Singapore Surprise

I'll confess, I didn't know much about Singapore. I know a few things since I've visited, namely that Singapore has to be one of the coolest city/states on the planet. Before that kind of knowledge, Singapore was only known to me in terms of Micheal P. Fay's caning case back in the 90s. This American twat was caught spraypainting walls in the pristine Asian city, and well, he got caned. And rightly so, says I. What kind of idiot tests the government of such a restrictive place, a place where you can't even chew gum? Moreover, why would you want to spraypaint in Singapore? Go to Europe, where they consider spraypainting an artform.

Singapore was meant to be a stopover place—a night or two before catching a plane to Bali. My expectations weren't only low, they were non-existent. This worked vastly in my favor.

All I could think about on our journey to the Malaysian/Singapore border was food. Since the advent of my Perhentian stomach bug, I hadn't eaten anything. And I do mean anything. I remember sitting in a Burger King at the central train station in Kuala Lumpur and turning my nose away from Chris' french fries. I didn't despair though. This was my opportunity to drop 10 lbs or so. However, I was starving. And I do mean really really hungry. By the time we walked out of Woodlands station in Singapore, going through customs and all that, I was ready to devour any walking man or beast. I grabbed Chris' arm, something I don't do a whole lot, and firmly declared, “We're eating.” Chris insisted on finding our hostel first. With this I tightened my grip, and with a determination I haven't used since walking away from a Jim Carrey movie, announced, “We're bloody eating.” Chris knew there would be blood if I didn't have my way. Wisely he conceeded to my decision to patronage Mickey D's. He was greatly rewarded. We both were. We scoffed down those Quarter Pounders like there was no tomorrow.

We headed into Little India in search of a hostel. Our first choice was full so we headed down the street to the next best thing. We got a dorm room that was air conditioned and non-smelly. That was all it had going for us. They had placed us in the world's squeakiest bunk bed. I mean really, you breathed and the bed squeaked. I felt bad for the other dorm dwellers. They must have thought we were constantly getting it on, when we all we were doing was getting comfy beneath the covers.

Disneyland Singapore

We had a few days to blow before dipping below the equator (Singapore is just a hair north of the line). After the travesty of Malaysia (we had been sick from one ailment or another the entire time we spent there) we were limping along, just waiting to get to greener pastures. Chris had mentioned a cable car. Anything to catch some breeze. Singapore was insanely hot. The sun was almost directly overhead, and it was relentless. It was the kind of heat where you dreamt of sticking your head into a freezer and leaving it there for an hour. You'd kill someone to get out of the heat. If the laws weren't so darn strict, more people would be doing drive-bys or other crazy kinds of shit. Yeah, it was hot.

The Singapore tranport system was a pleasant surprise. World class. It didn't hurt that everything in Singpore is written in English. The spoken language is Singlish, which is horribly pronouned English, but it's bearable. Stuff can be accomplished in Singlish. Takes lots of shouting and repetiton, but you get there in the end. The written langauge was our saving grace. Chris and I kicked ass when it came to tackling the mass transit system. We grabbed the metro by its horns and rode it hard. We rode it all the way to Harbour City where we boarded our Angry Birds cable car.

It must have been a slow day. Cable cars swung by empty, music and crazy laughter emanating from them, as we stood there on the 15th floor of some office building. It was like some kind of nightmare; the glass door shutting close on our car, being stuck with some birds glaring down at us. Can I just admit that I don't have a clue what Angry Birds actually are? They're part of a game, right? I just don't keep up on these things. We were given masks, and like we were six and it was our birthday, we wore them, while swinging over the treetops. Music played, and stuffed animals bore down on us with their angry eyebrows. It's like they wanted us dead. The good news was that the view was unbelievable. We swung upward to a vantage point where we disembarked and walked through Angry Birds merchandise to get to the actual viewpoint. We caught some breeze. The city of Singpore didn't look like much, especially in comparison to a skyline like Hong Kong’s. However there was a lot of sea. I got the sense that Singapore was a major Asian port.

The air was stiffling, even at the top of the world. We boarded another cable car, heading back from where we came, and swinging even further, as we had purchased an all-day pass. We rose higher and higher, the birds laughing even more crazily, as we approached Sentosa Island.

