I arrived at 5:45am into Changi Airport, feeling a bit sleepy even despite timing my sleep pattern like I normally do. I try to align my sleep pattern during flights with the next timezone and have avoided jet lag in my last several trips. As I write this from the future, my technique remains successful! I was able to do 5 days of roughly 15 hours of intense touring each without too much slowing down.
Customs was a breeze and I collected my bag and hopped on the East-West green line of the MRT (Mass Rapid Transit subway system in Singapore). The MRT is amazing!! It has five lines that form a comprehensive web over the entire city. Buses fill any small gaps that remain. I have attached an MRT map for you to follow along with.
Singapore is a metropolitan island off the southern coast of Malaysia with a population of about 5.4 million. It may seem huge, but it is only about the size of NYC, measuring 50km east-west and 26km north-south. Definitely bikeable. ☺
The people there are a crazy mix. There are Indians and Malays and Chinese and Middle Easterners and a speckling of Westerners. All come together with all their different languages and religions and they co-exist wonderfully in this city. I was constantly impressed with the tolerance both in the present and history of the nation. English is one of the official languages, as is Mandarin, Tamil and Malay. All important signs bear all four.
Singaporeans have an interesting sense of time. They are entirely prompt when it matters, but for casual outings or meetings, being late does not seem to be a problem. For a fast-paced person like myself, this can be a bit frustrating, but I learn to just check out other things when I wait. I made it to the Commonweath station and did some lovely people-watching while I waited for Daphne to arrive. As a solo white girl in a train station, I got some looks, but only one person asked if I was lost.
(For those who do not know, Daphne Ng was my LINK Partner at the University of Guelph for a semester. I showed her around the area and was a local source of information, opinion, and friendship. I invited her to my home to Vermont in April 2014 and we decided to swap roles this time).
Daphne arrived at 7:30am and we walked back to her place. Her father was nice enough to come and pick us up. A little sliding-door van with a company logo sat grumbling for us. Mr. Ng, an enthusiastic person with a great smile and eager-to-share attitude welcomed us inside. The rain was starting to come down now. Thunder cracked occasionally. We clunked along the main roads until we turned into Holland Close. I quickly remembered people drive on the left there...time for another transition period.
Daphne and her family live in one of hundreds of Housing & Development Board government public housing buildings. Singapore has the highest percentage of the population living in such government housing projects (~80%) and the highest percentage of self-ownership of their flats/homes (90%) in the world. They are all designed around the same idea: all necessities are within 5km of home. A cluster of them (each building is called a block and numbered) is around a village centre containing a such things as a clinic, school, fire/police station, food centre, etc. The quality of the flats can range from super-basic and cheap to luxurious and expensive. Daphne was in the Buona Vista Community area on Holland Close, right near Holland Village. Her block was about 11 storeys, with her on the 6th overlooking the school football field and tennis courts.
The inside of the flat was cozy: a living-dining room, kitchen, three bedrooms, laundry area and bathroom. I got a kick out of the bathroom, which had a sliding-door shower, but the water drained OUT of the shower stall into a drain on the main bathroom floor. Because of this, the bathroom was almost always with a wet floor. Washing is also hung outside the window on long poles or racks. When it rains, they can be set-up inside or the person waits it out with dirty underwear.
I bunked in Daphne's room on a spare mattress on the floor. It was great! The weather was so hot I barely needed a sheet and the set-up met all my needs. I never had a bad sleep while there. We settled in and I took a delightful shower. The rain was pouring down in buckets now. The whole outside was a sheet of white water and the thunder was out in force. After a little while it calmed and it was then time to go and gets some eats! We got a to Holland Road Wet Market and Hawker Stalls.
A hawker stall is a tiny stall selling food or drink. They are set up in hawker centres like a type of food court. Each gets graded for cleanliness by the government and can only stay open if they get a passing grade (A, B, or C, but not D). They are the place to go for CHEAP, tasty, local eats. I could gladly eat my way across the nation via hawker stalls. As a vegetarian, I found zero difficulty finding things to eat in Singapore. There are tons of exclusively vegetarian stalls and restaurants. I deferred to Daphne and her parents to toss any food or drink at me they thought was classically Singaporean and that I should try.
