June 22 2006 - Singapore mon Amore

Singapore was Lee’s first love in Asia. Now he thinks its “boring”. But I’ve heard so much about this city, and I’ve never been here, so I was really excited to finally get to see it. We flew in yesterday afternoon. Lee gave me a brief tour of Orchard Road, the main shopping district, and then we met Frank Sommerfelt (a 3M friend from Columbia) for a tour of his house, and dinner at a curry restaurant.

My first impressions? Singapore is hot, yes, but no hotter than Hong Kong this time of year. And Hong Kong is more humid. Hong Kong is the most humid place I’ve ever been. Singapore is way, way, WAY more westernized than Hong Kong. There’s a reason it’s called “Asia for beginners”! All the signs are in English. The primary language is English; people may speak a different language in their homes (Mandarin, Malay, Indonesian, Urdu, etc.) but they all speak English. They have a weird accent though. Lots of times today I thought people were speaking a foreign language, but then I listened a little more closely and realized that they were speaking English!

Frank and his family live in a nice HOUSE (a HOUSE, nobody lives in houses in Hong Kong unless they are jillioniares). They have a car; there are a lot more cars, for sure. Singapore has a nice subway system, and cheap taxis, like Hong Kong. The crowds are nearly as intense as Hong Kong. It’s even safer than Hong Kong, if such a thing is possible. It’s FLAT!

I thought Singapore was supposed to be really authoritarian (you know, the city where gum-chewing is illiegal). But people cross the street against red lights here just like they do in Hong Kong. It IS tidy though (not as tidy as Japan but still). People are very friendly too!

Singaporeans like to eat. There are some must-do culinary experiences that I’m being taken to this week, or told to go and experience myself. The curry place last night was one of them. It was a hole in the wall restaurant. You sit down at a formica table and they bring out a plastic “banana leaf”. There’s no menu, they just start serving you various types of curry until you tell them to stop. It’s cheap…and good. I had a lime juice with my curry – kind of limeade, but not as sweet.

Today I played tourist. First I walked down Orchard Road and checked out the shopping. There was a nice variety of stores – from high end to low. There are lots and lots of stores. Orchard Road reminded me vaguely of the Chanse Ellisee (you know, the famous road in Paris that I CANNOT spell!). It’s a broad boulevard, with shops on both sides, sidewalk café’s etc. There were some interesting sales going on, but I didn’t see anything that I absolutely had to have.

Next I went to Chinatown, and it was fun, but sort of odd, after all I live in China CITY now! But the architecture here is charming, a mix of oriental cultures and colonial buildings. There are a lot more colonial buildings remaining here. It seems like Singapore has done a better job of retaining things from their past than Hong Kong. Well, they have more livable landmass, even though it’s a smaller island, they don’t have a giant mountain sticking up in the middle of it!

After Chinatown I wasn’t ready to quit quite yet…so I ate lunch in a Hawker stand. This is an open-air food court, with dozens of different stands with all kinds of food. The trouble was, most of it I had no idea what it was, so I ended up trying something pretty tame – chicken and noodles. I wish I had been with someone that knew a little about the food here. After you get your food you just sit anywhere. I sat at a table with some people. They were poking at what they ordered and laughing and tasting it. Although I think they were speaking Mandarin I could tell they weren’t sure what it was. I said to them – “you’re braver than me, you ordered something and you don’t know what it is!” They laughed some more and replied “well, we know its pork; we were just trying to decide what part of the pig it was!” Braver than me is right….

I decided to go through the River/Park/Colonial area before heading back to the hotel. It was really pretty….a Park with lots of WW II memorials, more colonial buildings, little restaurants along the river, and lots of flowers.

Now I’m back at the hotel. In a little while I’m meeting Lee and some co-workers at a Chinese restaurant for dinner. Then, I have to decide what to do tomorrow. Little India? The Arab Quarter? One of the little islands? The Botanical Gardens? Stay tuned!