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Published: November 9th 2007
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shoppers at Bugis shopping complex
Photo by Jeff Roberts
www.eyeballimaging.com/blog We flew into Singapore’s shiny modern airport in the late afternoon on October 12th. We’d made reservations at Bugis Backpackers Hotel, the cheapest hotel we could find, which was still a whopping $50 a night for a room without a bathroom. We were able to take the MRT (Singapore’s mass transit system, an above and below-ground subway) directly from the airport to the Bugis stop, which was less than a block from our hotel. Bugis neighborhood is known for its cheap “street” shopping, with countless covered stalls selling plastic watches, printed T-shirts and clothing, fake designer handbags and shoes. Our hotel was around the corner from the main shopping area, on the third floor of an old building. We checked into a room with walls painted varying shades of purple. Despite the lack of bathroom, it did have air conditioning and a balcony (albeit littered with cigarette butts and an abandoned air conditioning unit) with a view over a busy intersection.
After checking in we went out to find dinner, and briefly wandered through the endless shopping stalls. Most were in the process of closing, but we made our way to the food court (known there as a hawker center)
attached to the back of the shopping area. There we had an inexpensive dinner of fried rice and chicken, served in plastic bowls at plastic tables. The whole food court shut down around us, and we finished eating and stepped out into the surprising quiet of Bugis street after hours. We weren’t at all ready for bed yet, but after a few laps of the area we concluded that everything and everyone shuts down and goes home after ten. If there are areas of Singapore with good nightlife, we weren’t in one of them. A little disappointed, we went to bed with higher hopes for the next day.
The next morning I waited outside the single shared bathroom to brush my teeth while another guest brushed hers. She offered to let me share the sink, so I wet my toothbrush and started brushing. I stepped back out of the tiny bathroom while I brushed, to let her finish, and she promptly shut and locked the door and began to take a shower, leaving me standing in the hallway with a mouth full of toothpaste foam and nowhere to spit. After a few minutes of waiting, incredulous, I got desperate
and ended up spitting toothpaste off the balcony onto the roof of another building. Although not usually a problem, shared bathrooms, when combined with inconsiderate or very scatterbrained people, can have their disadvantages.
Without intending to, we spent much of that day on the MRT. We were looking for the Canon service center, to have Jeff’s camera sensors cleaned, and ended up riding the train nearly all over town to try to track it down. It drizzled off and on all day, splattering the train windows with water droplets whenever it traveled above ground. Although we never did find Canon that day, we did a great deal of people watching. Singapore’s beauty, in my opinion, does not lie in its modern skyscrapers or its immaculately manicured gardens but in its people. The people are an ever-colorful mixture of Indian, Chinese, Malaysian and Thai descent, to name just a few. They cram themselves into crowded subways, shoulder to shoulder with other Singaporeans with drastically different religions and backgrounds. And we received friendly smiles from most everyone.
After our unsuccessful search for Canon, we returned to Bugis and decided to walk to Little India to find an Indian thali (set
meal) for dinner. Stepping into Little India was like passing through a portal to an Indian Disneyland. In ways it felt exactly like India: the crowds of Indian men with occasional women in brilliant sarees; the smells of incense and spices and; the little street-side shops spilling their wares onto the sidewalks; the swirl of bright colors. But it was lacking some vital elements, such as meandering cows, piles of smoldering garbage, and an aura of age and mystery. Singapore's Little India was a little too clean, a little to orderly, and a little too new to be India, but it was close enough to sink us into a deluge of memories. We found authentic thalis served on banana leaves, and ate with our fingers amidst curious stares from bemused fellow finger-eaters. The food was fantastically Indian. Afterwards we wandered (or rather, pushed our way) through the crowded road until we find a roadside cafe. Jeff drank a Kingfisher beer and I had a chai (which, although 20 times the cost, tasted exactly like the sugary tea served on Indian overnight trains), and we found ourselves planning out our next trip to India, and where it might take us. Our
tea and beer finished, we walked back through Little India and returned to the orderly and empty streets of Singaore. We went to bed fairly early once again, with plan to head to the famous Singapore zoo the next morning.
To reach the zoo we took the MRT across town, then climbed into an official zoo transport van with other camera-toting tourists. We were coerced into buying $4 passes for the zoo tram, which we were told was an invaluable resource for seeing the vast stretches of zoo territory, or something like that. In fact, the zoo was quite walkable and the tram drove too far from the cages to actually see anything. The landscaping and some of the animal habitats were pretty impressive, but a disappointing number of exhibits were closed for construction. We had to weave our way through thick masses of people to see anything, and the couple of shows we checked out were so packed and overly peppy that we ended up leaving. The polar bear, rhino and snow tiger exhibits were neat, but in general we were underwhelmed. It started to rain after a few hours, and we took that as our cue to
leave. We took a bus back to the MRT station, the MRT back to our hotel, and took advantage of the rainy afternoon to see the new Resident Evil in the Bugis theater.
The next day was our last full day in Singapore, and we used it to get Jeff's cameras cleaned at Canon. We managed to find it this time, very close to an enormous shopping mall complex. We dropped off the cameras and wandered through the malls until we found a sushi restaurant for lunch. We splurged on sushi while watching rain drip down the glass picture windows with views of Sentosa island, a theme-park island we didn't have the energy (or money) to visit. After lunch we bought tickets to see Sicko in a small theater in the mall, then I got my hair cut for too much money at a salon. We picked up the cameras in the late afternoon, saw our movie (and then seriously considered moving to Canada), then headed out of the mall. On the way out we saw a huge crowd gathered to watch a runway show on a stage erected in the mall center. Apparently it was Singapore Fashion Week.
We watched and Jeff took photos of the fashion show for a bit, and then we took the MRT back to Bugis for another hawker center dinner and our last night in our purple hotel room. The next morning we checked out and took a taxi to the airport to fly to Bali, Indonesia.
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anonymous
non-member comment
Mangosteen is one of my fav's too, and this one looks mighty good! amazing pictures Mr jeff and amazing story telling msssss Laura, the white tiger is a BEAUTIFUL PIC!!!!!!!!!! I have to say you havent help me in my decision making as whether to visit SG or not.... hmmm more time to think i guess!