SINGAPORE IS EVERYTHING INDIA ISN’T. It is a city and an island and a country, not a “sub-continent.” It is sparkling clean—spitting carries a hefty fine—and traffic jams just don’t happen. It even rains here!
Buddha Relic Temple decorated for the New Year
Singapore is officially Malay but three-quarters of Singaporeans are Chinese and Mandarin vies with English as the lingua franca. Skyscrapers somehow fit nicely among pastel-colored colonial buildings, Buddhist temples and Chinese shophouses.
Scarlet Singapore occupies an entire row of shophouses
This time we get to stay in luxury for a while
The Scarlet Singapore is a warren of 80-some mismatched rooms sloping down a row of shophouses in Chinatown. Not only is it charming and the staff ever-so-helpful, when we arrived jet-lagged and stiff from our cramped Air India flight, they let us check in right away. We are just up the street from the stunning Buddha Relic Temple, still decorated from Chinese New Year as is most of Chinatown.
Beef—it's what's for dinner
Scenic Chinatown shophouses
Holiday lights for the Year of the Rabbit
Our first order of business was lunch and our first choice was McDonalds! After three weeks of mostly veg Indian food we wanted MEAT—greasy QPs with Cheese. Chinese will have to wait. When we were here twelve years ago we noted that Singapore was expensive. Since then our financial situation has changed along with our definition of “expensive.” Guess what—Singapore is still expensive! Maybe even more so. Dinner tonight, three portions of dumplings that would have cost ten bucks in Taipei was nearly $50.
The building that wanted to be a forest
Don't fall overboard, Singapore Convention Centre
Along the Riverwalk
As we walked up Bridge Street towards the Riverwalk yesterday we noticed that the architecture in Singapore, the new buildings at least, have broken with tradition, both Chinese and Colonial. They are as avant garde as any we have seen outside of Kuwait City. One seemed to be morphing into a forest while the roof of the Convention Centre resembles a cruise ship. Bronzes of Chinese daily life also compete with reflective spheres and a rotund sculpture of a bird by Botero.
Street Sculpture in Chinatown
Loading rice along the Riverwalk
Don't even think about it—Raffles Hotel
We turned around at the famously overpriced Raffles Hotel. Stamford Raffles, in case you missed it, was Lieutenant-Governor of the Dutch East Indies in the early 19th Century and founded Singapore in 1819. With that pedigree I guess he is justified in charging $1500 a night. We had a high-class burger in one of the restaurants on our last visit but today gentlemen are “encouraged” to wear long trousers, proper foot wear and shirts with collars. They lost me at “gentlemen!”
