48 Hours in Singapore

Merlions and Tea Time: Singapore, the Southeast Asian curveball

Just when the cheese cravings subsided again, the sound of farang-farang! being called out from every passing motorbike became a familiar white noise; just when I'd re-resigned myself to the normalcy of finding cockroaches in the dry oatmeal and bicycling to work through ankle-deep flood water every other Monday; just when I thought I'd seen it all in my travels to Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Vietnam - I landed in Singapore.

Way to really throw off my Southeast Asian groove, SG.

Am I still in Asia??! Is this still 2011?? Am I going to get arrested for the pack of Trident Splash gum I forgot to take out of my purse? These are the things I had to wonder as Katie and I observed shiny rows of designer shops and restaurants, tourists teetering in 4-inch platform heels with shopping bags slung over their tiny arms, fingerprint scanning machines ping-ing Singaporeans through lines, and Asian people actually forming lines... It wasn't like any version of this continent I'd seen before. And it was just the Customs line at Changi airport.

Marina Bay Sands: doing what's never been done
with a boat before

Katie and my 48-hour vacation in Singapore a few weekends ago was a blissful melody of high-end (window) shopping, eating (heavy emphasis on the eating), and hanging out with a whopping 14-plus English-speaking foreigners our age all at once (What?! More than all of Nan province combined!).  We owe the success of our trip to our amazing host, Andrew, who guided us through the shiny squeaky-clean interiors of modern city buses and the MRT subway, the neon-colored nightclubs of Clarke Quay (you mean that club song isn't Thai??) and stunning silver panoramic views of the marina, lined with collossal and ambitious feats of architecture. (The Marina Bay Sands hotel stands front-and-center: an enormous ship stacked on top of 3 sky-scraping towers - and the Esplanade theaters loom above the waterfront like a giant aluminum durian fruit). Singapore didn't just transport us back into a western way of living - it catapulted us into a futuristic Asia leaps and bounds ahead of neighbors like Laos and Cambodia, and even Thailand. This is, after all, a city-country where efficiency and cleanliness are next to godliness, crime and disease are virtually non-existent, and even a landfill is a tourist attraction.

Soup inside dumplings. Sign me up.

We Nan-ians found that, despite its gleaming shiny new exterior and being famous for national pastimes of "Shopping and Eating" (the Singaporean PiAers couldn't refute it), Singapore boasts its own unique splash of Asian swag - it just might charge extra and make you clean up after it. But let no hater hate on a country with an official national pastime of eating when it offers the kind of feasting we partook in that weekend. Butter chicken masala, garlic and CHEESE naan, chicken rice, popiah spring rolls, fresh red apple carrot juice, soup dumplings, barbecue stingray, "carrot cake" (made with neither carrots nor cake, but a whole lot of other fried deliciousness), mozzarella sticks, Indian chaat with chutney, samosas, ice cream sandwiches on flaky-baked bread rolls... we even threw in a 5 am McGriddle at the 2-story 24-hour McDonald's (which also offers delivery), just because we could. Did I mention I was only visiting for 48 hours?

Giving Singapore a sweet farewell.

In between eating copious amounts of food and attending my first theme party since college (alliterated, as all good theme parties are: "Hipster n' Hood"), we were able to cover a pretty huge chunk of Singapore's "must-sees." Katie, Andrew and I walked Arab Street and the Sultan Mosque, visited the British-instated Raffles Hotel - where the Singapore Sling was invented - and grab an overpriced beer at a modern rooftop sports bar. We passed signs celebrating Singapore's 40-something birthday, stocked up on English-language magazines from the convenience stores, and waited in long organized lines for taxi cabs downtown. The three of us compared notes on teaching and students (Andrew teaches Chemistry to university students... a little different than the nose-picking-hand-holding-ice-cream-licking Bosses and Juniors of my daily routine), as well as impressions of our respective Asian hometowns. Andrew told us that Singapore is such a safe place, people will often leave their wallet or car keys to save a table at a hawker food court - everyone is so well off, and the punishment for theft so severe, that no one would bother stealing it.

Little India

On Sunday, mild HnH hangovers in tow, we walked through Little India under a sweltering Singaporean sun, past trinket shops and restaurant hawkers calling out their specialties - "Hello miss! Tikka masala! Paneer!"; we ducked under the umbrellas of food stall alleys, where Tamil men watched cricket games on a television set while sipping tall cans of Kingfisher beer; we passed the colorful Veeramakaliamman Temple, closed momentarily to visitors but crowded along the sidewalk with photo-snapping tourists. As Andrew pointed out, Little India isn't so much a mini India in Singapore - it's more Singapore's idea of what India should look like, in Singapore. I guess that idea pretty much sums up this place: a designed city, a city of what cities "should" look like. 

Farang-exclusive!

The next day, Katie and I made the 3-hour flight and 6-hour bus trek back to the N-a-n. I found out that a year-old paparazzi photo of me and Aj. Emily Hebner had emerged in a center-spread Thai magazine article about Nan city; my favorite waitress at Phufa Coffee dropped it on my table with my order and then ran away giggling (typical reaction to me). 


So, even though I left behind the bumping nightclubs, international cuisine at my fingertips, and Orchard Road boutiques as our AirAsia flight took off from the gleaming city nightlights of Singapore - at least I know I can still live the life of a celebrity, right here in my own Asian backyard.