Singapore

Travelling back from China or anywhere too far flung means you have to break your journey somewhere exotic. Singapore was my choice, as I had a campus to visit there and had heard much about its colonisation and prosperity. And I wanted to hear one Singlish as she is spoke la.

Being in Singapore made me wish I’d spent two extra days in Beijing. While a place of bustle and excitement, fine dining and fine shopping, especially Gucci and Prada or any brand you may or may not have heard of, it is ultimately one massive plaza with outskirts you don’t see where the real people live. The monied minority spend their days in salons and dineries, looking beautiful but never smiling, walking fast but seemingly getting nowhere. There’s a facaded plasticity about Singapore and it is not just due to its sterile cleanliness – though I did spy litter in the night market. It’s a neon artifice of concrete and mirrorglass with a few blotches of history like colonial Raffles or Ritz-Carlton Hotel. It’s a massive plaza, and feels like the best place in the world for a shopping stopover. Even the Catholic Church has a son-et-lumiere display over crucified Jesus. Everything is beautified and enhanced in Singapore, and it has endless provision and products from wall to wall. Most of all it is a fashion centre, and you have to flaunt it. Those in tourist garb stand out like a sore thumb, unless it is Versace tourist garb. I could never quite feel myself in Orchard road amongst the precincts and business suits with last week’s new haircut ready to become this week’s.

The Orchid Gardens are splendid, though to my amazement there’s an orchid there named after the rather unorchidaceous Jenny Shipley, one time PM of NZ. There’s a garden of special orchids, named for famous international visitors. Nelson Mandela’s orchid was also rather unspecial. The gardens are a pleasant oasis, so accessible by bus, and strangely unoccupied save for the odd jogger. I suspect everyone’s at the mall, especially on a searing 38 degree and humid day. The coolhouses – the temperature of the hot houses over here – were welcome. The flowers loved it, and put on the most florid display. And every corner saw a gardener lurking, usually an Indian fellow, dodging the photos of tourists. And Singapore is so organised that there were people stationed at photo spots employed actually to take your photo. Splendid.

Also splendid are the open precincts around the river and waterways. It’s like Melbourne’s SouthBank or Auckland’s America’s Cup Village, except with a Pan Asian spin that is so Singapore. Everything’s fusion, even Chinatown, itself a precinct of souvenir shops and Indian tailors vying for your money. Most splendid of all is the infrastructure: public transport that is everything Melbournians miss and Aucklanders will never know they are missing. The subways are comprehensive and white, and you can get fit walking in the underground from platform to platform. The buses are convenient and user-friendly and their frequency is impressive.

I went into public buildings – and had my temperature taken and was given a sticker to wear all day. It meant I was swine-flu-free, for the day. Such stickers much clash with much brand fashion! In Singapore, I read, schoolkids need to go to school with their thermometers and be prepared for regular self-tests. Despite it all, there are swine flu cases in Singapore, so even the safest you can be is not safe enough. I just plowed on through the plazas and looked for the esplanade.

I ended up in the Arts Precinct by the river mouth, looking out towards Indonesia, where the power and gas that powers this artificial Utopian island comes from, and over to Malaysia where the Singaporeans pipe their plentiful water from and use it to fill up their pools. I enjoyed the Singapore Flier, which is like the London Eye only more so. It calls itself the world’s largest ferris wheel and it’s safe so even claustrophobic and vertigo-sufferers need not fear. They even gave me a discount on flashing my Kiwi passport, tourists being a boon to booming Singapore. The flight – the airport metaphor is underlined in all the commentaries – travels slowly and offers 360 degree views as far as the eye might ever want to see. The floor beneath your feet is secure, and the glass is safer than that of a Sky Tower. The spot where the new casino is to be built is the largest spot on the foreshore, massive site and soon to be a temple of Mammon. All around and especially away from Indonesia, the skyscape is superb and the rooftops of multi-storey condos stretch endlessly until you can almost see the slums in the distance.

Advertisement