Singapore Introduction

It is hard to condense Singapore, or to introduce it. Singapore is a singularity and Singapore is a familar concept. If we have not been there, we have seen it on TV and probably know a little about it. In simplest terms, Singapore might be called the orderly and gentler counterpart to Hong Kong. Colonized by Britain, cut off from the mainland, and functioning as something very seperate from its host nation, Singapore has distinguished itself as one of the big Asian economic guns, the place to go to make a buck, spend those bucks on food and clothes and real estate, and merrily gamble away aforementioned bucks if you're feeling risky.

Singapore is Asia Light.

Singapore is immense. There's skyscrapers everywhere and all of them are more then equal to what you'll see in US and European cities. Everything is glitzy and flashes with hyper futuristic lights and electronic effects - infinity pools and gigantic glass fronted elevators are everywhere you look. There's no such thing as a standard Singaporean, mind you, and no real conception of what a Singaporean looks like. Indians in dress both traditional and not-so, sun burnt and nervous looking Europeans, Chinese businesswomen in designerwear, Muslim Malays and African tech students and Saudi media moguls, you've got it all and all of it has got you. There are five million people in Singapore and 42% of them are foreigners (if there is such a thing in Singapore). It is the second most densely colonized country on the planet, and is generally considered by most to be the most intensively globalized. The fourth wealthiest country in the world by GDP, Singapore is stringently urban planned and (most remarkably) seems to have achieved almost all of the lofty goals of former P.M Goh Keng Swee. It has the highest quality of life in Asia, and is 11th in the world: it doubtless aspires to be number one.

But Singapore doesn't have the driving, ferocious intensity of Hong Kong, not entirely. Hong Kong is positioned on the side of a hill and has been forced to build up: it is positioned right against (and is now entirely interwined with) the fate of its even more gigantic parent - Hong Kong is on the move and Hong Kong drags you along with it. Singapore is reassuringly flat and can be surprisingly relaxed - you can find yourself in the middle of a warren of skyscrapers and 7-11s and Hainan chicken/rice shops and still see no one much around.


The American financed Sands Casino. A helluva lot bigger then it appears.

Singapore is a chronic case when it comes to over-consumption, be that food or clothes or consumer electronic goods -you name it, they got it, and they got it in spades. But food especially is the primary interest and crown jewel of the city, at least for me. No one seems to cook here. Why the hell would they? There's food stalls satisfying literally every cuisine need on the planet on almost every corner: Mexican and Thai and Hokkien and Keralan, all of it served up on convenient trays in equally convenient (and clean) locations. People are devouring weird shit 25 hours a day here with effusive slurping sounds: you can get anything you want and at any time, according to your particular needs and proclivities. Gigantic mall-sized food courts spring up like mushrooms on every corner: you never see a grocery store, but you see everything else. Fine wine, liquor, and beer are another national obsession: when your nation hosts some of the richest human beings on earth, it pays to invest in fine dining.


Singapore is Asia Light, the Switzerland of Asia - an analogy its leaders freely use and encourage. Singapore takes a lot of what is good about Asia and gives it the Disney treatment, defangs and deodorizes it. Little India is just like India (down to minor details like crumpled coffee cups on the roads and nervous looking and tailless cats), but it is just a little cleaner, just a little more orderly. So too is the rest of Singapore: the scent of dried fish and incense and the every so occasional waft of street side piss reaches you, but vaguely, as if half-remembered. Chewing gum must be purchased at pharmacies as it can create messes. Everyone, radically and insanely in Asia, uses the crosswalk and waits patiently and calmly for the light to change. There's a fine, you see. There are a lot of fines in Singapore.

