Singapore

Leaving at 10:45PM, I lost 3 hours arriving at 6:00AM in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and slept for most of the trip. I have been moving progressively up the socioeconomic ladder – Nepal is very third world, India is a chaotic, corrupt second world mess, and Sri Lanka and Maldives are a significant step up from that. The Kuala Lumpur airport is big and beautiful. Easy to navigate, I had almost 2 hours till my next flight and took the train over to the Satellite Terminal for a venti mocha at Starbucks. It was then a short one hour flight to Singapore, which also has a spectacular new airport. After 5 minutes in the immigration line, I had my free visa in 20 seconds. It took at least an hour to fill out my visa application and get all the documentation for the India Transit Visa and then an hour waiting to hand it in, only to find I needed more documentation. After being initially told it would take five days to process, it grew to seven a few hours later and I had to cancel my entire Bhutan trip – and this was only to sit in 2 airports for about 12 hours on my way to Bhutan. One thing I didn’t do was offer the Indian Consulate baksheesh, maybe that would have helped. When I suggested to the woman at the Indian Consulate that they had the most difficult visa in the world, she got argued that it was easy!

SINGAPORE – THE TRIP April 13 – 15, 2013.
In Singapore, I got some money exchanged, bought a Lonely Planet SE Asia on a Shoestring, got a rail pass, and hopped on the train to go to my hostel in Chinatown. With two fast changes of metro, I got to within about 200m of the Beary Good Hostel, and found it easily about 1 1/2 hours after landing. Wow, a country that really works. Except for the temperature difference, you could be transplanted into Vancouver Chinatown and hardly know the difference. With two big sightseeing days planned, I masochistically set out in the midday heat, but was acclimatized from the Maldives. Some of the streets in Chinatown are pedestrian only but are impinged on both sides by shops spilling out from the sidewalks. Clothes, souvenirs, traditional Chinese medicine, and jewelry are big. The Chinatown Heritage Center focuses on the squalid living conditions the early Chinese immigrants once endured. Chinatown’s most photographed and recognizable icon is the Sri Mariamman Temple, Singapore’s oldest Hindu house of worship – adorned with wildly colorful statues of gods and cattle. Thian Hock Keng Temple is the city’s oldest Hokkien building with elaborately carved and painted beams, panels, and dragons adorning the roofs. There was a detailed description of devination lots used to predict your future luck. The religions all are mixtures of Hinduism, Buddhism and Chinese influences.

Chinatown is bordered on the north by a commercial area filled with huge, modern skyscrapers housing all the big North American, European and Asian banks. When built in 1928, the Fullerton Building was Singapore’s biggest building. The magnificent collumnaded structure served as the city’s post office until converted into a very posh 5-star hotel in 2000. I ducked in to get some respite from the heat, and see how the rich travel – it was afternoon tea and the tables were full of young oriental women eating elaborate canapes. Across Marina Bay is Singapore’s most iconic skyscraper, the Marina Bay Sands integrated resort; three large towers are joined on the top by a shallow boat shaped structure covered with palm trees. Large catamarans were racing in the small bay. The Merlion statue, a bizzare hybrid lion/fish spewing a torrent of water from its mouth, sits at the mouth of the Singapore River. Crossing the river, one enters the Colonial District with imposing relics of British rule fighting for space with all the wonderful new architecture. A cricket pitch, the Padang, is surrounded by the Victoria Concert Hall & Theater, Old Parliament House, St Andrews Cathedral, City Hall and Old Supreme Court, many shrouded in scaffold with major renovations going on. The Asian Civilization Museum has 10 galleries of different aspects of Asian culture. Well done, it was a lot to see on three hours of sleep. There are many Westerners walking around and many Caucasian men with Asian women. My hostel mates are almost all Asian with people from Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan, and the Philippines. They never go to bed before midnight, leave the lights on and seem to be constantly repacking their bags.

Despite good intentions, and because it was drizzling, I hardly left the hostel but napped, read my Lonely Planet, and worked on this all day. I really did not want to see the zoo, botanical gardens, bird park or go shopping. Let’s face it, shopping is what most people come to Singapore for. In fact, all I really want to do is go home. After 6 1/2 months on the road, the traveling is getting tiring. I need a vacation. The next morning, I rode the fantastic metro to the Golden Miles Complex and caught the bus to Kuala Lumpur. What a radical difference between the buses here and in India and Sri Lanka – air conditioned, luxurious, wide reclining seats, spotless luggage storage under the bus. After a quick visit to the Singapore exit checkpoint, we crossed the long 2nd link bridge into Malaysia.