Travel with Indigo

As we approached the massive harbor at Singapore (which Aussies call Singers), we could see what appeared to be tall buildings extending across the entire horizon before us. As we drew nearer, what had seemed to be buildings turned out to have been the ramparts of a vast fleet of empty cargo ships lying at anchor in the roadstead idled by the global recession. I’ve never seen so many ships gathered together in one place in my life, an impressive and sobering sight. To offset the momentary melancholy at such a sight I felt the considerable elation that comes of not being a commercial ship owner.

Singapore is the world’s busiest port and after Hong Kong (Honkers to the Aussies) the second busiest container port. In keeping with its status, entering it by vessel is much like flying into Heathrow by plane. The captain is required to check in to port control, which monitors us on radar and directs us into traffic separation zones, instructs us to allow faster vessels to overtake on one side or the other, sets speeds, permits other vessels to cross our path or hold in position, monitors anchoring sites. Even though so many ships sit unused with only skeleton crews, the radio crackles with activity. I can only imagine what this place is like during boom times.

Captain John guided us skillfully through the maze of ships into our berth at the Kepple Bay Marina set in the midst of an enormous modern condo development. At the end of the new floating docks is a complex of restaurants and bars that we happily used often. There is also a security patrolled circular drive from which we were picked up and delivered by our drivers, two Chinese Singaporean guys named Sam and Dave (really!).

The city-state of Singapore has been called Disney World with a death penalty, which is only slightly unfair. It is by far the tidiest city you could imagine. There are enforced laws against chewing gum, spitting, littering, urinating in public, smoking in public places, jaywalking, and failing to flush the toilet. In the recent past, and on occasion now, you could be caned for any of these offenses. Fines for public smoking are up to $500 and littering $1,000. Public displays of affection and a scruffy appearance, once misdemeanors, now still draw frowns of disapproval. The city has the florid landscaping of a gated community, its buildings all seem freshly painted, and urban squalor is not to be found anywhere. It also has the death penalty–by hanging, mind you–for even the slightest drug use or possession and lots of other offenses.  It’s no wonder that crime is not really a serious problem.

But the place has other problems. If you like a city to have an overlay of smog, graffiti decorated public spaces, a touch of squalor here and there, if you find slums rustic or quaintly charming, if windblown trash adds for you an air of festivity, if you enjoy the thrill of risking a mugging, then you’ll find Singapore unsatisfactory. These just aren’t there.

Singapore is Southeast Asia’s shopping center chock-a-block with enormous high-rise malls, now eerily unattended, dominating the mid-town skyline. Our favorite of these was its least imposing. Orchard Towers, located in the very heart of the prime addresses, is a careworn four-story affair with small floor plates and a central escalator, its shops mostly Indian and Chinese tailors, cheapjacks, and a few restaurants. By a wide measure, though, its prime attraction is its plethora of energetic nightclubs and bars. And of these the most incongruous was a country and western bar that specialized in honky tonk music. I could never go in the place without breaking out in a big grin. There’s just something comical about very short, brown skinned Asian bar girls parading about the place, their faces barely visible under enormous western hats, singing along to Patsy Cline or Hank Williams songs. I just loved it and went there often.

While we were there the Chinese New Year celebration was in full swing. This two-week long party featured colorful dragon parades, lots of fireworks, concerts appealing to every possible taste, various exhibits of Straits Chinese culture, and hawker stalls selling every manner of street food. If you have doubts about the avariciousness of the Chinese, consider their common New Year’s greeting, “I hope that you gain lots of money.”

During this time, I visited a Chinese Buddhist temple and was awed by its elaborate ornamentation—a snippy modernist might call it ostentatious—and the sophisticated elegance of its interior spaces. Red lacquered walls with hundreds of gold recesses each holding a miniature Buddha, a ceiling of three stories to accommodate a twenty-foot high, gold leaf-encrusted stylized replica of the great Buddha himself and two lesser figures at his side, congregants genuflecting deeply while waving aromatic joss sticks in the hope that the Great One will grant them good fortune, long life and happiness. It all made the most ornate Christian churches of Europe seem primitive and clunky by contrast.

While there a service was going on in which offerings of fruit and other food and drink were being made, I think to ancestors awaiting their return trip to earth. Saffron cloaked monks chanted mantras to bless the offerings and their intended recipients. Both tourists and worshippers walked about the building with a reverential air, but the place was thronged, and this in mid-week.

There was a fund raising effort underway. One of the ways to entice money from the pockets of the ever frugal Chinese was through the sale of miniature Buddhist gods associated with the year and month of their birth. By using a handy guide, I determined that I was born in the year of the rooster, which meant that my god was, I must confess, the most fearsome looking of them all. His skin rendered in ceramic was a middling blue, which I was told was an artist’s way of depicting black, and he had fangs protruding from the corners of his snarling mouth. To acquire this thing I needed only to pay $3,000, which I thought was quite a lot. He is supposed to bring me all sorts of good fortune but on this point I had doubts. I mean after all, the stock market debacle was well underway by then and what had he done about that. I think I’d rather have a fistful of free drink tickets for the honky tonk bar providing me at least the sensation of prosperity and at a fraction of the price.

In addition to shopping, the other obsession of Singaporeans is food. Some of the world’s finest restaurants are here for sure but it’s the street vendors, or hawkers, that serve up some of the best and least costly food. Some of it didn’t sound particularly edible, like pig’s organ soup and bird’s nest soup and fried dung beetle, but for the most part it was delicious and fun.