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Published: August 22nd 2006
The few yards' walk between the arrivals hall and a waiting taxi were enough to tell me that Singapore was demonstrating the real meaning of humidity, making Darwin look crisp and fresh by comparison. My driver spoke good English and informed me that it was the month of hungry ghosts - apparently the gates of hell open for a month, during which ghosts are free to roam at will and need feeding. My guidebook had inexplicably omitted this fact, but I resolved to buy some sweets in case of a chance encounter.
I'd been looking forward to visiting Singapore simply because it had barely appeared on the radar in the 3.5 decades of my existence. My vague impression was that it was a country that had achieved a vibrant and robust economy in double quick time, but at the cost of partially sacrificing the personal liberties of its citizens. It's a cliche in Europe to challenge someone to name 10 famous things about Belgium (not a problem for those of us with Belgian ancestry) but Singapore proved to be more problematic. I could only come up with the Raffles Hotel, the Singapore Sling cocktail, Tiger beer, and the ban on
chewing gum - the fact that my university badminton partner was from Singpore probably didn't count. A bit of Googling threw up Nick Leeson and the downfall of Barings, which I was surprised had slipped my mind. I was hoping that my own visit would reveal another 5 items to complete the list.
With Singapore having such a reputation for cleanliness and organisation, I was shocked by the grimness of my hostel - even more so given the glowing tributes I'd read on the Internet. The dorm was a 16 bedder, hence was clearly designed by someone who's never been backpacking - 8 or 10 beds is the absolute max before people's differing getting up/going to bed times result in 24 hour noise in the dorm. Luggage had to be left in one small area of the room, meaning you had to climb over assorted rucksacks and suitcases to get to your own, and there were no surfaces near each bunk on which to leave any belongings. There was a no-shoes policy in the dorm/bathroom area, which would have been fine if the place was full of travellers with clean feet, no veruccas, etc. Not to mention the fact
that drunken teenage backpackers aren't known for their ability to hit the target every time when attempting to take a leak. The bathrooms smelled of urine and could have doubled as a sauna, with the aircon being as deficient in them as it was in the rest of the building.
I could go on. However I'll attempt to make this critique a little more objective by saying the place only cost 6 quid per night and was located in Little India, which is supposedly one of the more interesting parts of the city.
With the hostel being so awful, my days in Singapore were spent out and about, mixing sightseeing with extended shopping trips to take advantage of the blissful aircon that's available in most malls and stores. The place doesn't really get going until 10AM, which seems rather late for somewhere that's heavily advertised as a shopping mecca, and on my first morning I found myself struggling to find anything that was open other than a Starbucks or Mackers. I ended up at a bakery, where 2 randomly chosen pastries (including one with a face on it called Mr An-Pan) were purchased and downed, together with a
can of green tea.
Orchard Road is the main shopping street here and includes everything from enormous malls to small souvenir shops to street booths selling food. I was reminded very much of Hong Kong, but there's more ethnic diversity here - three-quarters of the population are Chinese (versus 95% in HK), with large numbers of Malays and Indians too, so you see some different facial features. This diversity is also reflected in the profusion of different cuisines, including the famous hawker centres (food courts with myriad stalls and common tables/chairs).
I passed a booth that was demoing some exercise machine called an iGallup. As far as I could gather, the purpose of the thing was to work the same muscle groups that riding a horse would. However, with a sweaty young woman panting and gyrating on top, it more resembled a 21st century sex toy.
From the great deal of eating and small amount of shopping that I did here, it's clear that food is extremely cheap, and items such as books, CDs, clothes, and contact lens cleaning fluid are also good value compared with the UK. I believe that tailor-made clothes are also cheap, though
not to the extent that they are in other places in SE Asia. I also found fast 24/7 Internet access for a pound an hour.
When walking became too tiring, I descended to the subway system, which was clean, air-conditioned, and efficient. There's a great initiative to reduce ticket littering - $1 of the cost of your ticket is refundable, and you get the refund by inserting your ticket into a machine at your destination station. The ticket can then be reissued to some subsequent traveller.
There were a number of interesting sculptures near Raffles Place in the Central Business District, and after doing a walk that linked them together I took a seat in the square itself and watched the local business people hurrying through their lunch breaks. There was some sort of food festival going on this month so I tried a couple of nibbles from the stalls that were doing a roaring trade.
Heading north from Raffles Place, I passed a couple of the quays and reached the Esplanade. The centrepiece of the Esplanade is a concert hall known as the Durian due to its resemblance to the stinking fruit. I was pleased to
see that Lobo was doing a one-off concert there later in the month.
Nearby is a statue of the Merlion, which is the symbol of Singapore - the water constantly gushing out of its mouth gives it a somewhat disconcerting projectile vomiting air. On the way to the Raffles Hotel, I passed a chap with a pierced forehead, which looked as though it had been a great use of his time. The hotel had a dress code specifically designed to prevent gawpers like myself from clogging up the lobby, so I simply stood outside and thought to myself that it resembled many other luxury hotels I've seen or stayed in. I guess it's all in the history rather than the bricks and mortar.
