Singapore. 12/7. 12:16pm.
Well, it’s been more than a week since we landed in Singapore and things are getting better. Our culture shock has largely subsided, only to creep back into consciousness when we hear something about the Mumbai attacks. One story I was following was about a female Singaporean who was a victim at the Taj Hotel. Her death was all over the papers because she was the first Singapore citizen to become victim to terrorism, ever. I half-obsessively looked for stories about her until they stopped coming. It is probably good that newspapers are moving on. It helps me focus more on the present.
So here we are. At the moment I’m sitting in a comfy armchair at Starbucks and Christmas music is playing on the loud speakers. Today was the Singapore Marathon and to my right is a runner, still in her sweaty clothes, totally engrossed in a novel. I don’t even think she’s showered. She must really be into that book. Behind me is a group of people, most likely staying at the nearby Raffles Hotel (the most popular and nicest hotel in the city), chatting happily about the marathon and the state of Malaysian politics. And then there’s me in the middle. I am wearing shorts and a tank top. I point this out because it’s a totally different outfit than anything I’ve been able to wear since leaving home.
The dress code in Asia is incredibly conservative. I’m not really sure if this is because of predominant religions and their customs (Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Islam) or if it is just the culture itself. Regardless, women especially are not allowed to wear anything showing their knees or shoulders. It is unacceptable. So for the first several days in Singapore, I stuck to my normal pants or long skirts and t-shirt outfits like normal. That is until I started really paying attention to the styles here.
Whoa. Women here wear whatever they want. The shorter the shirt or dress the better. Some of the dresses people wear are so short I swear they are just shirts. The actual shirts are very revealing. Deep v-necks, spaghetti strap tops, tube tops. But beyond the revealing nature of the clothing (which isn’t everyone by the way) is the stylishness of how people dress. Men included. It looks like everyone walked out of a Neiman Marcus catalogue. Really, it does. Everyone looks so nice. Not a crease out of place. Polished shoes. Shiny jewelry. And this is everyone. People walk down the street looking absolutely fabulous at all times of day, sometimes with their perfectly-dressed kids in tow, sometimes arm-and-arm with their loved ones.
This brings me to another point. Public displays of affection. Over the past 6 months it has been absolutely forbidden for Tyler and me to show any signs of love in public. No hand holding, hugging, etc. We were taught that this is disrespectful to the cultures we’ve been in, so we’ve had to restrain from our normal behavior. This has been difficult and in a way has separated us a little. Not in Singapore. Here, people openly show how much they care about each other by holding hands on the subway, in line for the movies, at restaurants, etc. I’ve even seen people kissing (gasp!) while waiting for a stoplight. This is totally shocking and incredibly refreshing. And it has helped our relationship become normal-feeling again.
So these, as well as other observations I will get to later, have brought me to a few conclusions about Singapore. First, this country is a melting pot of the Asian elite. One look at the prices even at a corner store reveals how pricey it is here. It is insanely expensive. A normal dinner costs us on average about $30USD per person. Yesterday I got a side salad for lunch with about 15 pieces of lettuce in it for $10.50. Yeah. Ouch. Not exactly the place to go on a backpacker’s budget. For this reason, one has to be pretty well-off to live here. Besides being a playground for everything posh and high-end, it really is a melting pot of cultures. This is something I greatly appreciate. For the past 6 months, I have been stared at wherever I go. I have often felt like a circus animal. In several of the places we’ve gone, the locals have never seen a white person, let alone one with blonde hair. This hasn’t always bothered me and I’ve smiled when people want to take photo after photo with me, but there have definitely been days where I’ve thought about dying my hair black. But here, all cultures are represented. Europeans, Africans, South Americans, North Americans, Chinese, Thai, Indian, you name it. While Americans and Europeans are well out-numbered by persons of Asian ethnicities (specifically Malaysians), people don’t stare at me anymore. They just walk on by and go about their business. This mere fact makes me want to jump for joy.
Another thing I find fascinating about Singapore is how efficiently it operates. It’s an intelligent city. Take the subway for example. It’s called the MRT. There are stations all over the city and when you walk down into one (they are all underground) and buy a ticket, out comes a plastic card. You then wave the card over a sensor to get onto the train and when you get to your destination, you put the card back into a reader and it gives you a $1 deposit back. And it keeps your card. A one-way ticket to most places only costs a little more than $2, so with the deposit, it is really only a little more than $1, and you give the ticket back—therefore recycling it for the next rider, so it doesn’t end up littering the ground or cluttering up your pockets.
