Singapore

...is a local saying that Singapore is a 'fine' city - kept fine by fines. First-time litterbugs carelessly disposing of a sweet-paper or cigarette butt have to fork out S$1000 (£350), repeat offenders more. They won't, of course, be disposing of chewing gum because it's banned totally, with import, sale and even possession being against the law.

Fortunately, chewing gum is not among my vices and we passed safely through customs and ...
...been told that taxis in Singapore were cheap. In the event, the fare worked out at about S$18 (£6). We could have saved a fiver by taking the quick, slick air-conditioned MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) train shuttle at the standard fare of just S$1.70 (60p) each, but it just didn't seem worth the hassle of finding our way to and from its stations on a hot, sticky evening.

The drive is rather pleasant. Flowering tropical shrubs and shady ... more

When you pass through immigration at Singapore's gleaming new Changi Airport, the official who stamps your passport will smile and offer you a sweet. There is a bowl of them, individually wrapped in waxed paper, ready on his desk.

My wife and I smiled in return, accepted the offering, and passed through towards the baggage collection carrousels. "Don't eat it now," I whispered to her as soon we were out of earshot of the official. "They just want to see if you'll drop the wrapping paper, so they can fine you on the spot."

I was not, of course, being entirely serious, but I wasn't being entirely frivolous either. There is a local saying that Singapore is a 'fine' city - kept fine by fines. First-time litterbugs carelessly disposing of a sweet-paper or cigarette butt have to fork out S$1000 (£350), repeat offenders more. They won't, of course, be disposing of chewing gum because it's banned totally, with import, sale and even possession being against the law.

Fortunately, chewing gum is not among my vices and we passed safely through customs and in no time were installed in a taxi that kept strictly to the speed limit along the East Coast Parkway towards the city centre. Most of the other traffic did the same. I don't know what the speeding penalties are in Singapore, but they're probably draconian.

We chose a taxi because it was late at night in body-time terms, because we were encumbered with luggage and because we had been told that taxis in Singapore were cheap. In the event, the fare worked out at about S$18 (£6). We could have saved a fiver by taking the quick, slick air-conditioned MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) train shuttle at the standard fare of just S$1.70 (60p) each, but it just didn't seem worth the hassle of finding our way to and from its stations on a hot, sticky evening.

The drive is rather pleasant. Flowering tropical shrubs and shady palms fringe the road. Beyond them on the left is a view out to sea, where numerous cargo vessels wait in the 'roads' to enter the port. On the landward side are mostly tall apartment buildings, but they do not look shabby or run-down. As the city centre approaches and the traffic thickens, these begin to give way to towering office blocks.

We chat with the driver, who gives us a very glib recital of the Singapore success story: multiracial harmony between inhabitants of Chinese, Malay and Indian descent; business growth and prosperity; stability, public order and, of course, cleanliness. Oh yes, we observe politely, we have already noticed how clean and tidy everything is. It is an easy compliment to pay, and true. Most cities we have seen in the orient are grimy and litter-strewn by comparison, as indeed are most British ones. But somehow the stress placed on it seems excessive. Surely it can't be the most important thing.

So pat was the cab-driver's delivery that we began to wonder whether they are briefed by some propaganda-prone department of tourism. Another driver the next day, however, gave us a very different story, outspokenly scathing of a cliquey government run by the Lee family (Lee Kuan Yew was Prime Minister for many years, and is still thought to be the power behind the present premier, his elder son Lee Hsien Loong), and its all-intrusive bossiness. He also spoke of the difficulties experienced by ordinary people in earning a living, and the hidden cost of success in stress and suicides. The truth? Who knows? We were only there on a fleeting visit and couldn't begin to come to an informed view. But it is not hard to find websites alleging all kinds of nepotism and corruption, and it is not hard to imagine the discipline imposed on every aspect of daily life becoming irksome.

None of this need impinge much on the tourist, of course. For a visitor, Singapore is an interesting but unchallenging experience. English is spoken just about everywhere. Prices are expensive by the standards of some far eastern destinations, but cheaper than in the west. It is safe, and easy to get around. Despite the whole country and its four and a half million inhabitants being crammed into an area not much more than twice the size of the Isle of Wight, it does offer some variety of things to see. One could probably spend a week there without exhausting the possibilities.