A subway ride up to Ang Mo Kio should have been followed by a simple bus journey to the zoo, however it started tipping down with monsoonal vigour so I was forced to get in a cab. The zoo is a bit of an odd affair, as it actually consists of 2 separate zoos - one that's open during the day and one that's open at night. Though I'm not a big zoo fan, this
one has had some success with breeding endangered species in captivity, and it was surprisingly well laid out, with moats predominating as dividers between man and beast rather than fences.
Even though the night zoo opens at 6PM, the animals aren't really active until 7:30PM or so, so I floated around randomly, noting that there seemed to be a heck of a lot of people there. I did a couple of walking trails, both of which were rather atmospheric, with the animals obligingly all putting in an appearance, and the sound of chirping insects battering my ears. In one section you could walk through a short stretch of mangrove forest containing free-flying fruit bats. I didn't see any flying, but there were plenty hanging around on branches just above head height. I think the tarsier was my favourite of the animals, its started look quite appropriate given the groups of jabbering tourists who seemed incapable of understanding any of the 5 languages on the signs requesting both quiet and no flash photography.
Included in the price of my ticket was a guided tour on a tram. There were literally hundreds of people wanting to get on this, but
with 75 people on each tram and the trams going every 5 or 10 minutes, the queuing was annoying but not long enough to precipitate queue rage. The tour wasn't enormously informative and was plagued by people using flash photography, which the guide complained about but didn't put a stop to.
After catching a taxi back into town, I dined at the Tekka Centre in Little India. This is a hawker centre, with plenty of intriguing (and a few suspiciously unhygienic) smells wafting around, and God-knows-what stains on the chairs and tables. I plumped for a Hainanese chicken rice (Singaporean speciality) place, which served up their signature dish and a large bottle of Tiger beer for the equivalent of 2 pounds 50. I'm not sure how strong the beer was, but when I got back to the hostel the dorm seemed to be awash with blondes and I could have sworn a cat was prowling around too.
The following morning I went to a branch of Ya Kun Kaya Toast to try the "classic" breakfast of coffee, kaya toast, and soft-boiled eggs. Kaya is a spread made from coconut and eggs, which was a little sweet for my
morning taste buds but filled a gap. I couldn't stomach the extremely-soft-boiled eggs though.
Next on the agenda was a wander around Chinatown - an interesting concept in a country that's predominantly Chinese, and I saw more Indians there than Chinese. I visited the Seng Wong Beo Temple, which is famous for its "ghost marriages". These are conducted for people who died unmarried, as being single in the afterlife is not viewed an auspicious state to be in. Paper effigies of the couple, as well as paper presents (possibly including a car and house), are in attendance at the ceremony, at the end of which everything is burned and the families share a feast.
After stuffing my face with dim sum, I caught the cable car to Sentosa. Sentosa is a partly man-made resort island (all the sand had to be brought in) just off the coast that attempts to provide a small amount of tranquility amongst the general bustle of Singapore. This is made even more difficult by the estimated 2 million visitors per year that descend on it. I'd come mainly for a sound and light show that takes place at some musical fountains, but the
first show already had enough people queuing for it that it was going to be a sell-out, and to guarantee a seat at the second and final show would require several hours of queuing. I don't really "do" queuing, so I decided to wait around and see if any part of the show would be visible from the main arrival area. It wasn't, so I decadently took a limo to Clarke Quay (all 8 quid's worth).
Clarke Quay was buzzing, with a mix of locals and foreigners that was like a tame version of Roppongi. I sampled a few microbrews at Brewerkz, an enormous bar/restaurant with outdoor seating in prime people-watching territory. The pricing tariff for the beer varied depending on the time of day and day of the week - between midday and 3PM on weekdays, a pint could be yours for a mere $3.50, but the same thing would cost $11.50 after 8PM. As the evening went on the place seemed to turn into an expat ghetto so I left, having seen enough of that sort of stuff in the past.
My taxi driver to the airport possessed the first thick Singlish accent that I'd encountered
during my stay. Singlish is Singaporean English, and in its most casual form has sufficiently odd slang and syntax as to be virtually incomprehensible to many English speakers (this one, at least). I found myself simply nodding and agreeing, rather than own up to the fact that he may as well have been speaking Mandarin.
And so the second trip of my "career break" came to an end, as Qantas flight QF3345 took off from Changi airport and headed for Heathrow.
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J
non-member comment
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Aww, we're planning to stay in the Inn Crowd cause we've heard some pretty good/rave reviews! May I ask if you stayed in the 1st or 2nd one? O assume the 2nd one, the one with the pub, etc.? Thanks! :)