We arrived in Singapore in style. Never have I had a more luxurious plane ride. The flight attendants wore long blue or green floral dresses that skimmed the floor, chopsticks to hold their hair in soft buns atop their heads, and bright red lipstick to give us more the feel of being in glamorous Hollywood than on a mundane plane ride. They handed us menus which gave us the choice of meals like Veracruz style baked fish fillet with capers and pasta or creamy chicken and mushroom stew. And when they weren’t serving us dinner or an infinite selection of drinks, they came around with tightly rolled steaming towels to refresh us during the more than 21-hour flight from Houston to Moscow and then from Moscow to Singapore.
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| SEAS 2011 waiting in the Houston airport. |
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| I later discovered that you can buy the flight attendants' dresses at several stores in Singapore, including the Singapore zoo. I didn't even bother looking at the price tag. |
Our flight landed around 5:20 a.m. Tuesday (May 31st), and considering the 12-hour time difference between Singapore and North Carolina, you can imagine how tired we were when we arrived and how much more tired we were after a full day of sight-seeing! The first day passed like a whir. The highlights include: checking into our single dorm rooms (mine has a wall of windows with an excellent view of palm trees and campus housing), touring Har Paw Villa (an old outside art gallery featuring the Ten Gates of Hell along with more pleasant images), our first meal at a Hawker stand, and finally a mega walkathon hosted by our very own Hui Qian (a rising senior at the National University of Singapore, on-sight SEAS coordinator, and probable future wedding planner) who decided that although we’ll be in Southeast Asia for eight weeks and Singapore for six of those weeks, we had to see every local attraction on our very first day.
But before I go on, let me elaborate. When I first saw the gaudily painted statues outside Har Paw Villa I felt fairly certain I didn’t want look at tacky dioramas for the several hours we’d been allotted. However, upon entering the villa, I discovered that the gaudy entrance didn’t quite represent the entire park. In fact, after passing through the Ten Gates of Hell depicting bludgeoned corpses, scattered limbs, and enough gore to please even the most blood-thirsty among us, I realized that some of the scenery was quite beautiful. Brightly colored bridges crossed ponds leading to more colorful representations of shrines and pagodas. Mesmerized by the wall of dragons with flashing eyes and flickering tails, I snapped pictures until I finally got a few that almost did them justice. And, of course, the busts of several bearded men gained the attention of the seven boys on our trip who all had to try the beards on for themselves. Certainly the depictions of life were much better than of death. While we had wishing wells and bright colors to cheer us in life, in Hell all we had to look forward to were the repenting of our sins (where minor infractions like cheating on an exam or disrespecting your elders led to grandiose punishments like being sliced in half or having your heart torn out).
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| Ashley Rivenbark, Toyosi Oyelowo, Olivia Hart, and I outside Haw Par Villa. |
We walked to a nearby Hawker stand for lunch. Hawker stands are much like up-scale New York vendors in permanent stalls all under one roof. You still get the open-air feel because there aren’t any walls, but instead of overpriced hot dogs you get a wide selection of inexpensive Chinese, Indian, and Malay cuisine, and instead of a can of soda you can choose from a long list of freshly-squeezed fruit drinks. The only drawback to Hawker stands are the infinite choices which make it nearly impossible for you to decide what to order. For my first meal in Singapore I went to Ashmi Indian Food where I ordered chicken biryani (a long rice with chicken curry and absolutely divine!). Several of us had lunch with Hui Qian who bought a selection of fruit drinks for us to try: mango and watermelon juices as well as an avocado milkshake.
