After Melaka, we boarded the train enroute to the last destination of our trip: Singapore. Crossing the border by train is pretty seamless. The train stops in Johor Bahru – the southernmost city in Malaysia – and immigration agents board and quickly stamp your passport. After that is completed, the train goes over the Johor Strait and into the Singapore Woodlands station in the northern section of Singapore Island, which takes about 10 minutes. A lot of people boarded and exited between these two stations and I can imagine that there is a fair amount of commuting that goes back and forth – especially given the exorbitant price of Singaporean real estate.
We went through Singapore immigration, which was efficient, and then were deposited on the other side of the train station to find out that there are no ATMs to be found in the station, nor is it connected to the MRT public train system. This was an issue because we had no Singaporean Dollars and the frequent bus to the nearest MRT station cost money. So we decided to wait in the long queue for a taxi. Eventually it was our turn and we stopped at an ATM enroute to our hotel on Orchard Road & Scotts Road.
We stayed at the Royal Plaza Hotel, a recently renovated hotel that was definitely the best hotel that we stayed in during our entire trip. This did not come cheap, however. Prices in Singapore are incredibly high, and we discovered early on that our stay in Singapore was definitely going to be a vampire on our travel budget. The conversion rate in Singapore is $0.80=S$1, but everything was at least two or three times more expensive. For example, an average price for a cheap beer (i.e. Tiger Beer) was $8! (Don't believe me? Check it out at
pintprice.com). In Thailand, the average price for a cheap beer (i.e. Changa or Singha) is $2, to give some idea of the difference. Also in Singapore, if they can find an opportunity to charge you money for something, they will do it. It doesn't help that 1 in 6 Singaporeans are millionaires (and probably the other 5/6 aren't too far behind) and so spend money without batting an eye.
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| The lobby of our hotel. |
But besides being a moneypit, Singapore is an incredibly nice and easy city to visit. English is the official language, and all signage and information is in English. Yes, as you've heard, the laws in Singapore are very strict ($500 fine for eating on the MRT!), but the positive effect of these strict laws is probably the cleanest big city I have ever been to. The modernity and wealth of Singapore is everywhere, from the modern architecture to the fashionable people frequenting designer stores. Our hotel was located almost in the heart of the commercial district of Singapore – Orchard Road – and was block after block of enormous and glitzy malls and shopping centers.
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| Near our hotel, the entrance to the very fashionable Ion shopping center. |
We were also a few minutes walk from the Orchard Road MRT station, which was very convenient. Like Bangkok and KL, the Singapore public transportation system is clean, efficient, and comprehensive. (This might also have to do with the fact that
buying a car in Singapore will cost you at least $67,000 in additional registration and licensing fees.)
Arriving in the late afternoon, and after checking in to the hotel, we ventured out and got our bearings of the shopping neighborhood. There is an overwhelming amount of choice in these capitalist-intensive places, and we found that we became incredibly indecisive when it came to things like what store to visit or which restaurant to enter. For dinner on our first night, we settled on a large food court called
Food Republic, which is a chain whose concept is a hawker stall street with open seating like a food court. It was packed and, again, featured far too many choices of food to decide upon, but we found some good things: Emily got the famous Singaporean Duck-Rice and I got Indonesian food. After dinner, we decided to see the movie
The Sessions – a fabulous movie based on a real story about a man with severe disabilities (played brilliantly by one of my favorite actors, John Hawkes) that seeks out a sex therapist and surrogate (also played brilliantly by Helen Hunt). It was kind of an 'indy' movie, although one that has gotten a lot of buzz, and it was refreshing to find movies in Singapore that weren't just the latest Hollywood blockbuster.