ISingapore claims to be a parliamentary republic but is actually a benevolent dictatorship: everyone says that and knows it too, and you can just sort of see it in the fabric of Singapore if you squint a little and catch it in the correct light. One political party rules (with 94 congressmen to the opposition's paltry 2), and residents are politely "encouraged" not to associate with opposition party organizers or top brass. But infuriatingly to many Western observers, Singapore's dictatorship seems to be working remarkably well. As previously mentioned, GDP is high, almost everyone has plenty of money, and most residents agree that Singapore has introduced its rules and regulations for good reasons. Certainly Singapore's 200 dollar plus fines for sins such as jay-walking, littering, and tossing away gum has created a remarkably clean and orderly city-state.

But there is a downside and a darkside to all the shiny functionality of Singapore, too. Caning is dished out for a variety of sins (including, in one entirely too famous case, an American ex-pat boy for graffiti). Nearby Malyasia's dual track legal system still allows Muslim women to be whipped for the crime of drinking alcohol or having premarital sex, as examplified by a recent case where a Malyasian Singapore resident and pop star was sentenced to lashes for indulging in a post-show beer. Amnesty International has determined that Singapore has the highest rate of executions in relation to population in the world: drug dealing (a bit loosely defined) and first degree murder attract a mandatory death penalty. (I told this to a guy at my hostel, who had casually been discussing smoking pot the night before. His eyes, I can assure you, got real big).

Singapore is all of these things and is condensed into one immense and addictive city. Singapore really is a bit like a drug: I found myself walking for literally ten hours straight, in a crazed and perhaps poorly advised attempt to see it All in just two full days. Part of my stop off in Singapore was an effort to see if I could, in fact, manage to live there: I think the question has been answered. Of course I could. Singapore, like many big and ever-expanding (like the universe) Asian cities is kinetic, entrancing - you feel like anything is possible and that you can (maybe) have anything you want there if you exert the required effort and skill. This is probably a fallacy: Singapore is not actually a fair place (like the rest of the world) and just being there already indicates that you may, perhaps, have already had a more-then-fair shake at the universe. It has brushed its problems under the table, and so incredibly successfully that you do not notice they are there. Going along with Singapore is not just required: it is eminently pleasant.

Reasons to Hate Air Travel (But in Perth!)

Perth is awfully pretty when you actually get there.

I don't like traveling by air much at all. This is rather unfortunate because I do love international travel, and the days of highly civilized travel via ship are long, long gone. You take the airplane or you don't *go* off the continent. Further, as I am a fairly penniless young squirt, I go via the cheapest ticket possible. This was the standard protocol I followed when I purchased a flight on Orbitz from San Francisco to Sydney, via United Airlines. It was the only direct flight to Sydney offered from SFO - Qantas only flew out of LAX - and I figured that a flight that minimized connections was significantly more likely to be on time. My final destination was Perth - incidentally, the most remote major city in the world - and I bought a flight on Qantas from Sydney to Perth. Seemed simple enough.

The flight over was very, very long, but this was not a suprise. A flight to Sydney lasts at least 14 hours. This is the way of the universe, since the Concorde was scrapped and teleportation devices were decisively given up on. The flight departed at 10:50 PM and I managed to stay up for at least six hours into the thing, in a half-baked attempt at fending off jet-lag. (Well, it actually seems to be working, as I write this). The airplane smelled like a fetching combination of urine and mold, which is about standard for United's unnervingly elderly international fleet.

I was luckily seated next to a very nice family on their way to New Caledonia - the wife was an employee of the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta and had been invited to that curious island to do work with tuberculosis victims. They decided to make a family trip of it. I was sitting in a row with her husband and their eleven year old, and we ended up chatting most of the way there - they'd done some pretty extensive traveling. You might as well befriend the people you're seated next to on deeply unpleasant long haul-flights.

We were twenty minutes off Sydney when the pilot came on the PA system. "The visibility in Sydney has dropped below our standard for landing, so we're diverting to Melbourne." Fabulous.

We ended up sitting on the foggy Melbourne airport tarmac for a good two hours, while the pilot continuously gave us confusing and fairly contradictory updates about the situation. First we were going to turn right around and go back to Sydney. Then we were going to be let off in the Melbourne airport. Then we couldn't go into the airport because the facility didn't have enough staff to get our bags off and ensure that we wouldn't invade Australia with our mysterious foreign diseases. Then we were just going to hang out on the tarmac until we all suffocated or starved, or at least that was what I thought they were trying to convey.