We had only a couple of days and therefore had to be selective. We discarded early the option of going to Singapore's premier beach resort/theme park, Sentosa Island. This, to quote from its website, boasts not only beaches but: Butterfly Park and Insect Kingdom, Cinemania, Dolphin Lagoon, Golf Club, Sky Tower, Musical Fountain, Underwater World, Trapeze, Volcanoland, Retail and much more besides, including apparently Nature. For all I know, some of these might well be worth seeing, but we felt that they or their equivalents could all be seen elsewhere, especially the last among them, and possibly to better advantage.

The second thing we decided not to do to any significant extent was shop. This may sound perverse, given that Singapore is one of the world's great shopping centres, but we simply didn't much want to buy anything, having loaded up with souvenirs from earlier in our travels. For those who always want to buy something, a micro-city of malls, department stores and boutiques is clustered around the leafy boulevard of Orchard Road. These sell clothes, jewellery, antiques, curios and a whole plethora of consumer goods.

Cheap? Possibly, by the standards of Paris or Rome, but I believe Singapore has in recent years lost some of its reputation for bargains. This is to a large extent restored during the six weeks of the Great Singapore Sale, from the end of May until the beginning of July, when apparently swingeing discounts from normal prices are applied. If your main objective is shopping, that would be the time to go. Don't be put off by any thoughts of a summer heat-wave. Singapore is practically on the equator, so the heat is equally oppressive all the year round.

We didn't take tiffin or even sip a Singapore Sling at Raffles Hotel. Named after Sir Stamford Raffles, the leading light in the development of British Singapore in the early 19th century, the hotel is something of an institution. We went past it at night, and admired its white-painted colonial frontage basking in the glow of the floodlights, but we were in a hurry and never stepped inside. Possibly, it's an inimitably stylish grand hotel experience. Equally possibly, it's a fancy over-priced rip-off. Perhaps it's both. To find out, I'd have to go back another time.

Finally, we didn't explore the northern fringes of Singapore Island, nor did we attempt to cross the over-crowded causeway across the narrow Straits of Johor into Malaysia. Apparently there can be long delays at the border and we didn't feel we could afford the time. A pity, because I had hoped to gain some impression of what it must have been like in February 1942 when the Japanese descended from the north, outflanking the fortifications around the naval base in the south, British strategy having been predicated on the assumption that any attack would come by sea.

Changi Airport, incidentally, is built on the site of the notoriously cruel POW and civilian internment camps to which those captured in the assault were consigned. Just opposite the airport you can visit the Changi Prison Chapel & Museum (entry free), very likely a moving experience but one which we also failed to manage.

So what did we see? The City Centre, for a start. As so often with cities, a good way to obtain an initial impression is by taking a river trip. Brightly painted wooden "bum-boats" ply an hour-long circuit up and down the Singapore River that runs through the city and out into the harbour. They can be boarded at any of a dozen stops and the round trip costs S$15 (£5) per person. They are powered by smelly diesel engines, the chug of which mercifully drowns out some of the pre-recorded commentary full of clichés intoned in a Chinese/American drawl.

Despite a waterproof cover above the seats, it is also possible to get very wet in them if hit by one of Singapore's sudden showers, as we discovered. All worth it, though, as something of the city's history can be seen from the river. Most of the old godowns (trading warehouses) have long since disappeared, but some stately Victorian administrative buildings remain, and the river is straddled by some commendably solid ironwork bridges bearing names like Cavanagh and Elgin that evoke echoes of the British era.

Singapore became independent of Britain as part of the Malaysian Federation in 1957, and independent of Malaysia in August 1965 - forty years ago. Definitely, it has moved on. The relics of the past are just that, relics, little to do with life in the thrusting city of today. I have read descriptions of Singapore that depict it both as a western outpost in the orient and as an oriental city beneath a western veneer. On first acquaintance it seemed to me to be neither, or maybe both, essentially itself, drawing self-confidently as suits on the diverse strands in its past and its geography.

Alongside the river are many restaurants and cafés. Currently the trendy place to spend an evening is Clarke's Quay, where a connected row of brightly lit eateries overhangs the water, their seatbacks forming a wall of padded plastic, predominantly in orange, with a tent-like plastic canopy overhead. Here you can find every kind of food from Italian through Indian to Indonesian, albeit at almost European prices, and there are bars and nightclubs too. Music plays, and high above it all at night searchlights illuminate a seat slung between two bungee ropes, where punters can bounce around and scream to their heart's delight.