The next day we indulged in the Royal Plaza's fantastic breakfast buffet and then took the MRT to the Raffles Hotel, a very famous historic landmark of the city. It was a little disheartening to see a bunch of coach buses off-loading cruise ship tourists (the upper-middle-aged, fanny-pack-wearing, floppy hat kind) as we approached the hotel, but we knew that it would be kind of a touristy place. However, we figured we would play the 'tourist card' ourselves and indulge in a (very over-priced)
Singapore Sling at its place of origin: The Long Bar at the Raffles Hotel.
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| The entrance to The Raffles Hotel, which is still probably the swankiest (read: most expensive) hotel in Singapore. |
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| One of the many courtyards at The Raffles. |
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| The busy tourist scene at The Long Bar. |
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Emily got the Singapore Sling, I got a drink created by
Ernest Hemingway (when he stayed at The Raffles). |
From The Raffles, we walked down to the canal and made a pilgrimage of sorts to a brewpub called Brewerkz for lunch. Anyone that really knows me knows that I love really hoppy and bitter beers – things like IPAs, double-IPAs, and, especially, fresh-hopped or whole-cone-hopped ales like
Surley Wet). Unfortunately for me, the beer scene in Asia is incredibly lacking in this department. All you can find, anywhere in Asia, is light lagers like Tiger, Singha, Tsingtao, Sapporo, etc. While these beers do taste good and pair with Asian food well, I just need some hops dagnabbit! In Bhutan, at least one out of the two beers here is a weissbier (Red Panda) and mildly more interesting than the lager (Druk Lager).
And so we went to Brewerkz, which I had researched on the internet as having the best microbrew in the city. By any other measure, the beer would be slightly above average brewpub fare, but to me, coming from hop-deprived-Bhutan, it was a revelation! I had the
xIPA, which was as hoppy as I could get and just so happened to win the World Beer Cup several years ago. Not too shabby. We also got lunch, which was decent but standard (not to mention extremely over-priced) pub food.
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| Pretty building on our walk from The Raffles. |
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| The Singapore River, through the heart of downtown. |
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| Happy as a hop! |
After the beer and lunch, we went to the
Asian Civilizations Museum near the waterfront, which is a very nice and well put-together museum much like the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco (which I frequented often). It was perhaps a little too big, and after several hours we were starting to drag from all of the standing, walking, and midday alcohol. We decided to go back to the hotel for awhile and rest in the late afternoon. For dinner we ate a nice Chinese dumpling (
Xiaolongbao) place in one of the malls nearby and then went to the movies again to see
Argo (also excellent).
On our last day in Singapore (and of our trip), we decided to check out the
New York Times' recommended Gardens By The Bay. This new park is located on reclaimed land on the Marina and is a beautiful expanse of tropical plants, ponds, lakes, trails, and sculpture. It is also very unique because there are two amazing biodomes that won World Building of the Year last year at the World Architecture Festival. One of these biodomes is a mediterranean climate featuring flowers and plants from places like the Mediterranean, Australian, South Africa, Chile, and California. The other dome features an amazing 35m indoor waterfall (world's largest) and is a unique
cloud forest climate. But, before we entered the domes, we went up into the 'Super Trees' which are very tall metal tree structures with living plants growing out of them. One of the things that makes Gardens By The Bay so impressive is its uber-sustainability model. The Super Trees are really gigantic solar and rain water collectors and both power the buildings and provide water for the bathrooms and plants. There is also a biomass generator underneath the park that is recycling plant material for electricity, heating and cooling, and fertilizer. You can read more about it
here. The entire park produces zero-waste and is carbon and electrically net-positive.