I started with vegetarian bee hoon with noodles, "beef," "pork," cabbage, crispy tofu sheets and some snappy Thai chillis! It was soooo good!! I tried a "fish ball" as extra and the sweet hawker lady threw in two veggie wantons for good measure. Each stall is unique and that's what makes the hawker centres so amazing. It's not like they are chains that you can find a few kilometres over: they are all offering a distinctively nuanced variation of popular or rare edibles. Yum!
Daphne showed me around the wet market and I saw my loves: durians!!! If you don't know what a durian is: they are the best fruit in the world. No, really, people either love them or hate them. Daphne's dad and I were the only two in the household of the opinion that durians are food of the gods. I resisted the temptation to buy five and sequester myself to a bench outside and stuff my face with their custardy goodness. That came later. Haha!
Next, we gathered our things for the day and headed to the Singapore Zoo. The infamous Night Safari (only nighttime zoo in the world) was sold out, but I still wanted to see what Singapore had to offer zoologically. I was not disappointed. We got another ride from Daphne's generous father in the jerky van (we sat on one giant black bench in the back behind a cage wall, sans seat belts. The fates took the wheel on that one!).
Singapore Zoo is located in the north of the island and has four connected sights: the zoo itself, the Night Safari, the River Safari and the Jurong Bird Park.
Because of cost, I was only up for one. Okay, as someone who has studied animal welfare and behaviour, I was quite impressed with the design. There are no cages in the zoo, just the design of each enclosure is made to ensure each creature (human and not) stays where they should. Some animals are acclimatized to go free-range. We saw some lion-mane tamarines and birds free ranging it. The best one was as we were walking down a zoo road, some movement overhead caught my attention. I looked up to see two juvenile orangutans swinging across the walkway on rope lines. They got to a platform and wrestled a bit, then disappeared into the trees. They could go most anywhere! So cool!
A noteworthy member of the zoo community was Ah Meng, the oldest orangutan in captivity. She lived from 1960-2008 and was a staple of the zoo. Everyone loved her friendly demeanor and she was the first non-human to receive the "Special Tourism Ambassador" award. What won me over as I researched her was that in her honour, a durian tree was planted over her grave, because it was her favourite fruit. An ape after my own heart.
One of the best times I had that day was socializing the giant tortoises. $5 got you in and petting them and giving them snacks! It was incredible being so close to such large reptiles!
The animals at the zoo also had lots of clever enrichment. The elephants had my favourite: a high metal cylinder with bananas tied up inside it. A bell on top let people know some pachyderm problem solving and finagling was underway. I have posted a video of it.
We saw the tiger feeding (toss meat at them), the elephant show (I was so-so about using them for a show, but I guess it offers them stimulation...even if it is four times a day...oof), and a 'save nature' show where the CUTEST fat coatimundi (raccoon relative) scooted on a rope over the audiences head. I chuckled a bit at the Arctic section with all the Canadian wildlife. They even had a fake igloo for the kiddies to play in.
Another unique thing about the zoo was their koala mania. EVERYTHING had a koala. There were signs with each named koala dressed in a cute accessory hanging from the ceiling, they were on posters and official signs and they could be pet in the large koala exhibit. I did not quite understand the explosive passion for them. Yes, koalas are precious, but they are not native to the area. I would expect something closer like a panda or a monkey to get attention. But, to each his or her own!
After several hours at the zoo, we were hungry and went to a shopping centre (one of the seemingly thousands in Singapore). We got a unique snack-meal of goodies of your choice wrapped in rice as a long dumpling and steamed (at 'Rice'). I got shimaji mushrooms, green emperor veggies, braised peanuts, crispy "meat" and tofu floss in purple rice. It was scrumptious. Then I quenched my thirst with an oval maru durian cream cake and warm soymilk from Jollibean. The woman asked me if I wanted it warm and I thought 'wow, a toasty durian bun! Awesome!'. But, she meant the soymilk, so I had a scorching hot drink on a super hot day.
