Singapore - more than just a stopover

I only booked three nights in Singapore, mostly because everyone I know who's been there seemed to take the view that it's basically only somewhere you should stop over for a short period, three nights maximum. However, I have to ask those people - why??? I really really liked it, didn't want to leave at all, and could easily have spent at least a week there as there was easily that much to see.

Singapore is a reluctant country; it desperately wanted to be a state within Malaysia when the latter gained its independence in 1963. This initially happened, but Malaysia then threw Singapore out a mere two years later due to racial tensions perceived to threaten Malaysia's stability (Malaysia is majority Malay, but Singapore is three-quarters Chinese). This left Singapore's Prime Minister publicly sobbing. According to Wikipedia it's the only country in modern history to have become independent against its own will. 

Singapore has prospered to a remarkable extent, becoming rich by global standards, easily the richest in the region. The narrative told by the National Museum of Singapore is that this has come about through unglamorous hard work. There seems to be a relative lack of ostentatiousness about the city - Singapore is definitely not Hong Kong. It doesn't have the stunning natural backdrop of Hong Kong either, albeit it does have a patch of untouched primary rainforest. As I understand it much of the wealth has come through industry and technology rather than finance, and the Central Business District is small (albeit surprisingly pleasant and atmospheric).

What it is rightly well known for is being remarkably clean and well organised. Roads are organised on a grid system, with plenty of space everywhere, and the public transport is seriously impressive - I imagine it is a bit of an urban planner's dream city. But if that sounds uninspiring, it really is better than that. There is plenty of British colonial architecture still intact (again, unlike in Hong Kong), such as the world-famous Raffles Hotel and the more outwardly impressive Fullerton Hotel. The city centre has a very pleasant and impressive waterfront, as well as a river running through it, with many dozens of riverside spots to hang out in. I was impressed by the fusion of traditional and modern, there are also distinctly modern structures such as the Esplanade Theatres which look a little like giant metallic pineapples, and there is also notably a lot of modern (sometimes hyper-modern) street sculpture pleasantly dotted around the city centre.

Giant metallic pineapples... oh sorry, Esplanade Theatres

Orchard Road is the main shopping street and I can only describe it as bizarre. I've shown surprise at the number of huge shopping malls in several other Asian cities, but Singapore really takes the biscuit - Orchard Road is a whole street, probably a good two kilometres or more in length, that is just one huge mall after another. I didn't try to count them but it must have been somewhere around 15 or 20. Some of them make remarkable architectural statements too. A little soulless, almost certainly, but actually the overall effect was highly interesting and not quite as grotesque (or JG Ballard-esque) as you might imagine. And, you can literally step off Orchard Road onto Emerald Hill Road, an immediately quiet, tree-lined street with delightful bars and cafes giving way to gorgeous private Mediterranean-esque townhouses.

Emerald Hill Road

The National Museum of Singapore is a very good (and remarkably high-tech) museum with a welcome focus on social history. Don't bother with the disappointing Singapore Art Museum, but do head to the lovely Fort Canning Park, one of the loveliest and most peaceful city centre parks I've seen. The park contains a number of attractions, including the Battle Box - the military bunker used by the British Army during World War II, in which the humiliating British surrender of the island to the Japanese in 1942 is superbly re-enacted with the help of robotic waxworks (!).

By night, I had a lot of fun at the excellent gay club Taboo where the music was good (think Lady Gaga, Madonna and commercial house) and the atmosphere even better. I have to say that if you want to feel attractive as a Western gay man, going to gay joints in Asia seems to be an excellent way of doing it - simply because a lot of Asian guys seem to like white guys. Ahem. I'll be happy to discuss further over drinks when I'm back in London! Tantric, the gay bar nearly opposite, is also a decent venue although you probably need to be in the mood for the distinctly cruisy and posy feel. There are two or three other gay venues I could have explored with more time. Homosexuality is in theory illegal in Singapore as in Malaysia. However whereas in Malaysia they seem to still mean it, in Singapore I was led to believe that it's more that they haven't quite got round to changing the legislation yet but the authorities will turn a blind eye as long as you don't really rub it in people's faces. From what I saw, Singapore is definitely a pretty good destination for gay nightlife.

