(Friday, January 29th, 2016)
It is Friday afternoon. I had to think hard to come up with that. The 29th of January. I had to look that one up.
I am writing this in my cabin aboard the “Rickmers Shanghai”, docked at Jurong Port (one of six main ports) in Singapore, Singapore, on Singapore Island. Hey, we say “New York, New York” and don’t giggle. Singapore is a city, a country, and an island. The country is mainly the island, although there are many smaller islands that are also a part of the country. The whole thing is not that big. The city started in the southeast part of the island, but has expanded enough to consume quite a bit of the island in urban-ness. More than five million people live here.
Four cranes are all currently active on board. The crew is busy so my role while in port is to not get into trouble, and wait until they can spare the time to give me an orientation. They are pleasant, and treat me matter of factly, which feels good already. I am their only passenger, and probably will be until we reach the US.
I have my computer set up. I have no internet and don’t expect it until we get to Thailand. Weird: I will be in “airplane mode” for a few days. No ads from Costco or Cox, but also no notes from friends and family, hmmm. While writing I am listening to Muddy Waters on Chess, from 65 years ago, not bad. It is gently raining outside. That is not news to Singaporeans. Their least rainy month, at 7 inches, equals Phoenix’s annual rainfall.
Instead of describing the ship, and because I am barely onboard as yet, I’ll write about my first week away, and close this post there. The likely case is that both this Singapore post and the introduction to the ship post will publish near to each other.
A blog admin note: I intend to augment these posts with photos, but my current (WordPress) technique assumes that I am almost always online. I am almost never online, and when I am online I am in a port and I want to go visiting. So my compromise: While offline, I write in Notepad (.txt) and I copy photos to “Raw Photos” in Dropbox. When online, Dropbox will automatically sync the photos so folks can see them. And when online, I’ll copy my Notepad stuff into WordPress posts and publish. Saves time. What I don’t get: Posts with photos interspersed. What I do get: Posts published, and the photos available for folks to sift through. I might caption some of the photos (another thing I can do offline), because I will send a few to my parents’ digital frames when I get a chance. I might improve on this technique, but that’s what it is for now.
Okay, on to Singapore…
A freighter ship does not schedule its port visits around passengers, so I needed to be in Singapore a bit early to provide the necessary time buffer. Wonderful! I had a few days in Singapore, with nothing specific to do except check in with the port agent for Rickmers Shipping once in a while. As it turns out, the ship came in a day earlier than expected, but I still had a nice amount of time to myself.
I flew to LA from Phoenix, everybody knows that trip. Then I boarded Singapore Airlines from LA to Singapore with a stop at Tokyo’s Narita Airport. The string-on-globe route took us up the US coast all the way to where we were even with Eugene, Oregon, before allowing the sunset to catch us somewhere over the Aleutian Islands. Due to the Aleutians, Alaska is in both the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. Cool. “From here you can see…” — no, no, I won’t go there.
I am going to gush a bit about Singapore Airlines, then I will try to edit my gushing so that people who I care about don’t gag while reading. Summary: This was the best long flight I have taken. It was my first with Singapore Airlines, and now I see why people I trust will spend extra to fly with them. Even in Economy Class I was treated so perfectly well – not over-served, just attended to, competently, gracefully, with a smile. Beauty, elegance – I have never used those words to describe air flight, but they fit here. The food was good, which translates to great for airline food. We had choices. I cannot say that after about 22 hours of travel I arrived “refreshed”, that’d be a lie, but it did not feel bad at all. Again: The best I’ve had.
We landed at Changi Airport at around 3:30am. Empty. There were no lines at immigration, nice. But I stayed a little longer and got to know some of the immigration folk. It seems that my mode of leaving Singapore, as a passenger on a freighter ship, was unusual enough so that the immigration “midnight shift” didn’t know what to do with me. It would be so convenient if I were “just” leaving on a named/numbered air flight or cruise ship. There’s a space on the form, and, well, it could not be left blank. Also, I could not give a definite departure date. Hmm. I could understand their suspicion. In the end the senior-most officer there had to wake up his boss to ask what to do. I felt bad for him – for both of them really – but he stayed friendly to me throughout, and never did I feel that I was a “problem”, just an interesting odd challenge that would get solved, and we had plenty of time. His boss called Rickmers agents in New York (a lucky time zone hit!), and we got it settled.