The MRT is also spotlessly clean. The first time I rode it, all I could do was look at the ground and revel in its magnificence. I could eat off it. I would. “No you wouldn’t,” Tyler told me. “Yes, I would. Look how clean it is,” I said back. “Let me see you drop something and eat it then,” he challenged. “I totally would but I don’t have any food on me,” I answered.
Just at that moment, I looked up to see a sign posted on the wall of the train. Consuming food or drink: $500 fine. Well then, that settles it. No wonder it’s spotless. The other day we walked down to the train and found a man handing out chocolate truffles on a tray with a big sign on the front of it reading “Do not eat on platform or on MRT.” Odd. Why would he pass them out then? About 10 feet from him stood two uniformed MRT employees eyeing every patron taking a chocolate to make sure they weren’t munching on them. Tyler and I took 2 and walked away, stuffing them into our pockets. A $500 fine would really put in a wrench in our budget.
“Hey, look, that guy is eating a chocolate!” I whispered to Tyler under my breath, pointing at a guy who passed us, chowing down on his truffle. Just then we saw one of the uniformed MRT guys trotting off to catch up with the villain at a record speed, just like he was a police car pulling over a crazy driver.
On to another piece of Singapore intelligence. The other day I walked into a 7-11 (they have them here; something that was another part of my culture shock) to buy a bottle of water and when I went up to pay, the cigarettes caught my eye. I’ve never been a smoker, so I wasn’t looking to buy, but I was totally stunned by their packaging. Each package had the label of the cigarette covering the bottom ½ of the box, but on the top ½ was a grotesque photo of someone with mouth cancer. I mean, really grotesque. There were photos of people with ½ their faces decaying off and bloody from tobacco usage and toothless individuals in the middle of throat surgery. It was gruesome. But how perfect. As if the photos weren’t enough, underneath each one but above the brand name was a blurb giving a warning on the effects of smoking on the human body. I wonder who mandates these photos be put on the packages: the Singapore government in an effort to protect their citizens’ health or the tobacco companies in an effort to look like they care more about people than profits?
Going along with the recycling of train tickets, it seems as though Singapore is dedicated to preserving the environment in other ways. Such as with escalators. This is a city of escalators. They are everywhere. Primarily because of the MRT and the mere number of malls there are here, which are dozens. But back to escalators. They even have them on sidewalks. I know, weird. Well a few days ago we were walking back to our hotel over skywalk and had to go down one. Except that it looked to be broken. It was moving so slowly. Well, we stepped on it and all of a sudden it starting going at turbo-speed. Turns out it was going slowly to conserve energy and had a sensor that would signal to move faster when a person stepped on it. We rode all the way down, chatting about how efficient we thought it was and then stopped at the bottom to see if it would slow down when we got off. It did. Genius.
The general way Singapore operates can be called efficient, but I tend to question it. Specifically its punishment policies. Many people know that it is illegal to chew gum here (under punishment of fine and/or jail time) simply because people might spit it out and dirty the sidewalk and therefore the environment, but what some may not know is the extent to the laws. In an effort to be an orderly and freakishly clean society, the government goes to great lengths. For example, they made it illegal not to flush the toilet. That’s right. If you don’t flush the toilet, you are not a law-abiding citizen and can be either fined or given jail time. My question is: what government official is going to watch over you as you take a dump? Maybe I should check for hidden cameras before squatting.
As you might guess, littering is another major no-no. Hence there is absolutely ZERO garbage on the ground. Not even a gum wrapper. Nothing. The entire city is exquisitely clean. Therefore, if you litter you will feel the wrath of the government.