See, this is what I'm talking about in saying I didn't know a thing about Singpore. This certainly wasn't the caning experience I had read about. Singapore was nothing less than a theme-park. The whole fricken city. You didn't even need to pass through a ticket booth to enter the park. From the air you could see that the city was something a bit above the regular up-and-coming city of the century. Dubbed “The Garden City,” Singapore is a step beyond anything I've ever seen. The love child of Vegas and Disneyland, but sanitized to kindergarten standards (cutesy poems on billboards abound), this was the city of dazzlement. And there was nothing cheezy about it. Well, there was some cheese, I guess starting with the Angry Birds. Alighting on Sentosa Island, we found fountains and gardens and monuments to wow the senses. All we really cared about was aquiring some water, to be honest, but the sparkle of the place wasn't lost on us. I was impressed. For a city that I didn't expect much from (maybe some flush toilets and air conditioning) I was dazzled. Even back on the main island, the buildings were reminescent of Hollywood. We turned a corner off of the metro, and there we were at the Oscars. A building, like something out of Gotham City, rose infront of us, golden statues dominating the avenue from 20 stories up. I imagined celebrities and a red carpet. How the hell had we desceneded on this brand of themepark-acity?

That British Influence

Chris was adament about seeing Raffles Hotel, just a few blocks from the City Hall stop on the metro. Now Thomas Stamford Raffles was the British chap that founded Singapore in the late 1800's. He built a hotel and named it Raffles. We were thinking about kicking back there for awhile, sipping on Singapore Slings in the garden. However, wearing our usual backpacking garb, we weren't sure we'd be allowed to roam the premises or if we'd get chased off with garden rakes. The whole hotel complex was dressed in a pristine white. Very few people were about. For sure there was a garden area where a few foreigners were sipping drinks, but Chris and I quickly passed on by after we had caught a glimpse of the prices. We pretty much had the place to ourselves, to take pictures and crane our necks at the elegant balconies. It very much reminded me of Ricky's Cafe in Casablanca, where we had spent £60 on drinks not too long ago. It's the kind of place where you just want to sit down and listen to a man play a piano. You could feel refined and dignified by just being there. We hadn't gotten chased off with garden rakes, and for that I was thankful.

We perused a bookshop just across the road from the Raffles Hotel. It was a treasure trove for both of us. There were all types of books from my childhood, books I hadn't seen in absolute ages. There were Archie comic books, Little Golden Book Classics, even Scholastic books. What these were doing in a bookshop in Singapore I didn't know, but Chris and I spent a good hour there. I walked away with several comic books, glowing with a nostalgia I haven't felt in years.

An Ethnic Mix

Our hostel was situated in Little India, a colorful section of the city with charming wooden buildings. Lining the streets are shops with apartments perched above, sometimes three or four stories high. The buildings are adorned with balconies and brightly painted shuttered doors. Our hotel fit right. Chris and I sat out on our balcony, listening to the traffic below. A rat scurried past us in the dark, darting behind a potted plant. Indeed, it felt as if we were in India.

On our second day in Singapore we visited temples, one Hindu, one Buddhist. Walking through Little India (which is actually a sizeable neighbourhood) we came to the temple I had picked out from the others—the Temple of Kali. There's too much to Hinduism for me to get my head around. I'd really have to sit down and study the concepts, for that's what Hinduism is, mainly a philosophy. To say that there are millions of gods and goddesses isn't exactly true. Hindus believe in one god. The countless dieties are merely manifestations of that god. Still, in looking at Kali, I'm not sure what manifestation she's supposed to represent, with her human skull necklace and her vampire teeth. She's a bloodthirsty demon. Walking around the temple we saw several statues of her. In each statue, she was severing someone with a spear, her tongue out and streams of blood shooting from her mouth. How anyone could find peace in such a place is a mystery to me, but there were a few worshipers about. A priest handed out rice balls. Incense and offerings were given. Signs were posted not to pour milk over the statues. This is all probably deep stuff. Or maybe not. I'd always like to think that religion is deeper than its traditions. Hinduism is very ancient stuff, humans' ways of understanding the world. Still, with the likes of Kali, I'm not sure I'd subscribe to such bizarreness.

We had to hop on the metro to get to Chinatown. Having been to countless Chinatowns throughout Asia, we were pleased to find something quite different. Instead of labyrinths of stalls and spitting women, Singapore's Chinatown was very clean and orderly. The buildings were similiar in manner to those in Little India, with the balconies and shuttered doors. Chinese characters were used as decoration along with strings of red lanterns, all very picturesque. The only downfall was the rain, which had started as soon as we stepped out of the station.