Singapore’s mass transit is great. It was easy to get everywhere I wanted. From the airport I popped up above ground about a ten-minute walk from my hotel. I made it there in only an hour due to a tendency I have to make the occassional 180-degree-wrong decision, and to stick with it (persistence or stupidity, you be the judge). I got help from some older Arab men having some strong coffee at a street-side cafe (I had a cup with them, that’s how I know), and after chuckling to themselves in a different language they gave me good directions. I like walking around a city, just not with full luggage. I did, however, get some advice on where to get good lamb for dinner. It turned out later to be excellent advice and lamb.
I dropped my luggage at Hotel Kai and spent the morning walking about. I wasn’t sure to where I was walking – mostly I was using up a few hours until the hotel room was available for a nap.
I lucked into just the right choice of direction this time (well, I admit to having some help from the hotel staff), walking past a cathedral, the Supreme Court building, Parliament, finding myself along the Singapore River in downtown. There were sculptures, riverboats, low bridges, lots of public space. One means of commute in this area is electric scooter – whoosh! I tried to photograph one but missed it. Singapore is left-side driving (and left-side walking, tee hee), but with many one-way streets downtown. Look both ways.
This part of town is historical, with many colonial-era buildings in the foreground on the river. In the background are tall skyscraper office buildings with the logos of global companies at the top. An impressive juxtaposition.
A friend told me that his favorite part of Singapore was the architecture, and I agree with him that it is special. I have been to many big cities in the US, Europe, and China, but Singapore does skyscraper better than any I have seen so far. I used to think “how inventive can you get with something tall and skinny?” but I realize that I had no idea. You’ll see quite a few photos of buildings, and, like photos of the Grand Canyon, the photos don’t do justice to the reality of the experience. (Especially photos from this amateur.) The skyscraper-builders here seem to be willing to take more design chances than those in the US. It pays off.
While walking around that first morning, I kept getting glimpses of what looked like a ship, sailing in the sky. I could only barely make it out through the clouds and haze, and at first I couldn’t see the bottom directly. Eerie! I kept seeing it from all angles. The sun was behind it, making it especially mystical-looking. I took a few too many photos of it. More on this later, but for now I was thinking that whoever designed it, and whoever placed it in that place, couldn’t have had a bigger effect on folks seeing it from downtown.
I got back to the Hotel Kai. Super-small rooms. That wasn’t a surprise – I wanted to experiment. It was so nice. It works perfectly. The staff there was friendly and very helpful. It is a very small hotel, not just the rooms, and I think there are only 40 or so rooms total. So I got treated well – as an individual, which feels pretty good when you are traveling. I hadn’t slept on the plane, so I was ready for a nap. Well, the nap lasted ’till dinner, and that was about it for the day.
Over the next couple of days I visited places, just like a typical tourist. I took long mid-day naps, like a typical tourist from many time zones away. I did some business with the port agent for the Rickmers Shanghai.
I went to the Marina Bay district, a beautiful place surrounded by tall buildings and including an almost separate island containing the Marina Bay Sands resort and casino. That’s the building that is holding that ship up in the sky. Or, as a buddy at a bar said to me, it also looks like a cricket wicket. Ha! Marina Bay has a nice waterfront for public events, and the Marina Bay Sands has everything you expect (and either like or not) in a high-end casino/resort. I walked by shops in which the norm for a handbag was about $1000. You could get a distorted view of things here. I saw a shop in which the bags were “only” $350. I bought three. No I didn’t. I didn’t go into the casino. It’s not my thing, and it wasn’t easy to just walk in. You had to give up your passport and at least $200 as a starter. So, I did not start. I took a pricey elevator ride up to the “Skypark” – that’s the name of that ship in the sky. Us mortals could walk around an observation deck, the “bow of the ship”, but only hotel guests could visit the gardens, the infinity pool, and the several restaurants up there. It was worth the price – the views were amazing, and the feeling of being on that ship in the sky was interesting. I felt a little like an alien visitor. Both for the spot on the bow of that ship, and my normal reaction to casino/resorts of this type. Time to leave. A nap was waiting for me.
Next day I took the MTA, piece of cake, out to the Botanical Gardens. Good public transit – how wonderful. I spent most of a day there, including quite a bit of time in the National Orchid Garden. It was hot and humid, sometimes rainy, and simply wonderful. I could have taken ten times the pictures I did take. It helps to be situated on the equator, in a tropic zone, with plenty of rainfall. Plants we in Phoenix consider house plants, and maybe bathroom-only plants, are in the wild here, and as huge as houses.
