external motifs evoking coral gardens and one clad in dozens of half-spheres making it look a little like an overinflated golf ball with the dimples puffed out.

An open market filled a long pedestrian mall, branching off into alleyways and down adjoining streets. Anything can be had in these open stalls, the proprietors equipped with wireless microphones touting their wares. They sold everything. Haircuts and manicures, shoes and fruit, cooked food of all kinds, blessings for and from the Buddha and a few Hindu gods, clothing and reading glasses and acupuncture and palm reading and "guaranteed astrological readings," making the literal-minded wonder what about them, exactly, was guaranteed. To be astrological readings, I suppose.

A sign said, "Pool," and hundreds lined up under it in single file down the street. From the paper forms and pencils they clutched, we realised these folks were not going for a swim to escape the heat, they were lining up for lottery tickets. Luck and fate figure prominently in Asian cultures, and this was further illustrated by the Sands casino, where the slot machines are all in Chinese. Someone told me they slid a few bucks in and hit the button to find they were playing $8/spin, a touch over budget.

In the spirit of poking into uncommon places, we entered a lovely, airy building lacking the extravagance of the surrounding towers and hotels. This was the National Library, and we wandered freely all the way up to the administration offices on the top floor, where a receptionist signed apologetically, even sadly, through the wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling glass security doors that we could not enter. No matter, the other floors gave us grand floor-to-ceiling views of Singapore to the north, east and west, and access to two garden patios filled with exotic plants and trees, and curving pathways meandering amongst the greenery.

A confusing walk across a pedestrian bridge over a crammed parking lot of a main road, into a mall connected to an office complex of five grand office buildings. This convoluted and disorienting finally led us to one of our goals - the Fountain of Wealth. It sits, round and huge, a story below the road at the center of a traffic roundabout, flanked by Maserati dealerships and jewelry shops to rival, if not exceed, those of Manhattan's Fifth Avenue or drippingly wealthy Dubai. About 50 meters in diameter, this is a fountain that you enter and interact with, below street level but entirely open to the air with access though doors in the lower level of the shopping mall.

You will get wet wandering inside the fountain, and a central part bubbles continuously up to head height while jets and streams and sprays launch into the air around you at unpredictable intervals.

Watching other wanderers, it seemed that a reason to be there was to stick your right hand into the central fountain and walk clockwise around it until the circle is completed. We both performed the ritual. I am not superstitious in the least, but that day, the Canadian dollar began recovering against US currency and as I write this today stands a full six cents higher against the US$ than it did in mid-January.

You're welcome.

On southward, past an incredible theatre building which looks very much like a durian. I wanted to head for the Marina Bay Sands Hotel, where the top floor (56th, I think) boasts the best view of the marina area from 650 feet. Construction blocked the easy path around the bay, so we opted for the less direct. We passed a huge set of bleachers looking into the bay, containing huge painted statues of dragons and gods without explanation. We shall hopefully investigate further when we return in two weeks.

We found a street which was lined with street food vendors. The food was of varying complexity and cost, but menus were beautifully presented in pictures and models, and plastic-wrapped actual dishes presented as menus. Judging by the press of people of all colours and ethnicities, this is the place to eat in the Marina area, but Jane was mistrustful and we moved on.

We found a colourful music and dance show to watch for a while at a waterfront amphitheater, and wandered down the lovely walkways encircling the bay until we reached the famous Mer-lion, the longstanding and inexplicable symbol of Singapore. A wedding party did their photo shoot with this odd combination of feline and piscine in the background, while hundreds of people posed for photos and selfies, pretending to hold the mer-lion in their hands, or to wash their hair in the water stream gushing into the bay from its mouth, or to drink from the stream. Others posed with the Singapore Flyer, the world's largest observation (Ferris) wheel or the Sands hotel behind them.

Darkness began to fall and the city began lighting up. We could see the vibrant colours of the illuminated Supertrees in the 250-acre Gardens by the Bay beyond the hotel, and LEDs were strung through all the trees along the walkway. The Mer-lion, other sculptures, the boats in the bay and buildings everywhere sported multicoloured light shows.

Thus far we had managed to avoid the scary vehicle traffic, but were confounded by the fenced roads and lack of crosswalks to get us from the waterfront into the maze of towers where there was sure to be a subway station. We found an escalator entrance, and signage said this was for the attached hotel's parking garage. I figured there must be more to it than that, so we delved underground and past the parking garage, into the lower levels of the five-star hotel and found the brightly lit tunnel which pointed the way to Raffles Square, the center of downtown Singapore.

By this time we were walked out and ready to head back, but kept getting distracted by, "What the heck is that?" Sculpture and architecture and decorations kept catching our eyes, and often, confusion as to what we were seeing continuously piqued our curiosity; for example, the unexplained statue of an elephant with a unicorn horn.

We found the subway station; we had retraced our route by walking further than we had thought, and two quick rides with a painless transfer put us back at the cruise terminal.

---

Photos

Singapore
This turned out to be the first of many similar temples.

Singapore
Mosque

Singapore
Fascinating architecture everywhere!

Singapore
Marina Bay Sands Hotel.

Singapore
The Merlion!

Singapore
More Merlion.

Singapore
Uni-elephant?