It was the last nearby capital city that I had yet to visit, and since I had to leave Indonesia to get a new social/cultural visa, I decided to snatch up a relatively cheap air ticket (about $80 round trip) and visit Singapore for this vital errand.
This tiny Southeast Asian city-state, founded by British colonizer extraordinaire Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles and ushered into a developed and bustling modernity by strongman-cum-intellectual Lee Kuan Yew, is home to a towering skyline, sleek and efficient infrastructure, little visible poverty and in some quarters highly overt opulence. Singapore was once called “Disneyland with the death penalty” for its kid-friendly, crime-free streets and draconian penal system (mandatory death sentences for drug possession).
Other than that stuff, it isn’t really famous for much else, I gathered as I combed through the literature online on the eve of my departure from the island of Lombok.
Add to the list: expensive. As I was travelling with my girlfriend, we chose (idiotically) not to find a place to stay on Couchsurfing.org and assumed that we’d find some mildewed and stained guesthouse in an alley somewhere at a non-bankrupting cost.
We were penuriously wrong. A backpacker’s hostel near Chinatown was the cheapest accommodation we could find in the Lion City – roughly $30 US apiece for beds in a gloomy dormitory packed to the vents with other snoring, farting sojourners. But what could we do? The penalty for sleeping in a park in Singapore is most likely some kind of amputation, so that was not an option. We accepted our lot and soldiered on.
Singapore does have a nice street food culture, it must be said, even if it is still a few more bucks-per-meal than any other Southeast Asian city. It is lucky to have a large population of not only Chinese but Malayans and Indians, making for a deliciously cornucopian cuisine. However, whereas in Hanoi, Bangkok or Beijing one can find god-in-a-bowl for one to two dollars, prices hovered between four and six dollars in Singapore.
However, in spite of the reeling feeling that our visa run had by then taken on the cost of a honeymoon, we were able to take in some of the more interesting things in the city.
The Arulmigu Sri Rajakaliamman Hindu Temple is resplendent, with impressive statuary and ritualistic minutiae of the Indian religion. The Haw Par Villa ‘Buddhist hell theme park’ is more than enough to terrify anyone into following the eightfold path. The Arab Street district had some impressive mosques and alleyway shops with interesting imports and antiques. The nearly 200-year-old Armenian Church is a wonderful place of much-needed quietude in the teeming metropolis.
I hate to be negative in my review of this hyper-developed, modern, rich city, but it is obvious that its opulence has come at a cost: it has no soul. Of course that is only my opinion, but I prefer places where people sit around on the sidewalks at night playing half-destroyed guitars and ask you to come into their houses for coffee after five minutes of hanging out.
I don’t think Singapore will ever be like that, but they do have a big new casino/resort that’s important or notable for some reason that I forget.