I equate Singapore to being the Switzerland of Asia. Not much crime, no terrorism to speak of, no conflicts since the mid-20th century when it broke off from Malaysia. Well, maybe Switzerland has a little better track record. But you get the point. Anyway, Singapore is super duper safety consciousness. There are these flat-screen TVs all over the MRT stations showing dooms-day videos of terrorist attacks at train stations and what to do in case of an attack. They always show the same sad-looking old lady being escorted by a group of 20-something women down a flight of stairs and to safety while a teenage girl hacks up a lung in the background. I really shouldn’t make fun. I mean, it is important to be prepared, I’ve just never seen a society so paranoid. So the other day I am in the MRT and notice a sign on the wall pointing to an emergency red button. Apparently if you see someone or something suspicious on the train, you push the button and it goes to someone who can help you. Very nice. Well, right above the button it says if you push the button and there ISN’T an emergency, you get a $5,000 fine. Wow-za. Quite the penalty for crying wolf. When I was in middle school and high school, I always had the ridiculous urge to pull a fire alarm and run. That would not be a good idea in Singapore.
And in the punishment category, last but not least is the verdict if you are caught with any type of drug. Execution. They kill you. Yeah, they don’t mess around.
All of these rules and punishments have brought up one big question in my head: Is this society so orderly and clean and neat and safe because it wants to be or is it because the people are just in constant fear of being punished if they don’t keep everything status quo? Hmm. I haven’t figured that one out.
So back to us. After the first few days where we just walked around with our eyes bulging out of our heads at the sight of fancy everything and Christmas decorations strung up on every light post (we had basically forgotten about Christmas in India), we decided to settle in and try to get comfortable. After two false starts, we found a hotel we feel good in and it’s only $49/night! That is highway robbery in any other part of Asia, but here it is the cheapest we could find and it is quite nice with wireless internet and clean sheets. The only thing I could complain about is its lack of hot water, but with the weather hovering around 90 degrees with 90 percent humidity about 90 percent of the time, a cold shower is exactly what I want.
Funny enough, our hotel is in a neighborhood named Little India. Ha. We couldn’t stay away long. The neighborhood is so much like real India, except it’s not at all. It is Singapore’s sterile version of India. Clean streets, Mercedes driving by and slowing to let you cross (shocker). The elements resembling real India are shops selling saris, convenience stores playing Hindi music (but at acceptable levels this time), and darn good curry restaurants.
The other day Tyler picked up a TimeOut Singapore at 7-11. TimeOut is an award-winning magazine that is featured in most big cities (SF, Chicago, NYC, Paris, etc.) that details all the goings-on in the city at the moment. He looked through it with a fine-toothed-comb and circled all of his favorite restaurants and events in the city. So now we’ve become a couple-about –town. We are all over the place and it is great. One night we went to Howl at the Moon, which is a Chicago-based dueling piano bar that Tyler had been to back in the day. Turns out they opened a Singapore satellite just recently. We went in on a Thursday and ended up meeting the band and dancing the night away to Neil Diamond and Elton John. We told them it was our 7-year anniversary and they pulled us up on stage and made us play head-shoulders-knees-and-toes on each other. It was funny and a great release for us.
Yesterday we went to a Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream Festival. It was in a park and had a live band and everything. There were thousands of people there. The big attraction was that Ben & Jerry’s had brought 12 flavors from the U.S. to Singapore just for this festival for people to try. Like Phish Food and Chunky Monkey. They even had a live band and face painters.
It was a little rainy, so after we ate our ice cream (me-mint chocolate chunk, Tyler-Phish Food) we went across the park to the National Museum of Singapore. We’d read that they were having a few special photography exhibits. So we spent the next 3 hours there. I love, love, love museums and so does Tyler. It was a nice afternoon.
Last night we were craving Mexican food. But from experience we knew there was a fat chance of finding a GOOD Mexican restaurant in the vicinity. We’d been to a slew of Western restaurants in Asia and 99.9999 percent of them had not-so-accurate (to say it nicely) interpretations of the intended cuisine. Well, yesterday we were walking along the Singapore River (there is a nice river walk here with tons of shops and restaurants) and we spotted a place called Café Iguana across the river. It was packed. A sure sign it was good. We steer clear of vacant restaurants. Travel tip #1. Anyway, we walked over to find it was a Mexican restaurant! And what was even better—there was a huge painting of Frida Kalo on the wall, the wife of my favorite painter, Diego Rivera. We sat down, ate burritos and margaritas and smiled. It was delicious.
So we are here until Dec. 15th. We plan to visit a few more museums, take salsa dancing lessons on Tuesday, and try to find more fun things to do. Singapore is suiting us well.
WOW–7 years…congrats!!!!!!!!!!!!! I had lost track of the years.
Singapore sounds like a nice change–enjoy your time!!!
Love,
Colleen