The main temple in Chinatown is the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple. With a name like that you'd expect a tooth on display. For some reason I envisioned an elephant tusk gleaming in some golden light. It turns out that the Buddha tooth only makes occassional appearances at the temple. The tooth was not there when we visited. This did not dampen our spirits. The temple was like none other than I've ever seen. In all the Buddhist temples we've walked into, there was little going on other than mats and golden statues and a few monks walking around. I had trouble connecting to that kind of thing. This temple was Chinese and it differed from the temples we had visited in Thailand. Thousands of tiny golden Buddhas adorned the wall, like some 3D type of wallpaper. The altar area wasn't cluttered in the Thai fashion of statues. There was only one Buddha, and he was smiling in his gold and peaceful way. The outside of the temple was dark wood with layers upon layers roofs. I don't know why this all impressed me the way it did, but I connected with this brand of Buddhism the way I had hoped. Chris may connect with Thai Buddhism, but for me it's Chinese. It's orderly and dark and somehow more meaningful. It didn't hurt that there was some kind of service was going on. Monks, at least half a dozen of them, were chanting into microphones infront of the altar. Rows of women were sat behind them, chanting in a rapid pace, following Chinese characters from books. The room was filled with sound. It was theatrical. It felt like something important was going on. Why this strikes something in me, where nothing else has in my travels, I don't know. I've always related to Taoism, even back in the day I was a raging Christian. Perhaps this was the closest thing I experienced in the Taoist realm. I actually had tears in my eyes. Chris didn't feel a thing. Funny what we each individually connect to.

After our temple visits we stopped for some food. Prices were high in Chinatown. The rain poured down incessantly so we took shelter in a corner cafe where we hoped the prices were reasonable. They weren't, but the food was amazing. I had crab wontons. One of the best dishes on this trip so far.

Good Night, Sleep Tight...

We asked to change rooms. Two nights of the squeaky bunk bed had deprived us both of sleep. When we moved to the dorm the next room down, Chris and I felt we had hit the jackpot. Even though there were twenty beds available, we had the room to ourselves. Hitting the light at 11:00, we doubted anyone would be checking in later than that. We tucked ourselves in, fully expecting a good night's sleep.

I was somewhat aware that little creepy crawlies were dropping down on my face. I don’t know if I was awake for this, or if I was feeling it in my sleep. In any case, around 1:00 in the morning the light came flipping on, the room suddenly filling with bodies. They had all come in at once. I flipped over on my pillow, realizing that my sleep had been short lived. With the light now on, I noticed for the first time that there were several bugs on my pillow. Without thinking I flipped a few of them off. There was a fat one resting there, apparantly comfortable. I looked at it for a short while before I realized what I was looking at. I had been itchy in Singapore, it's true. I had attributed any bites to the fleas that jumped around the walls. It never occured to me that we were dealing with bedbugs. But the fat bugger I was looking at on my pillow had bedbug written all over it. I freaked out.

Seen as how we were all wide awake, I raised my head up Chris' level in the bunk above me. “Look at this,” I said, thrusting my pillow near his face. “I think that's a bedbug.” “So?” was Chris' response. “What do you want me to do about it?” What he did do, without my suggestion, was flick it. It exploded in a smear of blood on the pillowcase. Oh, just lovely. How on earth was I supposed to sleep now? The beds were now full of Filipino workers. The lights soon went out, but my eyes stayed wide open. The bugs continued to drop down on my face. How could I just lay here and be dinner for all these nasty creatures? It was one of the hardest nights of my life. I was pissed at Chris. He wasn't bothered at all. Every time he changed position above me, more bugs dropped down. My skin literally crawled with them.

The bites didn't appear immediately. Over the next few days they surfaced on my skin. All in all I had over a hundered bites. Easily. My skin was all bites, all except areas that had been tightly covered (such as my groin, thankfully). They got my face, they got my ears, they even got my knuckles. My body was one huge itch by the time we landed in Bali. After a string of ailments, it only seemed proper.

Chris and I loved Singapore. It came as a complete surprise. The bedbugs were a hiccup, but it wasn't Singapore's fault. Singapore is the cleanest city I've ever been in. Recycling bins are ubiqutious and manners are encouraged in positive messages around the metro area. We would be back in a month's time. Pushing on below the equator, we were about to discover a completely different kind of place.