The Perth Old Swan Brewery. Perth is worth it! When you get there! If you get there! (Goddamn antipodal cities. Honestly).

I needed to tell my aunt to anticipate my late arrival, and I also needed to call Qantas and figure out what my Plan B would be. Obviously, I needed to borrow an Australian coded phone, since using my Iphone would cost roughly the gross national GDP of Andorra. I asked a flight attendant. "Oh, we can't do that. Just wait until we're in the airport." (Condescending voice). As it had already been an hour by then with no sign of progress or change, this was not exactly a satisfying answer.

All the attendants on the plane answered the same way, with a distinct lack of interest in helping me find a phone. The concept of of international passengers on a diverted flight perhaps wanting to contact other parties was a totally novel and shocking one to United's flight crew. Great. The attendant also told me that "we always contact Qantas and tell them what's going on." A Qantas employee told me later that day that United has never in recorded history contacted them to inform them of flight delays. I love being point-blank lied to by airlines, don't you?

We finally were allowed into the airport, which meant we had to clear Melbourne's customs. The customs staff were swamped by the denizens of the two diverted United flights, which meant that our bags took an hour to come off the plane, and the lines to get our passports stamped and our stuff inspected for exotic beetles and deadly parasites were glacial. In the baggage line, I did manage to meet a lovely woman from Perth (Juvena), who was returning from a trip to the USA. We decided to join forces in an attempt to somehow get ourselves to Perth in one piece. Salient travel advice: Two complaining people are always better then one.

The United reps we managed to flag down grudgingly told us that the company was only willing to fly us to Sydney. They MIGHT pay for us to go on to Perth from there (since we'd obviously missed our onward flights by then) but they might NOT, depending on how they felt about things. As Melbourne is closer to Perth then Sydney, this was not pleasing news. We were told to head to the United desk. Turns out two harried looking representatives were attending to a 200 person line of deeply pissed off United customers - and the line wasn't exactly moving fast. We calculated that by the time we actually navigated the line, we would have missed all the afternoon flights to Perth anyway.

Qantas, naturally, told us that we had missed our onward flights to Perth and they sure as heck weren't going to honor them. Our only real option was to just buy an onward flight on Qantas to Perth, and hope like hell that United might decide to recompense us. (Unlikely, since United is evil, though I will keep you posted). At this point, I was jet-lagged, hungry, and had spent the entire day shouting at various people. It was about worth 300 bucks to me to just get to Perth and get it over with. So, Juvena and I bit the bullet and bought tickets.

The Qantas city-connect flight was, at least, remarkably pleasant. Juvena told the story of our day to the flight attendant, who felt sorry for me and kept on dosing me with free wine, coffee, and cheese. I sat next to another nice couple who warned me sternly that wild kangaroos and koalas were NOT FOR PETTING YOU WILL REGRET IT VERY MUCH AND PROBABLY LOSE A LIMB OR SOMETHING. (True - look it up sometime). Also, some people jokingly call koalas "drop bears". This makes me awfully happy. Juvena and I decided to get together later in the week, both to hang out and to figure out what to do vis a vis the letter to United.

My aunt met me at the airport, and we had a good dinner at the Perth yacht club, near their home in South Perth. I had Groper fish for dinner. Cue jokes about a fish that engages in inappropriate touching. I managed to sleep at a rational hour - which was definitely made easier by the whole "spending all day shouting at people" thing - and was happy to have actually arrived at my destination, rather then wandered around the Melbourne airport like an increasingly desperate wraith for the next forty odd years.

I've lodged a complaint with Orbitz, and will be sending off a strongly worded letter to United on Monday. We shall see if I see any of my money ever again. Not holding out hope. But at least I am in Perth, which is very pretty, and I have not been eaten by drop-bears (yet). So things are really looking up.