I really do hope to spend more time in Singapore at some point. Does it sometimes have a slightly sterile feel? Maybe. I should also warn that it seems to be far from well set up for backpackers and I spent too much money staying in a decidedly unimpressive place which Lonely Planet seemed to think was amongst the best available. But is Singapore an interesting, cultural, exceedingly comfortable place? Definitely, and with English as the primary language, I could even see myself living there without too much trouble.

Temples, tat and terrorism in Thailand

I've been decidedly fortunate that Northern Europe hasn't featured in my region-hopping of late. En route by plane from Hong Kong to Bangkok, I met two separate travellers who were completely screwed by the aftermath of the Icelandic volcano. One needed to get from Hong Kong home to Germany, but was now flying via Sydney (Sydney!) in the hope that a flight to Europe would be available a little sooner from there; while the second had had her flight from Bangkok to Switzerland that day, 20th April, cancelled and been advised that the earliest flight she could be rebooked onto would be on... 15th May. Her German friend had called the German Embassy and been told matter-of-factly that they could offer no assistance whatsoever.

Anyway, Bangkok seems to be a place with a remarkably poor reputation. The advice I got from fellow tour group members in India was that I'd pretty much just want to pass through it, while when I told the traveller who was stranded in Bangkok that I planned to stay at least three nights but maybe more, she looked at me as if I was a little mad and said, "In Bangkok?" disbelievingly. Even the Lonely Planet guide to Thailand, astoundingly, gives the distinct impression of not really being very fond of it, with various snide comments. But actually, I kind of liked it and I ended up staying four nights; if it hadn't been for the security situation (more on that later) it might have been more.


I figure a lot of the negative reputation stems from the notoriously steamy climate. It's hot and very humid all year round; while I was there at one of the less desirable times of year climactically I believe the seasonal differences are relatively minor. It does make you physically tired for sure after walking around for a while. However, two things you have to say in its defence: (a) they do air conditioning exceptionally well just about everywhere (from branches of 7-Eleven upwards), so you pretty much just have to step inside to get some relief, and (b) just when the humidity was starting to become a really serious problem while I was there, there was a short thunderstorm which freshened things up substantially. And it was a lot more bearable than northern India in April, when it doesn't rain at all.


What I really hadn't realised is that large parts of Bangkok feel like a distinctly modern, Westernised metropolis; in addition to all the air conditioning, you have lots of gleaming towers, shiny shopping malls, and some very 21st Century public transport in the form of the Metro and Skytrain (albeit they're limited in geographical reach) and abundant cheap and relatively trustworthy modern taxis. This supplements the traditional but useful and pleasant boat services up and down the river. Road traffic also seems calm and sensible if heavy. Oh, and fans of 7-Eleven take note - they're absolutely everywhere. :)

However, there are a few basics that the authorities don't ever seem to have thought about. Perversely, despite the apparent safeness of the way people drive, I felt more endangered crossing the roads in Bangkok than anywhere else I've been. Why? Because main roads commonly have five lanes in each direction and - unbelievably - crossing lights for pedestrians are virtually never provided. So you just have to take your life in your hands whenever you guess that the traffic flow is at its most favourable. At major intersections it's not fun at all. I also didn't see a public litter bin anywhere in the city, nor anything like a bench. These are hardly insoluble problems, so maybe by the time anyone reading this plans a visit some of them might have been resolved (assuming there continues to be any functioning government in Thailand that is of course).

The main conventional sightseeing attraction in the city is its Buddhist temples, the best known of which is Wat Phra Kaew, also the site of a major royal palace. I'm happy to say that I've found Buddhist temples probably the most beautiful religious buildings I've seen, as well as the most peaceful and calming. (I will declare a bias there; while I'm an atheist I have practised a little bit of Buddhist meditation as a relaxation aid, and was very happy to have the opportunity to meditate just a little bit in the temples I visited; I'm also pretty sympathetic to Buddhism as a philosophy if not as a faith as such.) The prominent colour, amongst variegated precious stones, is usually gold. I am usually someone who finds gold vulgar in the extreme, and I would sooner die than wear it or allow it to furnish my home - but somehow in the temples that I visited it usually just seems to work and create an overall effect which is remarkably tasteful, even beautiful, as well as striking. Wat Phra Kaew itself, the most sacred site in Thailand, was probably a little overwhelming - there are an extraordinary number of monuments in a really very small space - at the same time as it was breathtaking. I was therefore pleased to also explore the much lesser visited (and much cheaper to get into) Wat Pho with its enormous and rather extraordinary Reclining Buddha, some 46m long and 15m high.