Next we made our way to 1 Cantonment Road at Duxton in the Central Business District. There lies The Pinnacle@Duxton, a super posh public housing block. On the 25th and 50th floors there are SkyBridges. For $5 we went up to the 50th and got an outstanding view of Singapore downtown. Pinnacle is shaped in a half circle with towers separating several garden rest areas, each with their own theme. It took us over an hour to make our way around the whole roof.
The best part, besides the view, was the white dude running laps around the top. Every 10 minutes or so, he would come thumping through us tourists. I found it so odd, especially when I later found out the SkyBridge on the 25th floor has a track built into it! Go there, buddy, instead of playing bob-and-weave at the top. Getting down we had to phone the main desk again to unlock the turnstile. I would not have minded camping there at the 'Beach' area, though.
It was about this time I was fading in waves. About three times that day I crashed for a few minutes. I REALLY wanted to be alert and see more, but my body was putting up the red light. I was getting so tired my walking was a bit wobbly, but I was determined to not miss Little India. We did a crash course of it that night and I am glad I did not back out in the sake of getting some rest.
Little India is as it sounds: a concentration of the Indian immigrants and workers. It even smelled as I remember India smelling.
The main streets were lined with open shops selling flowers, food and incense. I noticed all over Singapore, but particularly in Little India, there were almost all Indian men there and barely any women at all. I found out that many men come from India to work here and make lots of money to send home or to pay their families' ways over. But, it made Little India seem like a boys' club with the gender imbalance.
We went to Saravanaa Bhavan, a vegetarian restaurant with great reviews. It was a 15 minute wait, but SO worth it! Casual dining, but great food. I got some crispy-amazing-tandoori-special-something-tasty cauliflower and a giant masala dosa with four chutneys. The gobi (cauliflower) came with a weird sweet katsup that I passed on. Agh, it was a delicious meal. The dosa filling was potato, spices and some cilantro and onion. It was just the right balance of flavours with the crispy wrap outside.
The meal revived me and I was up for a tour of the infamous Mustafa Centre, a 24-hour shopping centre. It is a five storey maze with clothes, household items, accessories, jewelry, and food. I hunted for my favourite Patak's garlic relish that I cannot seem to ever find in the States or Canada and it was not to be found in Singapore either. :( I found it fantastic to peruse the goods and the shiny gold at 10pm, while wondering what the hundreds of other shoppers were doing there...Daphne says the place is always packed like that!
At last, we made it home at around 11pm, just in time for Daphne's dad to break open the several durians! He heard I loved them, so got three to share. Daphne's parents and I had great fun eating, with Mandarin T.V. on in the background. This is Asian heaven, I thought. Daphne's mum is pretty quiet, but very smiley and sweet in her gestures. I could tell she looked out for Daphne and me when she was with us. Daphne's dad shared all sorts of facts and we ended up talking politics! Haha. I offered my limited political stance and I heard about Lee Kwan Yew, the first prime minister of Singapore and a social icon. More about him on Day #2.
When I finished (yes, 'I') the last lobe of yellow ambrosia, Daphne's parents taught me the post-durian-consumption procedure. Firstly, your hands stink robustly after handling durian flesh. Save the husk and go over to the sink, then wash your hands in the water that you pass through the inside of the husk. I washed my hand with soap and, even though they insisted there was still durian smell on them, I just smelled the cloyingly strong fake apple soap perfume. I then re-washed my hands in the husk. Boom. No scent at all. Everything was gone! Durian Magic!!!
Next, to cool the body after the 'warming qualities of the durian,' they mixed salt and water to drink. I agreed and took two cups of it to try, but really preferred to have the durian taste in my mouth, not saltiness. I was too shy to refuse, so I ended up drinking it every time I had durian with them. In the future, I will do the washing trick, but not the beverage one.
Then it was time to organize the next day and back the heck out!!
