a day in Singapore

I woke up at eight o'clock.

I passed a bundle of laundry to the desk clerk.

I asked for a towel and got one.

I showered and shaved. 

I marched down Kitchener and Serangoon Roads to the Mustafa Centre, where I exchanged 220 Thai baht, 10 U.S. dollars, and 361 Malaysian ringgit for 161 Singapore dollars. 

While I was there, I bought a padlock for my defunct locker back at Tresor Tavern.

All this I accomplished before eleven o'clock. 

I went back to the hostel and sat in the lobby, sweating, updating my journals and letting my parents know I was still alive. I also spent some time writing down the addresses of everything I wanted to see and eat in this town today (Thursday, July 31). 

I went to Chinatown to check out the Heritage Centre and was told it cost $10 SGD to get in. 

I said "Screw that with a pitchfork." 

I went to the foodie street and had some laksa, a spicy noodle soup in greasy orange broth which is central to Peranakan (Chinese-Malay) cuisine and Malaysia's national dish. It consists of rice vermicelli (though this touristy dump used spaghetti) in coconut milk and curry broth. My bowl included hard-boiled eggs, cockles, bean curd puffs, and bean sprouts, and cost $4.50 SGD.

I did not take a food selfie. Too hungry. 

On an impulse I walked across South Bridge Street and caught the open-top sightseeing bus for $25 SGD. We swung out west, down shady, tree-lined Havelock and Zion Roads, curving up to the Botanical Gardens (the one thing in Singapore that I didn't see and wish I had). Then we went dead east on Orchard Road. As clean, bright, and shiny as this city was, dazzlingly clear as it dried from the previous night's rain, there wasn't much to it besides shopping, eating, and authoritarianism. "HAPPY 49th BIRTHDAY, SINGAPORE!" squawked loud orange banners on every lamppost, but on the subway trains were stern admonishments to the citizens to be polite when boarding or exiting, to move to the back or offer your seat to an invalid. Public service announcements printed starkly in black, white, and red urged citizens to perform the vital five-step method to eradicate dengue fever (promptly emptying every container on your property of standing water). 

What was most jarring was seeing so many Occidental franchises. Malaysia and even Cambodia had KFC and Starbucks, and Seoul has Burger King and McDonalds and Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, but Singapore was just mad—Long John Silver's, California Pizza Kitchen, Coldstone Creamery, Quizno's Subs, and everything else British or American. I was disappointed. Foreign excursions are supposed to be...well, foreign. And I hated to think that the average Singaporean's idea of western culture was a soggy McDonald's sandwich, some limp fries and a syrupy soft drink. 

The Singapore River. Really takes your breath away, doesn't it? 

After a short foray north and east to Sungei Road, the sightseeing bus dumped us out at the Singapore Flyer. Think the London Eye, but bigger—"the world's tallest observation wheel," proclaimed the posters and brochures. That was a blatant falsehood, as the High Roller in Las Vegas is actually taller, but I'm not the quibbling type—not when sweat's soaking my collar and the red bandanna I'd tied around my right hand and wrist for mopping and sopping purposes. 

Pro tip, kids: this is more fashionable than wrapping it around your forehead and more sanitary than sticking it back in your pocket after every wipe. Just be prepared for lots of concerned fellow travelers to ask you how you hurt your wrist. 

I caught the next bus to Clarke Quay and switched to the metro. I went back to the hostel, rested, rehydrated, and wrote some postcards (the fifth of seven batches). At 6:45, a time I judged with a pilot's careful precision, I caught a taxicab back to the Flyer to see the sunset from on high. 

The Flyer isn't very popular with the locals. According to TIME, they gripe that it's too far away from everything and costs too much. I didn't sympathize with the former sentiment but certainly the latter: tickets were $33 SGD. Concordantly, there wasn't much of a crowd. I rolled up at seven o'clock, bought a ticket, hustled through all the supplementary bullshit they put up to make waiting in line more interesting—planetariums and historical placards and whatnot—and got some fantastic views of the downtown area and Marina Bay. 

Then, of course, I went to O'Leary's Sports Bar & Grill—foreigner-owned and foreigner-run, looking like it had sprung from any broad boulevard in the Inland Empire—for a nightcap. What else but a Singapore sling? 

It was weak and sickly-sweet and cost $17 SGD, but what the hell. I can say I've had a Singapore sling in Singapore. 

I'd meant to sample the best that Little India could offer me in the way of eats, but my internal compass was taking a much-deserved rest. I couldn't find my intended destination, Bali Nasi Lemak in Geylang. So I went back to the neighborhood of my hostel and sat down in the same little halal Sri Lankan/Thai cafeteria where that snaggle-toothed Samaritan Singaporean had bought me a bottle of water the previous evening. I had some iced lychee juice and a plate of nasi goreng thai for just $4.50 SGD. For afters I had some sort of fried fish dumpling, also delectable. I couldn't discern the waiter's thick Tamil accent when I asked what it was. Sounded like "kampop." 

I got an A&W root beer for dessert (you don't see those every day in Asia) and returned to the hostel to update my journals. My time in Singapore was at an end. The next morning I would mail postcards, check out of the Tresor Tavern at noon, and catch the metro for Changi Airport. 

If you'd like to find out why I hate Singapore, come back tomorrow. 

the Temple of Heaven

To be truthful, I didn't even know what this beast was until I saw it in one of my old hagwon's textbooks on a list of must-see landmarks in different countries. It was right up there with the Statue of Liberty and the Apple ('scuse me, Eiffel) Tower. Interesting cylindro-conical sort of structure with fetching blue detailing and attractive rounded eaves. Might be worth a look.