 Wat Phra Kaew

The other real must-see, if you are in the city at the weekend, is Chatuchak Weekend Market, one of the biggest markets in the world. It's definitely one of the best markets I've seen anywhere, selling just about everything you can possibly think of (from designer T-shirts and quality home decorations through to fish in plastic bags and er, used trainers). It's popular with tourists but not touristy, and also popular with locals. It was great to just wander round; I could only really stay a couple of hours but I'm certain I would have stayed amused all day if I'd had it to spare.


There is some hassle around the city from people who want to sell you things, but thankfully it doesn't seem to be in the (seemingly slightly reserved) Thai temperament to persist once you've said no once. What has stuck in my head is the call of "Thai massaaaaaaage!" whenever you walked past most of the many massage parlours, which often carried a rather comical (to a native English speaker) lingering high-pitched stress on the second 'a' of "massage" - no doubt because Thai is a tonal language whereas English is not. There are several well known cons tried on tourists too, but provided you're forewarned about them (just read the section in Lonely Planet) they seem easy enough to spot and avoid.

It almost goes without saying that there is plenty of sleaze as well. This is most notably in the form of go-go bars, as I understand it, basically a slightly sanitised access point for escorts and prostitutes, female or male (around the gay scene there were an entertaining number of balding, fat 50-something men parading young, lithe Thai boys). In addition to that on the infamous Khaosan Road amongst other places there are also plentiful stalls selling obviously pirated CDs and DVDs, and fake driving licences, degree certificates and so on (some of the ones on display were laughably poor quality fakes), as well as bars advertising their "very strong" cocktails (the tourist equivalent of a plastic bottle of cider from Asda?). Even amongst all of that though you can still find the odd tasteful chill-out bar, and great street food such as fresh mango with sticky rice and coconut milk which may, without exaggeration, have been the best dessert I've ever had. (Possibly the highlight of a very happy culinary time in Thailand - lots of lovely food, all very cheap too... And thankfully not a hint of a stomach upset either!)

I couldn't spend time sweltering in Bangkok without submitting myself to one of the aforementioned Thai massages. It was, er... a memorable experience. During a one-hour session which cost about £7, a typically small Thai lady yanked and shoved me in deeply unnatural directions, and gouged into areas of skin and muscle I barely knew existed, kneading them like dough. It was really pretty painful at times, and I was in not inconsiderable fear that some vital part of my body was going to be broken, ripped or dislocated. However, at the end of the session, I did feel remarkably fresh and relaxed! But to be honest, I think I'm going to stick to Swedish-style massages once back home! It could have been worse - I didn't have the appetite for the widely available "fish massage", which involves sticking your foot in a fishtank for the fish to literally eat the dead skin off between your toes and on the soles of your feet...


I've mentioned the gay scene which is reasonably extensive and impressive, albeit not quite as large or in-your-face as I'd imagined it could be. It's difficult not to observe the difference between this country whose principal religion, Buddhism, doesn't preach on sexual morals much beyond (if I've learnt correctly) 'treat people with respect', and other Asian countries where much more socially conservative religions hold sway. Bangkok's leading gay club DJ Station, set over three levels, mixes a mostly Western soundtrack with a distinctly Thai (and maybe slightly shy by Western standards) nightly drag show - quite good fun, and I can personally vouch for the fact that there are at least some genuine Thai guppies (gay professionals) who are neither go-go boys nor 'moneyboys'! 


It may not have escaped your attention, dear reader, that there has been some political instability in Bangkok of late. I'd had fairly limited time to research and fix where in the city I was going to stay, and I consequently managed unwittingly to pick the edge of the district, Silom, where the trouble is centred. Furthermore, the vast majority of Bangkok's gay scene is located pretty much just round the corner from Lumphini Park where the 'red shirts' were camped out. However, certainly for the majority of my stay, the atmosphere seemed really pretty normal, and the advice from the FCO (British Foreign & Commonwealth Office) at the time was just to avoid the immediate area around Lumphini Park which I tried to do. Yes, there was the small matter of large numbers of armed soldiers and riot police all around, and the odd barbed wire barricade to navigate round. I also saw a small counter-demonstration, clearly being encouraged by soldiers, of people waving yellow - not the greatest of signs for future stability. However, people were going about their business and trading of every kind (to locals and tourists) appeared to be continuing normally. Normality is a relative concept after all (something that travelling around Asia definitely heightens your awareness of), and there's been regular unrest in Bangkok to a greater or lesser extent for some years now, so it would be more surprising really if people weren't getting on with their lives.

