Singapore

After 3 full days of being here I feel like I've formed a solid impression of this country/city. In every sense of the word, this is a melting pot. Much like the US, there is very little unique culture tied to the geographical location and historic population, rather the nation's culture is characterized by coexistence between many unique communities. This is pretty obvious in the language situation here. You think Canada is bad, mandating that everything be in French and English? Singapore has English, Chinese, Malay, and Tamil (sometimes Hindi) on pretty much every public sign. There is no majority language here at all. English is the standard, but more people speak Mandarin (still only about 30% of the population), so communicating is interesting. There are different districts throughout the city where the segregated ethnicities are based: Chinese, Malay, Indian, Indonesian, etc... and each of these cultures brings its own cuisine. The food in Singapore is terrific, abundant, and cheap. On any given street corner there are at least two restaurants stalls from each culture.

Race definitely comes into play here. All of the native/expat Caucasians I've seen have been wearing suits walking around the business districts. Lighter skinned East Asians make up most of the population and seem to make up the middle class. The darker the skin (Southern Indians, Bangladeshis, and Indonesians) are the only ones doing manual labor. Interesting how that plays out.

One of the biggest things I noticed here is how much "left sided traffic" on the roads affects EVERYTHING. People walk on the left side of the sidewalk (I kept running into people the first day), they use the left door to go into a building, the escalators are on the left side and people hold onto the left handrail while people pass on the right. There are so many situations in which I never would have noticed the importance of "left and right".

The weather is really hot, really humid, and really wet. It rains a LOT every few hours but then immediately gets sunny again. Normally a good thunderstorm would alleviate the humidity, but here the humidity just changes from thick air, to a sea of rain, and then back to thick air.

Capitalism is definitely the way of life in Singapore, and it seems a little forced at times. For example, sidewalks randomly end and there will be a sign warning that crossing the street to the next piece of sidewalk is illegal and will be punished by a hefty fine. How to cross the street? You have to go down into the "underpass" which just happens to run through a shopping mall. I imagine any big business can pay to have the sidewalk rerouted through their store. It's a lot more expensive here than anywhere throughout the rest of my trip will be; the prices are comparable to New York at times. (I saw a pint of beer for 25 bucks yesterday!) But this is still Asia -- bargains are to be had if you look hard enough (a full street meal is about 3 bucks).

When I woke up on my first morning, I decided I would just walk around with my map and see the major tourist sites. I stopped by the famous Raffles Hotel, which was nice but nothing to write home about. The Esplanade is very cool. It's Singapore's version of the Sydney Opera House, but it looks more like the eye of a fly. I stopped at a "hawker center" for lunch, which was a sensory overload. Thousands of people, hundreds of food vendors, dozens of national cuisines, and very low prices. I walked down Orchard Street which is basically a 4 mile long tourist trap/shopping mall, and I wasn't very impressed. I strolled along Emerald Hill, which is I guess one of the early colonial neighborhoods which the government hasn't torn down yet to build skyscrapers. I spent the afternoon at the National Botanic Gardens which was definitely the highlight of my day. The manicured fields nestled between jungle flora and fauna, a 4 hectare patch of primary-growth jungle/rain forest, and an impressive orchid garden were worth the schlep. (Mom - your orchids would actually rival a lot of what I saw there.)

The second day rained continuously. I don't think I saw the sun once, but for some reason it wasn't as depressing as an overcast day back in New Jersey. I took the train up to the middle of the Island to see the Kong Meng San Phor Kark See Buddhist Monastery, which is the biggest one in the country and very impressive. There clearly aren't many tourists that make the trip up there because when getting off the train and riding the bus to get there I got many confused glances. Walking around the beautifully ornate Chinese style temples and pagodas for a few hours was very peaceful. It was the first time I had ever been to an authentic Asian temple, so I was pretty excited. There was a large, open room with an ENORMOUS golden Buddha statue, where I got to spend some time meditating with the monks. This was clearly not an appropriate place for tourists and pictures, but I managed to snap one. After the monastery, I got back on the train which looped around the entire country in about an hour. It all looks the same - not much geographic or architectural diversity. I got off at the Chinese Gardens, which are a series of Chinese and Japanese style pagodas, gardens, sculptures, bridges, and bonsai trees on an Island in the middle of a lake. It was very cool. Afterwards, I was pretty beat so I came back to the hostel, grabbed some dinner, and headed up to the garden/bar on the roof where I met the first American I've seen all trip who is spending the first semester of his 8th year of college here, a dread locked Australian surfer who has been living in Indonesia for the past year (who is on his way to England BY LAND), and a very inebriated Colombian guy who loves New York. I'll probably go out to have a drink with them tonight.

Today I spent my morning walking around Little India, Little Arabia, and the Quays while I waited for Brian to get here. I was exhausted so I took a nap, and when I woke up and walked downstairs, he was in the lobby checking in. Perfect timing! Having been here for three days I have an idea of what is actually interesting to see in Singapore, and I brought him around the city on a condensed one-day tour, as we're planning on leaving for Indonesia early tomorrow morning and he won't get another chance to see Singapore.

Sorry that was so long, but now the blog is up to date!!

I've been posting all of my pictures, which you should definitely check out and comment on. Here is the link: http://picasaweb.google.com/MxMrshll/Asia

(It's also listed on the right side of my blog..)

That's all for now!