What's this.... Order? (Singapore)

  Singapore, Singapore
Friday, December 1, 2006

Raffles Hotel

Arriving in Singapore late in the evening twilight, a grand thunderhead hovers over the strangely identical buildings, threatening to drench us as we wander towards our host's place for the night. The light holds just long enough for us to land. Stepping off the plane and out to the gate area, one thing jumps out at us right away. We can read all the signs here! Yay... we're no longer illiterate foreign morons!

An incredibly nice thing Singapore does is provide all travelers with 15 minutes of free internet time before they have to slog through customs. We took full advantage of that, then went and completed all the boring stuff. We headed out to the taxi stand and were paired with a portly octogenarian driver who opened the trunk for us. We loaded our bags in and showed him the address. He said, "I've never been there before."

"Neither have we. It's our first time in Singapore."

"Okay, you show me."

All right. So we drive to the general section of town that it's supposed to be in, Punggol, which is one of Singapore's newest residential hives. The government builds about a thousand identical high-rise buildings in a giant field, gives them three digit numbers and a letter to distinguish one from the other, and builds a subway station and light rail transport to link all the buildings to the subway station. It's quite futuristic, and at the same time, hell if you've wandered in late at night and are looking for a particular building. The three digit numbers appear to have been distributed randomly, so we were just driving around with our taximan peering through the windshield foggily. He'd just told us he couldn't see the numbers on the buildings, which didn't make us feel very good, as they were only slightly smaller than the other cars on the road.

"Hey, do you have a phone? We could call the person we're meeting."

He scratched his head. "No, do you have a phone?"

After a few more minutes of watching the numbers on the meter tick steadily higher, we call a timeout and I get out and harass people on the sidewalk for directions. Thankfully, everyone speaks English. Unfortunately they all glance at me in a fearful manner on my approach. Must be time to shave again. Nobody has a clue.

Meanwhile, back in the cab, Cierra's asked the correct question, "Do you have a map?"

"Yeah!" He hands it back to her. "Here you go."

Would you like to get in the back seat, buddy? I'm sure we can drive this thing. It turns out that we've been across the street from the correct building all this time, and even the next door neighbors don't know this building from all the others. Hmm. Seems out of character for a country that's in general an aberration of order in Asia.

We meet Jasmine in the neighborhood food court and head upstairs to meet her parents. They're a traditional Chinese family, with the child living with the parents even after adulthood. Although the parents don't speak English, we get along all right with Jasmine's help, a lot of gesturing, and constant "Thank You"s. Jasmine and her parents get along in a very jovial manner. It seems that the necessity of living together really encourages them to get along in a much more relaxed way than Western adults and their parents. Westerners tend to feel the need to stress our independence and individuality when we're around our parents, yet Jasmine always has a joke and playful slap for her Mom, like she's with a great friend.

Our first day in Singapore, we head straight to the US Embassy to get some additional pages in our passports. Now, I know that reading this spellbinding blog has inspired all of you to throw your entire life away, buy a big backpack, put all your money in a sack and start your own adventure. And you might be tempted to plan by looking at your passport and figuring that, well, there's 4 spaces to a page, and about 14 pages for stamps, so surely there's plenty of space for all the countries you're visiting, right?

Not so fast. See, countries loooove stamps. There's a stamp for entering. A stamp for when you leave. Sometimes there's another stamp to let you know how long you can stay. Several countries, such as China, Vietnam, and Cambodia, have issued Visas that take up an entire page, and then have still more stamps that they have to put elsewhere. We were running out of room. So, we ambled up to the Embassy. There's a big sign out front telling Americans to just butt to the head of the line, which fits in with the traveling stereotype. "Scuse me, I'm an American. Scuse me! Could all you foreigners schooch out of my way? Lemme git mah fanny pack past ya, there lady. Scuse me!"

There's no line, so thankfully we get to skip this formality. We're run through Security, then directed to walk up to the actual Embassy building, where a friendly guard greeted us after we'd pried open the 2 ton blast doors on the front of the place with every fiber of strength in our bodies. An automated system gave us a 4 digit number to be served. We step into the deserted waiting room. Our 4 digit number was up before we could finish filling out our forms. A nice lady smiles at us and tells us to take a seat, it will be just a minute.

Sweet, I thought we'd have to come back. CNN is on in the waiting room, and I was all ready to watch for a while. I had just enough time to start thinking about how nice it might be to get some sleepy job at an Embassy in Thailand or some exotic place. You know, those people get holidays off for 2 different countries. If there's not a lot of overlap there, you might not have to spend that much time at work.