Boy, was it ever. Once you got past the obstacle course, that is.

First we had to pass through the overcrowded, grungy Beijing subway system and squeeze by the little four-year-old girl who took a dump on the pavement in front of the ticket office, her mother chasing her around with a doggie bag like her little girl was some kind of pet. After that, though, we found ourselves in a scenic park.

The complex as a whole is set up like the Forbidden City. Instead of courtyard after courtyard, though, it's gate after gate, and ticket after ticket. You had to buy a ream of four tickets (for something like six dollars American) to penetrate all the way into the park and see its every secret. We paid for everything, but we only saw the garden and the temple itself. Oh, and these, the Seven Star-Stones:

They're supposed to represent the seven divine peaks of China, or something, and also the unity of each of China's distant provinces. (Tell that to the Uighurs, guys.)

Then we hit the temple proper.

Originally constructed between 1406 and 1420, this particular building (called the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests) is 38 meters tall, 36 meters in circumference, and is built entirely of wood—not so much as a nail. The Chinese emperor and his entourage would come here to pray for a generous haul of rice every harvest season. Given its central location, the temple complex has often been conquered and used as a command center by invading forces, notably the Anglo-French Alliance during the Second Opium War in the late 1850s (not to be confused with the Taiping Rebellion) and the Eight-Nation Alliance in 1900 during the Boxer Rebellion.

But I didn't come here to tell you that. I came here to be sententious.  

Let me just say this: my initial impressions of the Chinese people (or at least the Beijingites) were negative. After I saw my fiancée get groped at Donghuamen Night Market, that four-year-old girl take a crap in public, old men with their shirts tied up under their armpits (exposing their sagging underbellies), and dozens of Chinese guys with cameras snapping covert pictures of us (particularly Miss H and Miss J), my impressions became even more negative. The Chinese seem to have the frayed tempers of the Koreans, but lack even the most basic idea of decorum. Hence, they take pictures of foreign women without permission (and then grin crookedly at them), walk around in stained tank tops, have screaming fights with each other in public, cough and sneeze and hack without covering their mouths, and let their kids relieve themselves in public like dogs.

It was that moment, as we sat on the west side of the Temple of Heaven, watching the smoggy sunset over the heads of creepazoids taking pictures of us, that I decided that I would never set foot in Beijing again.

Got some good pictures though.

Ensuing: HONGQIAO PEARL MARKET. Best place in the world to buy wedding jewelry.  

Zhongshan Garden

Not much needs to be said about this, either. Spotting a low gate in the wall of the Forbidden City, and disliking the look of the lines about the main entryway, Miss H, Miss J and I opted for the small door, thinking it might be a side entrance. We were wrong. It was Zhongshan Garden. It cost ¥6 (about a dollar) and was mighty beautiful. Take a peek:

Next? Our perfunctory venture inside THE FORBIDDEN CITY. Stay tuned...

Suizen-ji Jōju-en (or, how to pet a carp)

"Now," says the venerable Vaunter, hitching up his trousers, "I've seen my share of gardens."

And he's not lying. I love gardens. I go to 'em wherever I can. Wherever they are, I'll find them. Parks and gardens are as high as museums and towers on my list of must-see things to judge a culture by. They're quiet, peaceful, naturally beautiful places where you can recharge your travel batteries. It's absurdly easy to get a good photograph, and you can get an idea of the importance the local culture puts on landscaping and botanical beauty. I've been to the extensive gardens at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California; looked down upon the Royal Botanic Gardens from my remote perch atop Edinburgh Castle, Scotland; strolled through Yeomiji Botanical Garden on Jeju Island, South Korea; and, of course, photographed the eastern portion of the Imperial Palace Gardens in Tokyo, and the grounds of the Golden Pavilion in Kyoto, Japan.

But out of all of them, Suizen-ji Jōju-en in Kumamoto was my favorite. Take a gander:

Ain't it beautiful? I'm starting to see why Lafcadio Hearn put down roots in this town.

As you may have noticed from that one pic up there, this pond was absolutely bursting with carp so huge that they looked like they'd been mutated by nuclear radiation (sorry, too soon?). I could tell they were accustomed to being fed by passersby, 'cause they swarmed wherever my shadow touched the water, mouths agape.

I took advantage of that fact to cop a feel:

Yes, ladies and gentlemen. I felt up a carp. In the Suizen-ji Gardens. In Kumamoto. On Kyushu. That's the kind of person your Vaunter is.

Then I kept walking, snapping the prettiest pics I knew how, making a languorous circuit of the reflecting pool:

 

It was on the home stretch that I came to understand how the carp in this pond got so freaking fat. A couple of little old ladies, one of whom looked to be a hundred and two with hardly a tooth in her head, were selling stale breadsticks to park-goers. I bought one and spent a happy five minutes goading the greedy fish into a feeding frenzy.

And then I waltzed out of there, content as a carp with a mouthful of soggy bread. Back to the tram station and a few stops toward the town center brought me to the last item on my to-do list:

KUMAMOTO CASTLE.

You'll notice that's a tad larger than the other post previews have been. That's because Kumamoto Castle is

GINORMOUSLY

FREAKISHLY

HUGE.

You'll see for yourself, if you have the gumption to tune in tomorrow. C'mon and storm a castle with me.