Singapore is the stepping stone to Southeast Asia, they say. It's clean, urban, user-friendly, English-speaking, and easy to connect to other countries in the surrounding area. And it was the cheapest flight we could find out of SFO, so we decided to wing it over here and lay over for a few days before going to Bangkok.
We found that Singapore was indeed exactly as described, more expensive than we thought, and not all that special. We stayed in the neighborhood of Little India, which was pungent and colorful and filled with Indian sights and smells: garish gold costume jewelry for sale, heady curries, men holding hands in friendship.. The hostels we stayed in ranged in cleanliness and modernity but rarely in price (S$18-30, or about $15-25 a night, per bed). It was Formula 1 race car week (? who cares ?) so a lot of foreign people were in town for that. I had a lot of dreams every night, some unpleasant and some just strange.
Singapore is a tiny little country, and I would say we made the most of it. The public transit system was super efficient and clean, so we were able to zip around and see a lot. One day we wandered through the botanical gardens, and saw amazing little bonsai trees and wild orchids. Another day we hiked through the Bukit Timah rainforest nature reserve north of the city, where we met the cutest little monkeys and learned all sorts of interesting rainforest facts. One of the best parts of Singapore life was the street food, which was sold by one hundred tiny little vendors all lined up in great big "hawker centres" around the city. These places were super cheap and hectic and nitty-gritty, but delicious nonetheless and wholly memorable. Every kind of Asian and Indian delicacy was available here, from delicate dim sum and mango salad to enormous vats of chicken biriyani and whole legs of fresh mutton. Old folks, hip young teens, Indians and Chinese and southeast Asian people all mingled together for a snack and discussion of weather, gossip, who knows what else. The smells of seafood and Indian spices and ripening fruit and iron-rich raw meat made me dizzy (and sometimes queasy) but it was nice to sit with J and sip on two mugs of cold Tiger beer and watch it all come together.
We bought tickets for Bangkok and promptly regretted it upon discovering that it is rainy season all over Thailand (we could have easily avoided this by heading first to Indonesia, then to Thailand in November) but we'll make the best of it, as we always do.
This final bit on Singapore: for our last night, we bought a camping permit (for free..) and slept in a public pavilion on the beach (beneath a "no camping" sign, oops), resting on top of our packs and resolving to leave early in the morning for the airport. We closed our eyes and promptly fell asleep, but were woken up maybe half an hour later by this huge procession of people dressed entirely in white, banging cymbals and blaring music and generally celebrating something as loud as possible. It was the weirdest, funniest thing: we woke up, heard them coming from afar and saw all their colorful lights in the distance, and within about a minute and a half they were practically on top of us, clanging and clapping and confusing the hell out of us; one of those enormous gilded paper dragons came undulating up (carried underneath by about 17 teenaged boys dressed to be the dragon's legs) and rested right there in the pavilion! Talk about a wake up call. Apparently it was some sort of Chinese "welcoming the emperor" ceremony, and they all walked down to the beach and lit incense and left offerings of oranges and animal vertebrae, sang and danced some more, and then took the whole procession elsewhere. It happened so fast, I hardly had time to rub the sleep out of my eyes and grab my camera. If not for those few photos I would swear that the whole thing happened in a strange Singaporean dream. Did it?
11:54AM
In-flight to Bangkok, Thailand
We found that Singapore was indeed exactly as described, more expensive than we thought, and not all that special. We stayed in the neighborhood of Little India, which was pungent and colorful and filled with Indian sights and smells: garish gold costume jewelry for sale, heady curries, men holding hands in friendship.. The hostels we stayed in ranged in cleanliness and modernity but rarely in price (S$18-30, or about $15-25 a night, per bed). It was Formula 1 race car week (? who cares ?) so a lot of foreign people were in town for that. I had a lot of dreams every night, some unpleasant and some just strange.
Singapore is a tiny little country, and I would say we made the most of it. The public transit system was super efficient and clean, so we were able to zip around and see a lot. One day we wandered through the botanical gardens, and saw amazing little bonsai trees and wild orchids. Another day we hiked through the Bukit Timah rainforest nature reserve north of the city, where we met the cutest little monkeys and learned all sorts of interesting rainforest facts. One of the best parts of Singapore life was the street food, which was sold by one hundred tiny little vendors all lined up in great big "hawker centres" around the city. These places were super cheap and hectic and nitty-gritty, but delicious nonetheless and wholly memorable. Every kind of Asian and Indian delicacy was available here, from delicate dim sum and mango salad to enormous vats of chicken biriyani and whole legs of fresh mutton. Old folks, hip young teens, Indians and Chinese and southeast Asian people all mingled together for a snack and discussion of weather, gossip, who knows what else. The smells of seafood and Indian spices and ripening fruit and iron-rich raw meat made me dizzy (and sometimes queasy) but it was nice to sit with J and sip on two mugs of cold Tiger beer and watch it all come together.
We bought tickets for Bangkok and promptly regretted it upon discovering that it is rainy season all over Thailand (we could have easily avoided this by heading first to Indonesia, then to Thailand in November) but we'll make the best of it, as we always do.
This final bit on Singapore: for our last night, we bought a camping permit (for free..) and slept in a public pavilion on the beach (beneath a "no camping" sign, oops), resting on top of our packs and resolving to leave early in the morning for the airport. We closed our eyes and promptly fell asleep, but were woken up maybe half an hour later by this huge procession of people dressed entirely in white, banging cymbals and blaring music and generally celebrating something as loud as possible. It was the weirdest, funniest thing: we woke up, heard them coming from afar and saw all their colorful lights in the distance, and within about a minute and a half they were practically on top of us, clanging and clapping and confusing the hell out of us; one of those enormous gilded paper dragons came undulating up (carried underneath by about 17 teenaged boys dressed to be the dragon's legs) and rested right there in the pavilion! Talk about a wake up call. Apparently it was some sort of Chinese "welcoming the emperor" ceremony, and they all walked down to the beach and lit incense and left offerings of oranges and animal vertebrae, sang and danced some more, and then took the whole procession elsewhere. It happened so fast, I hardly had time to rub the sleep out of my eyes and grab my camera. If not for those few photos I would swear that the whole thing happened in a strange Singaporean dream. Did it?
11:54AM
In-flight to Bangkok, Thailand
It's natural
These signs were EVERYWHERE. Rough translation: "Don't Mess With Singapore"
Strange Dream
No comments:
Post a Comment