Then the next fellow comes in, and starts ranting and raving at this person. He applied for Social Security in some other country and wants to know what's going on. He had a Medicare bill for five hundred something and should he pay it, because it's past due, or is somebody going to pay it for him. Hmmm. Maybe these Embassy jobs aren't as easy as I thought. Seems like you've got to know how to do the job of every civil servant in the government. Minutes later, our passports are back, newly fat with extra pages, and we flee, leaving the fellow to further harass the clerk. ("And another thing. I have an overdue power bill. What should I do about that?")

Pretty Flowers....

The rest of the day was spent wandering the Singapore Botanical Gardens, a really beautiful, well maintained, and large garden. It had rainforest, bonsai trees, orchids, and even a section that's set up as a historical walk through the evolution of plants on Earth. We lunched at a great Indian-vegetarian buffet place, and ate so much that we only had a snack for dinner. Later, we strolled past the famous Raffles Hotel, where the Singapore Sling was invented, and where the last tiger in Singapore was shot under the billiards room. We walked right into downtown, into the financial district and it's huge skyscrapers and bustling yet sterile streets. After a quick bite in a cafe, it's time to head back home for the night and off to bed...

**********

One of the oldest surviving colonial buildings in downtown Singapore was recently renovated and turned into the Asian Civilizations Museum. What a perfect way to cap off our vist to Asia! We got a look back at many of the cultures that we've visited, as well as a peek at those we've skipped this time through. (Hello, India.) We arrived 10 minutes after a tour had begun, and joined up not having missed much. Our guide was excellent, focusing on the religions that each culture spread throughout Asia. Very illuminating stuff, so much so that we immediately toured the museum on our own after the tour finished, and only left when our stomachs insisted that it was way past lunchtime... at 2 pm.

Singapore's an ideal location for such a museum because just about every Asian culture is well represented here except the Japanese, who, according to our host, aren't very appreciated here. Apparently, some Singaporeans are still a bit unforgiving about being brutally occupied.

We continued our cultural education by heading to Chinatown for a bit of shopping. I picked up a winter hat, gloves, and scarf at bargain prices, so I won't freeze on arrival in Helsinki. Then we headed to Little India for some more excellent Vegetarian Indian cuisine. If more vegetarian food tasted like this stuff, more people would be vegetarian!

Treetop Walk

Monkey, See.

Saturday, our host Jasmine took us on a hike to a pedestrian bridge that takes you high up into the treetops of a forest reserve here. Not much wildlife to report while we were up there, but we did surprise a family of monkeys on our way back. We stood and watched them for a bit, and they watched us right back. There were many more around unseen, revealing themselves only with a crash of leaves and branches when they landed in a tree after leaping from another. A tiny monkey came the closest, to a tree right above us, and watched us carefully. Since I didn't really relish the idea of him jumping down on my head, we eventually moved on.

We went a little farther out of town to several fish farms, a frog farm and a couple of organic vegetable farms. I was surprised to find any kind of agricultural activity going on in Singapore, but it does exist. Turns out it's more than just a giant city.

Back at the flat that evening, we attempted to cook our hosts the world famous Kentucky Derby Pie, but it turned out a lot less gooey than usual, the chocolate here must not have as much fat in it. While the pie was in the oven, Jasmine and I took her laptop down to the garden to mooch off someone's wireless internet connection there. We'd almost finished when some friendly neighborhood teenagers decided to hold a performance of "West Side Story", minus all the singing and dancing. They ran up out of nowhere, and one teen was getting beaten by about 4 others, about 2 feet from my ducking head. Then he pulled a knife on the others and they were all circling around us. After taking a moment to quietly panic, I slammed the laptop closed and said to Jasmine, "We're clearing out of here." We got up and out of there in a hurry. I had no intention of getting accidently stabbed in Singapore by a pimply teen.

Once we were safely behind a locked door, we had time to talk a little about what we'd seen. Despite the face of control and safety that Singapore projects to the world, they too have problems with teenage behavior and gangs. It seems to be a worldwide problem these days, with young people everywhere willing to throw away their futures in an instant.

My Food is Staring at Me.

Sunday was our last day in Singapore, and we woke to rainclouds. We headed to a rural island in the northeastern part, the last undeveloped part of Singapore. Here, the landscape and buildings more closely resembled the poverty and disrepair of other places we've visted in Asia. We discovered the pathway with possibly the worlds stickiest mud, nearly losing some shoes. Lunch was some freshly caught seafood in the island's one village. Very tasty stuff, and the last time I'll hold chopsticks for a while. Hope I can learn to use a knife and fork again!

We're off tonight to Finland! Hope we don't freeze!

No Taking Pictures on the Bus...