 Red shirt demonstrations at a major traffic intersection, which closed down two major shopping malls

However, a series of bombings occurred during my stay - grenades launched from Lumphini Park, some of which landed substantially further away on Th Silom than I (or I think the FCO judging by its advice at that point) would have anticipated. If I'd been out on the gay scene that night, which I wasn't, I would have been walking through the area where it happened. 

Because I was in fact nowhere near the area at the time, I didn't actually realise till the following afternoon exactly what had happened. The morning after I'd blithely hopped into a taxi and asked to be taken to Sala Daeng, the nearest pronouncable landmark to where I wanted to go next, but (I didn't yet realise) the exact focal point of the bombings - I didn't really understand why my taxi driver who spoke minimal English was getting quite so agitated in response! Oops. Suffice to say where I eventually got turfed out was a little distance away! Train stations in the area were closed in the aftermath as were most of the gay venues in the affected area the following night. (In hindsight I possibly shouldn't have gone looking, but it's harder than you might realise to assess these things when you're caught up in the middle of them... and I did have a good night at one of the few places that was open.) Also the FCO promptly changed its advice to warn against all non-essential travel to Bangkok. I took all of those as pretty good signs I was right to plan to leave the following morning. It did take me several slightly panic-stricken seconds to realise (from the comfort of my hostel lobby) that the start of a thunderstorm that morning wasn't something much worse!

A fellow traveller I met in Chiang Mai who had been in Thailand for seven months predicted that within a year the country will be in civil war. The Bangkok-born-and-bred friend I made said that it was freaking him out and making him wish he lived somewhere else. I've no idea how much credence should be given to either of those comments - let's hope againt hope they're both worrying needlessly - but just maybe from a travelling point of view (for however little that should actually matter in the grand scheme of things) I got to see this intriguing city just in time.

Welcome to communist China. Er...

Hong Kong in a sentence: one huge monument to capitalism.

It is easy to think of this as deeply ironic for a region of China, but in fairness to China it agreed in the run-up to the 1997 handover not to make any attempt to dismantle Hong Kong's capitalist system for at least 50 years, but instead to run a policy of "one country, two systems". And there is no doubt that this is what they are doing. Hey, I even stumbled across a modest but noisy political protest right outside the government offices against alleged police suppression, which the very modest presence of security staff was containing but clearly tolerating.
 
The number of high-rise towers in the city, many albeit far from all of them belonging to financial institutions (as high-rise living is also very common), is pretty staggering. This creates what is surely the most dramatic and stunning cityscape view in the world, as you look across the water from Kowloon to Hong Kong Island itself - I knew roughly what to expect but it was still a bona fide take-your-breath-away moment. Think of Canary Wharf in London but then literally multiply it by 10 or 15 while keeping the same concentration, and you get somewhere close. The weather was misty throughout my stay, apparently very common at this time of year (and not helped by the notoriously poor air quality), but this only detracted marginally from the effect. 

Misty, but truly stunning

 
Unlike London there is very little more traditional/historic architecture to balance this out, largely because pretty much anything in the way of 'progress' over the years has been ruthlessly demolished - an attitude entrenched under British rule and only continued by the Chinese. However the very modest St John's Cathedral and the Legislative Council building are two rare surviving notable examples of 19th or early 20th Century architecture.

Everyone would probably know that uncompromising high-rise is what you get in Hong Kong, but what I think is comparatively little realised is that it also has stunning natural scenery - beautiful turquoise waters with shorelines to match, and a substantial quality of forested hills. The bus ride into the city from the airport, which juxtaposes this natural scenery against the backdrop of various city centre towers, was without a doubt the most attention-grabbing and memorable I've experienced. Conversely, the cityscape view from Kowloon is made even more incredible by the presence of several forested hills in the background.


