One Night In Singapore

Long time, no write, I know, I know. Sorry. Life has been busy, but not very interesting on the travel side lately. Mostly I’ve been driving around Illinois and Indiana with a couple treks to Alabama. The one or two things I find interesting to say about those trips get posted on Facebook and generally don’t seem worthy of a full blog post.
That should change over the next few months. I’m currently in Singapore for the first time and will be here for about 3 weeks. Also on the near horizon is an extended (4 -5 week) trip to Australia which I’m really looking forward to. Last time I was there I spent about 6 weeks in the outback of Queensland in a tent – not the most fun ever, but definitely memorable. The two weekends I got to spend in town (one in Brisbane and one in Rockhampton) are some of my best memories from those years. So a month staying in a nice hotel on Sydney Harbor will have to be, um, exceptional, wouldn’t ya think?
On to Singapore….
When I first got the call and volunteered to do this project I had very little idea of what to expect. In fact, although geography is one of my favorite subjects, I really wasn’t even sure where Singapore was on the globe. Turns out it’s northwest of Australia and south of Thailand, right on the southern tip of Malaysia. I read up on the place and pictured a place somewhat like Hong Kong. While Singapore does have some Asian-influenced architecture and a large ethnic Chinese population, it’s a much different place than Hong Kong. It’s very clean, remarkably quiet, and not nearly as crowded. The mix of peoples is so diverse that the common language is English – all the signage, menus, etc. are written in English and everybody selling anything, no matter what, can understand me and be understood by me. I usually recommend people traveling overseas for the first time to visit London, because it’s just odd enough to give you that “I’m in a foreign land” rush but familiar enough to keep you from freaking out too bad. I’d now recommend Singapore for the same reasons.
The government is very strict, but in a mostly benevolent way. They raise taxes through the roof on any behavior they want to squash and in some cases make some very strange laws. For example, there’s a myth that chewing gum is illegal here. Not so. You can chew gum as much as you want, but it’s illegal for the stores to sell it and if you spit it on the sidewalk you’ll be fined and forced to take remedial classes to show you the error of your nasty ways. They also have laws that Americans would find odd and not take very well to regarding housing, cars, and any number of other things. While they wouldn’t fly in the US, they seem to work well here.
Enough with the civics lesson.
One of the guys I’m working with is an American who happens to have a Malaysian wife, who also happens to have family here in Singapore. Lucky for me, one of the guys, Simon, loves to show people around and have a good time and has the money to do it in style!
He picked us up about 6pm in his little 4-seat BMW hard-top convertible and took us on a short tour of some of the more interesting parts of town before ending up hitting the bar on the 71st floor of the Swissotel. The bar is all glass walls and gorgeous panoramic views. I posted a couple pics, but they were from my cell phone and don’t do the view justice. I’ll post up some my friend took with his hi-def camera later. We had one beer there – the local brew, Tiger – and were moving right along.
I’m sure I wouldn’t get the names correct of all the places we stopped, so I’m not even going to try. Plus, I was lost most of the time after the sun went down. The next place we hit was a roof-top bar across the river from the Swissotel. As we got there, the “potential for lightening” warning started going off (complete with red flashing lights) so the staff started shooing people off the roof to a bar a few floors below. Before we allowed ourselves to be shooed, however, we made the circle of the roof admiring the view and picking up the preferred drink from that bar, a Heineken. The views were again spectacular and I’m thinking there are probably quite a few rooftop bars in Singapore for just that reason. We hung out in the bar below (which had a golf theme, complete with putting green) until it was almost dinner time, then we headed over to Clarke Quay, which is probably the touristy epicenter of Singapore based on what I saw.
Clarke Quay is a huge maze of low-slung buildings along the river in downtown full of bars, restaurants and any number of other social-gathering places. Most of the street-like walkways are covered with the central drag looking like a just-as-colorful-but-less-digitized version of Freemont Street in Vegas.
Simon had dinner reservations for us at a nice Chinese restaurant right outside on the river. It was a little muggy, but the breeze made it bearable. Simon did all the ordering (and the paying I’d add), starting off with a bottle of champagne – the first of several that night. Turns out Simon loves to order bottles of champagne. We had dish after dish of what I was informed was Northern Chinese cuisine, with my favorite being the “fish-n-chips.” It looked just like any other plate of fish-n-chips except the little shoestring-looking “chips” turned out to be slices of mango. Mango tends to leave a little tingle on the tongue and that mixed with the excellent fish made for a delicious course!
After the meal we took a whirlwind tour of some of Simon’s favorite bars in the area, including The Forbidden City (whose raised dance floors doubled as fish tanks), a bar with wheelchairs for seats and IV bags full of alcohol, and a dance club for Chinese expatriates that didn’t have a dance floor – apparently the act of dancing in a large crowd encourages violence, so people are expected to dance at their tables or other open spaces in the bar in ones and twos. No room for the Zombie Stomp there, kids. Besides, my Caucasian ass got enough odd looks just for being in the place…hahaha!
After our tour of Clarke Quay we hopped back in the Beamer for some more driving around the city, finally ending up at Saint James Power Station. It’s an old coal burning power plant converted into a maze of clubs with different themes – techno club, hip-hop club, jazz bar, live Latin music, etc. We started out at the jazz bar and I figured that’s where we’d end up since it was late, we were tired (well, not Simon of course), and we had to be up for work in a few hours. We downed a couple more bottles of champagne, mingled with the band and the club owner for a bit then did a tour of all the different clubs before calling it a night. My favorite of the clubs is Movida, the Latin bar. One of the lead singers reminded me a lot of Shakira, hip movements and all.
The evening felt very much like an episode of my favorite show, No Reservations. There’s nothing like having a local who knows a thing or two showing you around a new place. Thanks Simon!