Pulau Tioman departures committee.
The pier at five AM. Nothing better.
Our breakfast. Roti in Mersing.
Hindu temple in Singapore.
Buddhist temple beside Hindu temple in Singapore.
I got yelled at by a security guard for taking this picture...
I thought this was a particularly precarious way to dry your clothes.
The market we checked out in Singapore. It was pretty busy.
Okay...sorry about the long obscure quote, but it must always accompany this picture: "A man has a choice...I chose the impossible. I built a city where the artist would not fear the censor. Where the great would not be constrained by the small. Where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality...I chose to build... Rapture."
Flashing green men are the best kind.
How much international intrigue has gone down in the bar of this hotel? I do know this month, they created a pretty damn famous drink.
There's a bit of construction near downtown Singapore. Mostly on reclaimed land it seems.
And there's downtown Singapore, plus the Merlion.
And there's a bedraggled Canadian in an ugly blue shirt.
Allow a photographers conceit for a minute. This photo is frustrating because the plant in the foreground is out of focus. If it had been shot in Landscape or with the building out of focus it would look good. Alas, it was not.
These grow on the street!
Colonial District.
Singapore and The Trip Home
Week 49 and 50
Well, there’s nothing worse than finishing off a trip by waking up ass early to make it to the ferry that will take you back to the boring old mainland, but that was the start of our journey home via Singapore. Early, early god damn wake up, and out on the pier by 5:30 AM. I had a wonderful little time while I waited for Winny and Melissa to finish getting ready. I sat outside on the porch with petting a stray kitten.
The ferry ended up being a half hour late, which really, really pissed me off. That rage was mildly alleviated by watching the squid flit around beneath the pier in the pre-dawn glow.
Finally the ferry arrived and we were Mersing bound. I tried to sleep on the boat, but no dice. I just ended up sleepily watching the Stephen Chow movies they played on the DVD player. It was a bit too early in the day for Kung Fu Hustle.
We pulled into Mersing at 8:30 AM and, after dodging the approaches of a few cabbies, started the short walk out to the bus/taxi terminal deeper within the city. On the way we ran into a woman by the name of Daniella who was going the same direction as we were. She was some kind of business development worker who had recently finished in South America and was now on a tour of South East Asia, doing the solo-backpacker thing. She tagged along with us to the station where we had some roti for breakfast which was excellent. When we found out that the busses were fully booked, we decided to do the natural thing, which to take a cab all the way to Singapore.
I got the front seat, which had both its pros and cons. The pros were that the AC was doing its thing for me…not so much for those in the back seat. Also, I got to see the roads we’d whipped past a couple of nights ago in the dark. The Cons? I got to see the roads we whipped past a couple of nights ago in the day. Oh yeah, and the constant tension caused by the driver continuously trying to edge around massive transport trucks on curvy roads. Malaysian drivers have this wonderful thing they do where, if they’re on the road and it looks like there’s no one coming in the opposite direction, they drift over onto the center line. It was nerve wracking to say the very least. By the end of the trip I was envying the passengers in the back seat who had been lulled partially to sleep by the stifling A/C-less atmosphere.
Arriving at the cab depot we switched over to a different cab, one tasked specifically with making trips across the border to Singapore, or so it seemed. The driver was pretty pro.
Before long, we were in the short queue to enter the city state of Singapore. It was an interesting shift of visuals waiting in line there. As soon as we entered the massive customs complex the quality and price of vehicles around us greatly increased. This spoke to the obvious prosperity that Singapore has enjoyed and the last few decades. We had a slight complication getting through the customs paperwork and had to have our bags examined, but it was ultimately no problem.
Once we were dropped off in downtown Singapore we were on our own. After getting some Singapore dollars and consulting our Lonely Planet book, we were off and searching for a place to stay. A few inquiries and about a half hour of walking later landed us at what could be very, very loosely defined as a hostel. It bore a much closer resemblance to a hotel, especially after the price of our room for 3+ was quoted at 240 Singapore dollars. That’s kind of REALLY expensive for a hostel. This was especially true considering our room did not have a TV and the shower required priming of the water heater before hot water would be available. I know that in a hostel you wouldn’t expect this anyways, but for $240 SD, I’d expect a little something extra. Also, the desk clerk was kind of unfriendly, bordering on downright hostile. I think our showing up without a reservation frustrated her. Again, it’s a FUCKING HOSTEL.
*sigh*
Daniella did not check in with us. After lunch at a local food court she split off and went to meet up with a friend of hers who lives in Singapore. And so, our group was down to three.
What followed was basically just a long walking tour of Singapore. We spent a good while walking through a very large market in the center of the city, perusing T-Shirts and other things. We also visited a few different temples. Singapore, much like Penang, maintains a cornucopia of places of worship in relatively close proximity to each other. Our ultimate goal in these wanderings was to find the Merlion which required at times some fairly unconventional navigation of shopping malls and busy city streets.
Singapore is very beautiful. It is chock full of well manicured gardens and revels in its liberal application of green spaces. It’s also exceptionally clean. This of course all comes at the cost of some of the freedoms normally associated with other cultures. I mean, come on, this is a city where it used to be illegal to chew gum. There’s still a fine for spitting it out on the ground. Clean is clean and Singapore accepts no substitutes.
After a good amount of path finding we finally hit the harbour and, against a backdrop of towering sky scrapers, found the symbol of Singapore itself, the Merlion. We admired it as it contently sprayed water out into the harbour.
From there it was a nice walk back through the colonial and administrative district of the city. Impeccably maintained, it was almost like visiting Britain for a day (or so I imagine). The sun was setting fast though and before long it was back to the hotel room to get refreshed and head out for dinner.
Our last meal overseas was in a beautiful little boutique restaurant. We ate Middle Eastern food, shish kebab and pita. It was delicious. We also shared a Singapore Sling, the birthplace of which we’d wandered past earlier, the Raffles Hotel.
It was a great meal too. The wine was well matched and it gave us a great opportunity to reflect on the trials and tribulations of the last week. It was a great way to finish off our short day in Singapore.
Dinner complete, straight to bed.
Next morning we woke early of course, rolling out of bed at 5:30 AM. After once again having to fight with the hotel desk staff, we had a cab and were off along a beautiful orchid-bedecked highway within minutes. The 8 AM flight soon saw us on the way home to Tokyo. I of course failed to sleep again, but managed to watch Gran Torino, The Road To Perdition and The Bourne Identity on the way back. In flight movies are a terrible thing…
Landing in Narita in the mid afternoon we quickly bid farewell to Winny who was bussing back to Fuji-Yoshida. Then Melissa and I had lunch in an airport restaurant before boarding the Narita Express back to our respective homes.
The next day I still had off so It was merely relaxation. I think in the PM I actually did end up going to Ben’s to partake of a bit of Rock Band, but I’m not entirely sure. I’m writing this about 3 months afterwards, so the events are a bit fuzzy. Ben had just returned from Vietnam where he had been travelling with his girlfriend. He had a pretty wild time it seemed, even having lost his wallet shortly after arriving. Crazy.
Anyways, that was Malaysia and Singapore! Another amazing trip I believe…
Finally finished writing about it…
Ian “Mello Yello” Cantello
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