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| Chicken biryani, my first meal in Singapore! |
And then we embarked on a whirlwind walk through Singapore. We began with a tour of the 5-star hotels – economy style, meaning we walked to the front of each and ogled at the people walking inside. Then, in the case of the Fullerton we followed the guests inside and headed down a spiral staircase to the nearest bathroom, and, in the case of the Raffles which does not allow non-visitors even the chance of using its facilities, we admired the posh Mercedes taxi parked out front and then walked into the court yard to check out its mud room. Of the five-star bathrooms we visited on our first day, we were in pretty unanimous agreement that the Fullerton with its marble walls and large mirrors far out-shined the Raffles’ bathroom whose most interesting accessory were the square toilet seats. Still, to be fair, we only got a glimpse of the Raffles’ mud room. Certainly the guests who arrived in a Mercedes taxi had the use of more upscale facilities indoors. After all, Hui Qian told us that every notable author, including Rudyard Kipling and Joseph Conrad has stayed there. A few other guests include the less-well known and practically obscure: Queen Elizabeth II, Michael Jackson, and Beyoncé Knowles. To top off our hotel tour we enjoyed (from a distance – drat those guest-only rules!) a third hotel featuring two towers connected by a boat-like shaped pool on the roof designed to make it look like you’re going to fall off when you approach the edge.
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| Part 1 of our bathroom tour: inside the Fullerton. |
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| Overlooking the patio at the Raffles. |
Exhausted from our hotel excursion, we next visited the Esplanade, a performing arts center, complete with an art exhibition, open-air theater, and plenty of comfortable seats to rest our exhausted limbs. Perhaps most striking were the number of shops and eateries inside the Esplanade. You could easily make a day of the place, beginning with lunch at any number of restaurants serving everything from pizza to sushi. Then, after a theater matinée, you could indulge in a cookie from Mrs. Fields (easily one of the nicest cookie shops I’ve ever seen) or ice cream by Häagen-Dazs (where you sit in red leather chairs at a glass table top with fresh roses in the center). Then you can head to any number of boutiques to finish your Christmas shopping half a year early before heading to a posh Indian restaurant for dinner and drinks. The one exhibition I saw amongst the rows of boutiques and restaurants featured a yellow four-seater bike which the artist toured around African villages. In the center of the room sat the well-worn bike and on the walls photographs of all of its many riders. We hope to return to the Esplanade for a performance. Tickets are free on the weekends!
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| At the Esplanade. |
Walking through the city we were surprised by the number of signs telling us what not to do and what would happen if we did it anyway. One underpass featured a sign instructing you to walk – as opposed to ride – your bike through. The sign kindly informed you of a $1,000 fine if you failed to do so. When I say, “kindly,” I’m not being sarcastic. When we arrived in Singapore customs stuffed our passports with tiny white sheets warning us that drug trafficking equalled death. A $1,000 fine is quite nice considering alternative forms of punishment.
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| Too many signs to choose from. So many fines to avoid. |
On our walk, we came across a statue of a Merlion facing a large body of water. Stopping for pictures a small kid, probably seven or eight years old, walked up to Toyosi, one of the students on the trip, and asked her where she was from. When he discovered she’s originally from Nigeria, he was crushed that she wasn’t carrying any African coins. He struck up quite a conversation, telling her that he’s a coin collector with money from 97 different countries. Nigeria would have made #98, he continued, sure to make her feel guilty. Then he met the rest of us and asked if any of us were from D.C. Again, our “no’s” elicited severe disappointment. But, when he asked if any of us had state quarters and I produced the Texas Lone Star, almost all was forgiven. He was so excited he even rushed back to his dad where he handed me a Chinese yuan for my trouble.
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| Posing in front of the merlion. |
The day was also interspersed with trips to several mega malls which had enough stories to get Toyosi, Gautam, and I VERY lost – enough so that we asked to borrow someone’s cell phone to call our professors. The malls that we have visited remind me of the ones I frequented in Chile in that supermarkets, movie theaters, and parking decks are inside. Dinner was good if not confusing. I have no idea what I ate, but I had a most difficult time ordering it. Toyosi and I had someone else order our food, but when he ordered us a plate filled with massive amounts of every meat imaginable (Toyosi is a vegetarian), we had to turn it back in and request something else. When we finally got soup with noodles, a hard-boiled egg, and a menagerie of other spices, we were too hungry to really care what we were eating as long as it was good, and like most everything I’ve tried in Singapore so far, it was.
We returned to our dorm rooms exhausted and I don’t think many of us stayed up past 9 p.m. After all, I’d gotten up at 5:30 Sunday morning and didn’t get a full night’s rest (because a few hours on the plane here and there don’t really count) until Tuesday night (with the time change we skipped Monday almost completely). What a wonderful – if not exhausting – first day in Singapore!