In San Francisco there are some beautiful orchids in a “hot house”. Those are outside, here. And in the Orchid Garden they have a “cool house”, for those orchids from higher-elevation regions, for which the heat is unwanted. Ha. The National Orchid Garden has many programs in sync with other gardens, has a rather large staff, and conducts orchid experiments. They had a list of orchids that only they can grow.
On my last full day in Singapore, I was leg tired from all day in the gardens the day before, so I opted for “things that you ride”. First stop, again an easy MTA ride, was the Singapore Cable Car from Faber Peak. “Peak” is a little strong but hey. Maybe 300-400 feet. The cable car goes through the upper part of a hotel, and connects the main island with another island, Sentosa, in the middle of Singapore harbor. I had lunch at the top of Faber, with a great view. On the terrace above the restaurant, in a private area, a wedding was happening. Nice voyeuristic fun – people dressed up, looking good, in mid-day, pop dance music playing, foreign-language jokes over a loudspeaker. A few of us in the restaurant below were chuckling to one another and having a good time listening. Some of us probably understood what was being said – not me! Sentosa Island is mostly one big amusement park, water slides, other stuff like that, a resort, and a golf course. Probably some other stuff. It didn’t seem like anything unusual, so I skipped it.
A nap, shorter this time (yay, getting over the jet lag), then another walk through that area of town where I was lost in the morning a few days ago. Found the recommended restaurant, had some Turkish espresso that felt intravenous if you know what I mean, and had some very good lamb kabob with peppers and onions.
Eating in Singapore: I ate breakfast at the hotel, which was good – eggs if you want, cereal if you want, that sort of thing. Lunch out was mostly salads. Dinners out were either Chinese or Arabic. All of it good. Beer, also good (cold!).
More “things that you ride”: On a recommendation I waited until after sunset to take the riverboat cruise up and down the snaky Singapore River. That river is a controlled river now, like the River Walk in San Antonio. We had a slight delay due to thundershowers. The rain was not a concern – if it was, nothing would get done in Singapore – but the lightning was cause for pause. Mostly the river cruise went by areas that I had already seen, but from a slow boat, at night with lights and all, it was quite nice. Some of the night photos came out.
Okay, that’s the tour. I have already written too much. What’d I think? Well, everybody I met seemed to be friendly and nice, even those who seemed to be in a hurry getting to their jobs or whatever. There was a sense of industry and progress and striving. Singapore doesn’t have natural resources. They export orchids and aquarium fish, not exactly country-supporting commodities. So Singapore is into value-add. They have many refineries (Indonesian oil). They have a large technological contribution. Many design offices of tech companies famous around the world are housed in Singapore. They are an Asian financial hub.
The people are diverse. Chinese, Malaysian, Indian, Arabic, European, African. I’d say (a guess) that’s the order in terms of population percentage. From my probably-naive viewpoint everybody got along well. Many languages were spoken on the MTA, and the announcements were in three languages (English, Chinese, Malay). A sight on the MTA (I wanted to take a photo but that wouldn’t be right): A couple of teen Muslim girls in head scarves along with three Chinese girls, all of them skinny, all giggling at something on a phone, all five of them in different color Converse All-Stars. Too cute.
The government is really strict, from what I understand. I have no real experience, just listening and reading. Although a democracy, the same party has ruled for decades. Kind of a benevolent dictatorship, eh? Depends on what you think of the decisions of those in power. No drugs – possible death penalty, a concise deterrent. I didn’t see any sign of oppression by police or other authority figures, nothing like that. My one dealing with authority, at immigration, was pleasant even if challenging.
Where I was staying was a pretty affluent area, so I am not sure if extrapolation from there is apt. More than a couple Lamborghinis, Ferraris parked in front of coffee shops, plenty of those handbags from casino shops, that sort of thing. What do you do with a Ferrari in Singapore? If I need to ask, I guess I don’t understand.
Looking at photos I’m reminded of a few other things to mention, but this post has gone on long enough. Maybe I’ll add a mini-post along the way, if those things still seem interesting enough to write about. I am now on board, and have been for a couple of nights (I didn’t write this post at one sitting). I’ll introduce the ship in a bit.