One pleasant aspect of the river is that only in a few places does a road run beside it, so that it is saved from being overshadowed by traffic. Mostly, there are walkways and as one approaches the taller more modern buildings of the business district, the quayside is ornamented with sculptures. These are part of an official policy initiated in 2002, and other public places in the city are similarly decorated. The statues along the riverfront are particularly well-sited, though, and one or two are very memorable: Fernando Botero's massive, ponderous Bird, and the five naked bronze boys jumping into the water, for which the man who sold us our boat tickets claimed to have been one of the original models. Perhaps.

Rather more traditional in style is the white stone lion that marks the point where the river emerges into the harbour, a fountain spitting from its mouth. The name Singapore derives from the Sanskrit 'simhah' (lion) and 'puram' (city) and the lion theme is evident in numerous public works.

One sees little of the harbour from the standard bum-boat circuit. Most of the serious seaborne traffic has in any case departed to giant state-of-the-art container terminals located out of town. Singapore is by some measures the busiest port in the world, an entrepot handling a vast volume of cargo being transhipped to and from other Asian ports. But the very scale and sophistication of this traffic keeps it remote from the visitor's eye.

We disembark instead in the financial district and shelter from the rain in a busy café where earnest young men in suits make deals and talk on mobile phones, just as they might in London, New York or Hong Kong. Hong Kong is, of course, the place with which Singapore is most often compared, and they do indeed have much in common, including a colonial past and a commercial present. Singapore, though, has its own distinct flavour. Dynamic though it undoubtedly is, Singapore has the more leisurely and studied ambience. It is less chaotic, less confusing, less Chinese. And, of course, it's clean.

To put this to the test, we next walked down to Chinatown, being careful not to jaywalk en route in case of fines. One might wonder why Singapore needs a distinct Chinatown, when 70% of the population is ethnic Chinese in any case, but Chinatown does feel more Chinese than does the rest of the city. The covered food market, in particular, with its nameless cuts of meat, live frogs and live crabs being tonged straight into customers' shopping bags, might with only a little more assault on the nostrils, be found in Chongqing or Harbin. And there were signs, if not of the squalour one might find in parts of China, at least of unSingaporean untidiness. One stall-holder we noticed taking a nap sprawled out on his stall.

Memories of China were stirred up too in the eating hall, where market booths selling freshly cooked meals front onto communal tables. Deciding against the Pig's Organ Soup, we each chose by pointing out dishes to compile a tasty plateful. With drinks (local beer for me, bottled water for my wife) lunch for the two of us cost S$8 (under £3), and very good value it was too, less than a tenth of what we'd paid for dinner on Clarke's Quay the previous evening.

Chinatown also has 'department stores' selling all kinds of everyday goods and modelled more on the higgledly-piggledly lines of those found in China itself than the westernised model of Orchard Road. Apart from Chinatown, there are other ethnic districts in the city centre - such as Little India and Arab Street - which retain a distinct character, despite the uniformity impressed on them by the prevailing tidy-mindedness.

Outside the city centre, we visited the Botanical Gardens and the Zoo. The Singapore Botanical Gardens are magnificent, or so my horticulturally-inclined wife assures me. The elegant period entrance hall - its architecture a cross between colonial bungalow and railway terminus, with lots of glass, polished wood and a huge hanging clock with roman numerals as a centrepiece - promises much, and the 150 acre (52ha) spread beyond doesn't disappoint. There are patches of original jungle, landscaped parkland and speciality gardens. Free entrance makes it a snip in anyone's scale of values, though they do rush you S$5 (S$1 for concessions - under £1.70 and 35p respectively) to see the National Orchid Garden which forms an enclave in the whole. With 20,000 different varieties of orchid on display, some of them bred within the gardens and named after visiting dignitaries. Here, for example, we meet Margaret Thatcher, a spiky but dully coloured variety. The orchid garden, nevertheless, is also a snip for those with botanical interests.

The most interesting specimen to us, though, albeit a rather sad one, was the Talipot Palm in the grounds. This huge variety of palm flowers only once in its lifetime, in its final year. When it does so it is crowned by the largest inflorescence of any plant on earth, with literally millions of tiny blooms adding feet of extra growth, like exuberant floral antlers, to the tree's crest. The flowers turn to fruit, drop as seeds, and the palm, exhausted by its efforts, dies. The one we saw flowering was 79 years old.