However, walk around a little further and the overall impression in my eyes is not entirely one of a livable city. While Kowloon is a breeze to navigate, I spent a long time lost on Hong Kong Island. Admittedly there are a few oases of very well tended green space left in the centre (one of which, Hong Kong Park, was apparently designed to look as artificial as possible - fitting in with its surroundings I suppose, although to be fair it's vastly more pleasant than that makes it sound), and of course the aforementioned forested hills further out as well as many square miles of outlying shoreline and sparsely populated areas. The Peak area, around the top of Hong Kong's highest hill, which is reached from the city centre by a remarkably steep funicular railway (so steep that my sense of parallel and perpendicular was pretty much lost as I watched the towers on the way up), has always been the most desirable area of the city to live; given the view over the city, it's not hard to see why. Another lower but still desirable area called the Mid Levels has been provided with the world's longest outdoor escalator (some 800m long) to make it more accessible from the city centre! However I'm not actually entirely clear why the city proper hasn't spilled out further and more generally than this, as I reckon if this was my city even I would be tempted to live a little out-of-town if the opportunity were there, given its apparent beauty compared to the OTT-ness of the centre.

In fairness, there were a couple of surprising elements of public accessibility amongst all the urban sprawl - the famous Bank of China Tower, which has a bizarrely striking design where the four 'sides' of the building all end at different heights (from above it is four triangular prisms moulded into a rectangle, but each of a differing length), has a public viewing gallery on the 43rd Floor which Reception and Security smilingly whisk you through to, offering fantastic views over much of the city. And the HSBC Tower, the most expensive building in the world when it was finished in 1985 and apparently the one which really set the tone for Hong Kong's development since, allows you to wander up unchecked to the third floor to gawp up from the remarkable glass atrium.


The other element of the rampant capitalism on display was the astonishing quantity of high-end shops spread over wide areas and, in particular, shopping malls virtually everywhere. I was reliably told that Hong Kong residents tend to consider shopping a major hobby and don't like to spend time in the city centre without buying something. For a city with a population about the same as London, I was just astounded at how it was all viable - although it's occurred to me since that London has various satellite and suburban 'town centres' which restrict footfall in Central London, whereas HK probably has very little of that, hence pretty much everyone shops in the centre. It was also very obvious that this part of the world has seen nothing resembling a recession, only (as I understand it) continuing runaway economic growth - I didn't spot a single empty shop. Although I only had time to scratch the surface, you have to add to this a considerable quantity of much more traditional street markets too which thankfully seem to preserve an element of traditional Chinese economic culture.


There is clearly a substantial Westerner population within the city's 7 million overall residents, especially evident amongst the suited, booted businessmen I saw after the weekend. It's not hard to see why they are attracted, given the general Western feel of the place, with excellent English signage just about everywhere, English widely spoken, and the general sense of order and organisation (for example, the Metro is strikingly efficient and the airport may be the best I've ever used). Based on the very limited evidence of my short stay, I got the impression that there may be considerable social segregation between the Chinese and Western populations, at least in terms of venues they frequent. Certainly of the two gay venues I went to, the rather nice Kolours (which really felt like a generic European gay venue) was at least 70% Western, whereas the even nicer-looking but desperately over-crowded (albeit on a Saturday night) Zoo was overwhelmingly Chinese.


One by-product of the obviously astronomical real estate prices in the centre of the city is that budget accommodation is a little small and basic. For my last night I ended up in the infamous Chungking Mansions, which takes the concept of 'backpacker central' to a whole new level. This is a single delapidated 18-storey building which contains, at my count, no fewer than 67 separate hostels and guesthouses (honestly). There are only six lifts in the whole building, leading to regular long queues to get up and down - and it's better to queue because the stairs are not especially pleasant to say the least. You generally have to call a mobile phone to get reception service because the owners are typically away running other businesses, rooms are tiny (I think it was the closest I've ever come to feeling I was sleeping in a prison cell) and general cleanliness leaves quite a lot to be desired (and I was in one of the hostels there recommended by Lonely Planet) - but hey it was an experience and quite possibly a travelling rite of passage.

I'd only given myself three nights here before my next flight to Bangkok was booked - in hindsight this wasn't long enough, although especially so because I'd come down with quite a heavy cold (no doubt brought on by the physical rigours and the stress of my Indian tour) which reduced my energy for sightseeing. To explore the markets, temples and, particularly, the beautiful outlying countryside properly, as well as Macau (which sounds well worth a day but which I had no chance of getting to), you could easily spend a week here at your most energetic.