From a Slingshot to a Badminton Court

  • Posted by David

To describe Singapore in one word wouldn’t truly do it justice. Nor would a sentence, or even a paragraph really. In fact, I’m not exactly sure how I feel about Singapore, other than that, relative to the one other place we’ve been to thus far, it feels strikingly small. Actually, “lush” would be a great way to describe it – both in the incredibly green and blooming sense, and the over over-indulgence of the shopping culture in Sin city.

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Contrary to HK, Singapore is flat and immensely easy on the shin splints. The avenues are wide, the subway system extensive, and everything is mighty close together. We popped off the subway into Bugis, a packed to the rafters flea market and mall with teenagers (because it was Friday night, and all of high school had descended upon it, until the wee hours of 10pm as all of the youngins waited patiently for their city buses back to the burbs, i there is a such a thing on the outskirts of downtown Singapore, may just be H n M factories and Tiger beer) over to the Tree In Lodge, an eco friendly hostel run by very helpful backpackers. Good start.

Lush. Yes, right, back to that. Would you call a $26 cocktail lush? It had a green umbrella, and likely a bit of foliage sticking out the rim, so, yeah, very lush. Singapore is expensive like that. I saw a sign that advertised beer at “1 for 1”, oooh good deal, I’ll take a dollar beer any day. Maya knew better, said it really meant two for one. I inquired and, yes, 2 for 1, the 1 being $18. Although we’re talking Singapore dollars, they stack up nicely to the Canadian Lira. Ouch.

And the malls. They just don’t end. One after another on Orchard road, to the point that I found it mildly insulting that they each had their own names – “Eon Center”, “Tangling Gardens”, “Eternal Shopping of the Spotless Mind” – give me a break, it’s all just one mall. Did we shop? Yes. Did I get very upset, internally, externally, existentially, trip wisedly, that we were shopping? Yes. Did I get over it because shopping is certainly Singapore’s national sport, and I love sports? Yes.

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Singapore has its charms. The laser light show by the pier was perfect Asian kitsch, even if by 11pm, on a Saturday no less, the whole harbour front and its many bars and clubs seemed abandoned. The hawker centers (open air food courts) sling all cuisines, and the Indian curries, seafood soups, dumpling, and duck rice were all affordable hits. Little India on a Sunday bursts with locals and exists in such sharp contrast to the shopping mecca just a couple kms to the west – it really captures the heterogenity of the colonial turn economic powerhouse cum consumerism frenzy that is Singapore.

Four hours north, we slip into Malaysia, to the round robin of religions and revolving door of colonial rulers that define Melaka, a town of about 100,000 thousand with a well-preserved Chinatown at its center. Temples, mosques and churches dot the sidewalkless streets flanked by remnants of Dutch architecture (think thick and red walls, and windmills) and every-five-minute cruise boats ferrying hordes of Asian tourists down the river. We had a great view of these river boats from the depanneur two doors down from our guesthouse, which had a lovely outdoor patio and fantastic live music (live music being the call to prayer vs. boat motor vs. man shucking coconuts vs. my tiny (and quite tinny) iPod speakers vs. the rehearsal music for Chinese New Year. That and One Direction in all malls and cafes).

Our guesthouse, Jiong’s Guesthouse, felt like being home (in Asia) – a $10 a night room with a fan, shared bathrooms, plenty of smiles, and plenty of signs on the walls asking you whether you’ve smiled yet today. Minutes after check in we were whisked onto a bike tour that led us through a cute residential zone that looked like a hybrid of Varadero and rural Mexico, to an open air food court where Maya taught the locals how to make a snake with her hands – see our video section for details. Afterward we got schooled in badminton. Turns out Malaysians love badminton, oh so popular to the point that the only court time that could be arranged was 11pm on a Monday. At least Maya took one game off of the locals. I floundered. But my racket broke. But that’s no excuse.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dummy

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But let me step back a bit. First, the man on our bus to Melaka: he boarded somewhere in Malaysia, immediately sat down right in front of me and reclined to the fullest (with a good 35 other empty seats at his disposal), and placed a plastic bag full of yellow liquid – could have been anything really, my best guess was spinal fluid that he had to ingest through a straw every 10-15 minutes to treat his whooping cough – on the armrest across the aisle. Splendid. I eventually bought a bag of this liquid at a night market. I chose the color that looked the most like Gatorade. It tasted…salty. Not, bad, per se. But nothing like anything a drink has ever tasted like, nor that I would imagine it could taste like. It just didn’t work. But it did kill my whooping cough (kidding).

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Drinks aside, Melakan food can’t be beat: satay skewers with a light peanut sauce, round yellow noodles served in a rich coconut curry and rice balls flavored with tamarind and lime juice served with sliced chicken on the side, to name just a few. It’s all delicious and accessible – Maya spotted a man making what looked like burritos, and they were, so we grabbed one, took it to our local Dep, and snacked on a fluffy tortilla filled with caramelized onions, bean sprouts, lettuce, omelet, and a couldn’t-really-describe-it spicy sauce. To the locals, it’s just poh piah.

A trip to a bank on the outskirts of town (thanks, ING, for being so very inaccessible in Malaysia), proved uneventful for sightseeing. But we were treated like royalty. Walking out of the fifth bank we found – the sixth worked, don’t worry family, we are not broke – a huge crowd had gathered at the bottom of the stairs, as if an asian pop star was about to exit the Heung Leung bank at the corner of Melaka street and Melaka crescent. There were (unarmed) guards, cameras, and a good 100 people all waiting for someone to emerge. Had they gotten wind that foreigners were visiting the Heung Leung? Were we about to win 500,000 ringgit? We didn’t stay to find out. A couple blocks later we heard loud cheers, maybe jeers. Poor Psy.

We’ve made a few new friends – an Aussie named Sarah who lives in a farming town in rural Australia that boasts 30 degree heat, in the winter. An antiques store owner who sent his kids to Melbourne and Montreal to study, and now just kicks back and relaxes with opening hours from 11-3pm, most days. The group of university kids that interviewed us for a school project, as they oooooed and ahhhhhed at all of our reponses like the crowd on Price is Right, our guesthouse owner, Mike (or Kent), who has had many articles written about him and his many guesthouses around Melaka, and who has a wicked overhead smash that is downright badmintonian, and who allowed us to use the hostel computer, until Kent (or Mike) told us that no, guests can’t use this computer.
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Which city did I like best? Surely you can answer this one. Singapore isn’t easy to describe – at least not down on the nitty gritty level – since apart from the Indian and Muslim quarters, the colonial buildings and shopping malls and $24 cocktails are hardly spectacular or inspiring. Melaka, on the other hand, is deeper, with more nooks and crannies, and with so many people and cultures packed into close quarters all feeding off some sort of shared Malaysian identity (and foreign tourist dollars, yen and Kroner). It’s worth a visit, even if you go 0-5 in the round robin.