Shopping in Singapore

Just one of thousands of orchids at the Singapore Botanical Gardens
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Sing, sing, Singapore.  I arrived at midday and hailed a Mercedes Benz taxi, complete with working seat belts and a driver fluent in English.  I was back in the First World again.  I settled back in my seat with a sigh of relief and chatted with my driver all the way in from the airport.  Forty percent of Singapore is preserved as green areas, parks, forests, gardens, an astonishing accomplishment in a city less than 700 square kilometers big.  We saw lots of that green area on the ride in (not to mention the endless orchids in the airport).

Enough with the orchids!
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I spent three days at a passable hostel in Little India, able there to buy anything and everything I could have bought in New Delhi.  I was struck again by how easy friendship is between men in India (and Little India), men holding hands, putting their arms around each other as they walk, standing on street corners or over a cup of coffee, talking for hours.  It is commonplace to see deep friendships among men, intimacies easy and relaxed.  I reacquainted myself with the good dishes of India, particularly enjoying vegetarian thalis and various dahls and rice.

Swear a solemn pact to go to the Orchid Gardens in Singapore.

More orchids.
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For those first three days I also spent a fair amount of time in the nearby Arab Quarter and in Chinatown, both likewise tiny subcultures in a larger city devoted largely to shopping and eating.  I had two meals at a Yemen restaurant that were incomparable, just down the street from a mosque often intoning earnest sounding injunctions in Arabic.  I bought some more small souvenirs for the folks back home.

After three nights in low-budget accommodations in Little India, I relocated to the Singapore Marriott where I was due to meet my cousin Mary Lou in just a couple of days.  Heaven on a stick.  I was now located on Orchard Street, the prime shopping district in Singapore as well as the site for numerous wonderful restaurants.  I spent a happy two days wandering about the shops and eating noodles at the Asian food court in the basement of the Lucky Plaza mall.  I scored faux Crocs for $4 and rescued my feet from faux Tevas (purchased in Bangkok) and the blisters they fostered.

Who knew that the calabash tree is pollinated by bats?!
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A few other activities in Singapore bear mentioning.  First, I spent a contented afternoon in the Singapore  Botanic Gardens, enraptured by the orchid gardens.  Telling you that thousands of orchids grow outdoors there is an index to the degree of heat and humidity that infuses Singapore.  Bring it on, though, I say, if it results in flora as various and colorful as these orchids are.  I can't say enough about the beauty of these well-maintained and meticulously groomed gardens, except to ask each of you who admires gardens to swear a solemn pact to go to these in Singapore some day.

Mosque in the Arab Quarter.
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I also spent a less fruitful but absolutely as satisfying afternoon at Sentosa Island, where flyers advertised "the world's first virtual reality ride"!  I couldn't resist, so I took a taxi and then slogged on foot for another half mile (the driver had left me in the wrong spot) in boiling hot weather to get to the incomparable CINEMANIA!!  It was a hoot and absolutely nothing like what it was billed to be.  Las Vegas's Star Trek ride has it all over Singapore's Cinemania, not that I've ridden with Klingons four times in my life.  After a half-hour wait with other rubes and two young women from the Bangkok Tourist Agency checking out the ride for future customers, I was allowed past the chained gate and let into the auditorium.  Each of us was seated in a beat-up black plastic chair with a frayed seatbelt, and for the next half-hour we were bounced up and down in our chairs while we visited "Dino World II!" and a seemingly endless roller coaster ride that had a subterranean component to it.  It was so bad it was infinitely enjoyable.  I had a huge, foolish grin for the entire ride.  Then it was back outside to the blazing heat, a long trudge across a deserted parking lot and up to a road where I waited for 20 minutes for a taxi to cruise by and let me in to its blissful air conditioning.  The whole experience was worth every penny.

Hindu Temple in Chinatown. Go figure.
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Finally, when my cousin Mary Lou joined me, she was able to bring to our day together experience gained from having lived in Singapore for four years.  We spent the morning hours walking along a gorgeous path paralleling the shore of the South China Sea, taking in the sights of giant container ships stacked up and waiting for their turn to be unloaded.  After an afternoon of errands for both of us, we dined at a restaurant on the 70th floor of a new city building in an inestimably beautiful restaurant called Equinox.  The restaurant itself was upscale and well-appointed, but it was the view that was incomparable.  We watched the sun set over the city and then had a view of the water, the downtown, and various parts of the city that Mary Lou was able to point out and explain.  The view of the neon at night reminded me of Hong Kong, but the clean air and water were novel.  We ate well, each course paired with a wine selected by the restaurant sommelier, and by the time dessert came, I was only vaguely aware of the drizzled chocolate and mandarin sorbet surrounding some sort of chocolate cake whose name I forget.  It was an amazing meal, made more so by the fact that Mary Lou treated; that would be my cousin who I met only three months ago, who remains unrivaled in good humor and generosity.