I always find zoos sad places too, with their incarcerated animals, but my wife had professional reasons for wanting to see the one at Singapore. As zoos go, it is extensive and well-stocked, and wherever possible organised on the "open zoo" pattern, whereby the inmates are kept in sizeable landscaped enclosures, separated from the visitors by moats, rather than in cages. This layout lends itself well to Singapore Zoo's special claim to fame, its Night Safari. Entry to the Zoo alone is S$15 (£5) for adults, for the Zoo plus Night Safari S$25 (£8), well worth the extra since it is what makes the whole visit memorable.

The 'safari' sets out on purpose-built rubber-wheeled open-sided trains and the sense of being close to the animals would be extraordinary if only the other passengers would keep quiet and desist from using flash photography, which, despite frequent instructions from the guides, they don't. It is nonetheless impressive, and is greatly enhanced at the points where one can alight from the train and wander along dark paths through the undergrowth unguided, happening upon the animals' enclosures along the way. They are so cunningly constructed that the moats are invisible and it is hard to believe that the animals couldn't jump out if they so chose. Seeing leopards and hyenas in such circumstances adds a frisson of excitement to the visit. Even if you don't much like zoos, this is recommended.

One tricky thing about the zoo is that it is some way out of town and not on an MRT line, though you can take the train to about two miles away, from which it is a relatively cheap cab-ride. There are also buses. Either way, it is less than an hour from the city centre, and transport is available till late in the evening so you can enjoy the safari to the full and still return easily to a downtown hotel.

We stayed at the Swissotel Merchant Court Hotel, beside the river near Clarke's Quay. I had some misgivings in opting for an international chain hotel, always preferring something independent and local wherever possible, but it served its purpose well. Booked over the internet for US$115 (£65) per night, bed and breakfast for two, it looked good value by the standards of local competitors for what it offered, and in the event was efficient and responsive. We were upgraded without question or extra cost when the receptionist noticed that we had requested a non-smoking room and that the only one available was in a higher price-bracket. The resultant room was spacious and well-appointed, with a large balcony giving a view over the excellent swimming-pool to the quay beyond. Buffet breakfast, taken on the outdoor terrace, was delicious and varied. And, of course, it was spotlessly clean.

Staying in a Swiss-owned hotel prompted a memory for me - of many years ago ghosting a conference speech for my then boss on the subject of third world business opportunities. No one would think of classing this mature tiger economy as third world now, but in case any were tempted to do so then, I wrote "Singapore has more in common with Switzerland than Swaziland". Was I right? I don't know; I've never been to Swaziland. But if you can imagine a hot, tropical Zurich inhabited by ethnic Chinese you might not be too far off the mark in describing modern Singapore, or its business district anyway.

As usual in drafting a travel review on somewhere we have been together, I asked my wife how she would sum up Singapore. "A good place to change planes" was her verdict. She did not, I knew, just mean the brand-new, showpiece airport. Nor was she alluding to the fact that transfer passengers with a few hours to spare are offered a free coach-tour of the city. She meant that Singapore was calm, comfortable and unchallenging, with enough to see for an interesting stopover, but not much more. Being perhaps of a more sceptical nature, I am somehow unconvinced. Its sometimes turbulent history and mixture of races and cultures would seem to dictate more friction than is apparent. Surely, underneath the surface of this relentlessly smooth and efficient city-state deeper currents must stir, if only one could plumb them.

Rereading, I find I've written a review of a tropical place without using the word "exotic". Somehow, that seems significant. I'm not sure whether it means that Singapore has gone post-exotic, or whether it is still exotic but the exoticism is no longer apparent to the short-stay visitor. There is no way of finding out without going back and probably not even then.

Would I return? Well, passing out through immigration, we were once more offered sweets, and once more took them. Just before boarding the plane, I unwrapped mine and dropped the paper surreptitiously on the floor of the departure lounge. A silly gesture perhaps, even a churlish one after such a trouble-free and mainly pleasant stay. But I felt I had to do something in face of all that cleanliness, all that sterile stability based on conformity. I only hope I wasn't caught on CCTV, or I'll certainly face a fine if I ever do go back.

© torr 2005
 

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