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| The 'Super Trees'. |
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| The park offers a view of the Singapore Flyer. |
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| Up in the 'tree canopy' which is at the same height as the tree canopy of a tropical rainforest. |
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| The biodomes. |
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| Succulents inside the Flower Dome. |
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| Fuzzy cactus that looks like a Tribble from Star Trek. |
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Emily plays with one of the interactive stations teaching visitors
about environmental sustainability. |
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| The Cloud Forest waterfall. |
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| Carnivorous plants! |
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| Up at the top of the Cloud Forest mountain, seven stories above the ground. |
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| Emily and I and a giant mirror. |
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| Looking up to the catwalks above. |
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| A storm is brewing. Our entire time in Singapore was pretty rainy and cloudy. |
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| A biodome and an ominous sky. |
After the super trees and biodomes, and lunch at a food court hawker stall place in the Gardens, we went to the nearby
Marina Bay Sands – an impressive architectural feat of three buildings connected by a sky deck shaped like a boat. I think I'll just let Wikipedia do the describing here:
"Marina Bay Sands is an Integrated Resort fronting Marina Bay in Singapore. Developed by Las Vegas Sands, it is billed as the world's most expensive standalone casino property at S$8 billion, including cost of the prime land. With the casino complete, the resort features a 2,561-room hotel, a 1,300,000-square-foot (120,000 m2) convention-exhibition centre, the 800,000-square-foot (74,000 m2) The Shoppes at Marina Bay Sands mall, a museum, two large theatres, seven "celebrity chef" restaurants, two floating Crystal Pavilions, an ice skating rink, and the world's largest atrium casino with 500 tables and 1,600 slot machines. The complex is topped by a 340m-long SkyPark with a capacity of 3,900 people and a 150m infinity swimming pool, set on top of the world's largest public cantilevered platform, which overhangs the north tower by 67m. The 20-hectare resort was designed by Moshe Safdie."
Indeed, the building was as impressive in person as the statistics tell it above. We went up to the SkyPark, but unfortunately could not get into the pool area (for paying guests only) but did see Singapore stretched out before us on a tiny observation deck. We did not go to the casino (Singapore sucked enough money out of us as it was), but instead went to the Shoppes at Marina Bay Sands to have English High Tea at the
TWG Teashop, which has been operating in Singapore since 1837 (although certainly not at this location originally). The teashop was weirdly located in the middle of a mall rotunda, but it was pleasant enough. The Shoppes at Marina Bay Sands has to be one of the swankiest malls we were in during our entire trip and featured – I kid you not – a canal that ran through it in which you could ride a gondola. (I didn't get a picture of this, for some reason.)
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| Looking up at the Marina Bay Stands from the Super Trees at Gardens By The Bay. |
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| An aerial view of the 'Super Trees' from the SkyPark atop the Marina Bay Sands. |
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| View from the top. |
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| Enjoying our afternoon tea. |
After tea, we went to the ArtScience Museum located on the Marina Sands property and is also designed by
Moshe Safdie (a famous "starchitect"). I was excited because the ArtScience Museum was featuring an exhibit by the artist Nathan Sawaya, who is unique in that he does all of his sculpture with Lego bricks. (I had heard of him a few years ago through a
Studio360 episode on NPR.) The exhibit lived up to its hype and proved to be an amazing experience. It probably also helped that the art combined my childhood passion of Legos with my more adult taste of visually striking and emotionally visceral sculpture. There was also another exhibit featuring photography from the
Magnum Group, which is a co-operative of well-known photographers. Since I also love photography just as much as Legos and sculpture, I also enjoyed this exhibit.
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Hard to see here, but the Art Science Museum is shaped like a giant lotus flower and collects
rainwater through its 'rain oculist' that is used to water the building. |
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| The amazing art of Nathan Sawaya. |
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| Emily poses with her fake family in the photography exhibit. |
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| Me, if I were Malaysian-Chinese ... apparently. |
It had been a long afternoon and we were pretty beat by the end of it. We retreated back to the Orchard Road area for a little more shopping and fast-food dinner before heading back to the hotel to pack one last time for the return voyage to Bhutan.
Post Script – Reflections on Travel
I am of the opinion that travel not only exposes the world to you, but it is just as much an act of discovering yourself; exposing your personality, your opinions, your assumptions, your feelings about humanity. Travelling in foreign countries is especially good at doing this, as you are in a place with different languages, social norms, religions, customs, foods, and expectations. I have been very fortunate in the past year to get plenty of these kinds of experiences; from learning to live in Bhutan, to the trials of tribulations of being a tourist in India, and now to Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore. In these places I constantly feel exposed when I can't read and understand the language, am unfamiliar with the directions, when I don't know how to do something or get something accomplished. Ultimately, it is a lesson in patience, ignorance, and humility. Sometimes when travelling in unfamiliar places, you need to completely remove your expectations and submit yourself fully to just being in that unfamiliar places with its own rules and norms. It is an act of submission that every traveller should experience.
I say this, because sometimes I can get caught up with too many expectations about the way things are 'supposed to be.' This can be disastrous as a tourist and can make for a very unpleasant trip – especially to a continent like Asia. One thing that I have learned in Bhutan is to just be in the experience of the moment. Yes, I would love for everything to be on time, but perhaps it is me that needs to alter my expectations and not them. Yes, I would love for everything to be clean and tidy, but what are the reasons that they are not? Could it be that people throw trash on the ground other than to personally offend me? Yes, I would love the bus and taxi drivers to slow down, to observe traffic laws, to drive more conservatively, but I have to trust that they are better drivers in a place they grew up driving than I would be having learned to drive in entirely different circumstances.
If you've read through all of our blog posts pertaining to our trip through SE Asia, you will have probably picked up a few themes. One of the most prevalent theme is our mutual dislike of developed tourist areas. The reason for this, I think, is that it does not allow the traveller to experience the realities of travelling. It fulfills their already-existing expectations, reinforces their stereotypes, and disconnects them from experiencing any sort of self-discovery. Our favorite places on this trip have all been places that mostly existed for themselves and not for any sort of tour package or cruise itinerary. These especially include the beautiful near-solitude of Ko Tarutao and the bubbling-pot of culture and history of Penang. To a lesser extent, this also included Bangkok, KL, and Singapore, although these places can be touristy as well. I would much rather get completely lost in a Chinatown somewhere than take a duck boat tour any day.
On this trip I read a lot, and finished several excellent books (How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization, by Franklin Foer; The Wind-Up Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi; American Gods, by Neil Gaiman; The Gift of Rain, by Tan Twan Eng). At the end of the trip, I started Paul Theroux's Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, and it has been a powerful reflection on his own travels as well as the act of travel in general. This seemed like an appropriate way to end this trip, and I will leave you with the articulate words of Paul Theroux:
"Luxury is the enemy of observation, a costly indulgence that induces such a good feeling that you notice nothing. Luxury spoils and infantilizes you and prevents you from knowing the world. That is its purpose, the reason why luxury cruises and great hotels are full of fatheads who, when they express an opinion, seem as though they are from another planet. It was also my experience that one of the worst aspects of travelling with wealthy people, apart from the fact that the rich never listen, is that they constantly groused about the high cost of living – indeed, the rich usually complained of being poor." (p. 18)
"Travel can induce such a distinct and nameless feeling of strangeness and disconnection in me that I feel insubstantial, like a puff of smoke, merely a ghost, a creepy revenant from the underworld, unobserved and watchful among real people, wandering, listening while remaining unseen. Being invisible – the usual condition of the older traveller – is much more useful than being obvious. You see more, you are not interrupted, you are ignored. Such a traveller isn't in a hurry, which is why you might mistake him for a bum. Hating schedules, depending on chance encounters, I am attracted by travel's slow tempo." (p. 2)
"The best of travel seems to exist outside of time, as though the years of travel are not deducted from your life. Travel also holds the magical possibility of reinvention: that you might find a place you love, to begin a new life and never go home. In a distant place no one knows you – nearly always a plus. And you can pretend, in travel, to be different from the person you are, unattached, enigmatic, younger, richer or poorer, anyone you choose to be, the rebirth that many travelers experience if they go far enough." (p. 3)
