Chapter Summaries
PART VIII
Surprising Singapore
Chapter 34
THE
WORLD OF CHARLIE TAN
After the bizarre
world of Kathmandu, arriving at Changi Airport seems like returning from a time warp, back
to the future, as I walk through what looks more like a glittering shopping mall. I
haven’t even breathed Singapore’s humid air before a short stout Chinese man
comes up and begins flipping pictures of his tourist accommodations – one of
Singapore’s "crash pads".
"You come stay my
place," he says. "Very clean. Very cheap. I pay one-half taxi."
His name is Charlie Tan and he
helps the taxi driver with my gear. Dorm beds, cubicles, air-conditioned doubles
and common rooms – that’s Charlie’s place – subdivided flats on two
floors of the Skyscraper residential complex. It is a virtual UN of shoestring
travelers, coming and going. Mrs. Charlie makes continental breakfasts. For seven out of
the next eight weeks, Charlie’s place is home in Singapore.
After seven months
in Third World discomforts, Singapore offers polished air-conditioned luxury. It is
stylish, sophisticated and cosmopolitan. It has state-of-the-art everything in its
gleaming stores, its resplendent hotels and its towering Telecom Centre where E.T.
finally phones home, instantly. And it has cinemas – starved for movies, I will
pig-out on ten features.
I
have arrived in time for the republic’s colourful National Day celebrations,
commemorating 22 years of independence. But the national songs, led by "We Are
Singapore" play incessantly over every public speaker and cause a generation gap:
children sing along; cashiers hum, but most adults, like the audience in Orchard Cinema,
anxious for Black Widow to begin, just moan or boo – yet
105,000 cassettes of the sugary jingles are quickly snapped up.
In Singaporeans, I see an
unusually high patriotic spirit, rivaling that of Americans, but it seems somewhat
justified. Singapore is a multicultural republic dominated by Chinese but heavily
influenced by its Indian, Malaysian and Muslim populations. Not only do they truly
live "in harmony", they delight in sharing each other’s festivals (great
excuse for a lot of parties) – I will share in four of the 26 festivals noted on the
calendar.
The government is a parliamentary
democracy. Though the Ministry of Communications and Information lists 20 political
parties, one has governed Singapore since independence day – the People’s Action
Party (PAP) – continuously lead by the articulate and protective Lee Kwan Yew,
effectively Singapore’s benevolent dictator. He has led Singapore from being a
filthy backwater port to being a financial, high-tech and transport hub of Southeast
Asia. Singaporeans are educated, orderly, polite and mostly employed. But all
may not be what it seems.
Paul Theroux lived and worked
here I the early 1970’s for three years. He came to feel it was "a
loathsome place" – a submissive society living under repressive laws and
governed by a polite but firmly intrusive dictatorial government that catered to western
investment – a place that everyone seemed to want to leave. Theroux freed himself in
1975 and moved to England.
Twelve years later, on busy
corner, a tall Chinese man with the look of a retired executive spontaneously says to me:
"You are a tourist. You see a very clean and efficient city, but they do not
tolerate any real opposition here." He tells of a friend who ranked high in
the government. He had publicly opposed government policy then found himself charged
with slander. He found himself jobless and leaving Singapore for good. Then,
as if the man suddenly felt he had said too much, he walked quickly away and disappeared
into the lunchtime crowd.
And there is the young couple who
befriends me. He is macho Singaporean and she is a warm French girl and they are
looking forward to a possible overland journey by motorcycle to France – to live
– "Singapore is so small," he says.
Indeed, the main island is only
14 miles wide by 26 miles long. With its 57 islets, the entire republic covers a mere 240
square miles (New York City covers 315) – little wonder it has been so relatively
easy to develop and control.
Nevertheless, in Singapore I see
that money has been spent on progressive things including infrastructure, education and on
cleaning up the environment. I lament that so much of the economies of so many
countries are devoted to developing offensive and defensive systems, more new and improved
ways of tracking and killing people and destroying property.
For most travelers, Singapore is
little more than a jumping off point, a shopping binge, an elegant dinner or a Singapore
Sling at Raffles Hotel. For shoestring travelers, it’s telecommunications and
airline tickets to more exotic destinations.
At Charlie’s place, the
westerners are gorging themselves at the hawker centres, phoning home or arranging onward
passage. Then they thin out their gear and move on quickly. Iranians are
riveted to the TV in the common room, watching news of the crisis in the Persian
Gulf. I dine with them and plot my own onward strategy.
I want to extend my journey by
flying to Moscow to ride Melawend through part of the Soviet Union before picking up the
Trans Siberian Railway to Vladivostok for the connecting ship to Japan. Surely, I
feel, the Soviets will welcome a planned visit from a peace-seeking scooter rider after
being humiliated by the daring West German pilot who audaciously landed his small airplane
in Red Square. Vladimir, the young Russian counselor at the Soviet Embassy, is very
kind and supportive but after slogging Singapore’s humid streets, I conclude that no
company in such a virulently anti-Communist country is going to jump forward to support my
venture.
With constant rejection, I become
increasingly dispirited. And my loneliness is made keener by the nightly enticements
of comely prostitutes in the nighttime shadows on Orchard Road. I envy the rapid
sure-footed comings and goings of fellow travelers at Charlie’s place.
Enough. I decide to take off for
a while, to relax and gain some perspective. I board a bus to begin a journey to
"One of the Ten Most Beautiful Islands in the World."
Chapter 35
TREASURE IN THE SOUTH
CHINA SEA
The bus crosses the causeway,
goes through Johor Baharu and rumbles back in time. Malaysia seems like a cleaner,
greener, less-populated version of India. At Mersing, I take a four-hour bumboat
ride to an island that emerges from a haze like some storybook island that beckons
adventure. This is Tioman Island.
Part
of South Pacific was filmed here. It’s all palm trees and
pathways and jungle treks and cheaply rented huts along sandy beaches. It has
relatively few tourists. It’s a mini-Riviera (less the structural trappings)
with its topless European sun seekers. Some fry sunnyside up just outside my
hut. Two of them swim out to a yacht while another, a dark statuesque girl from
Sarajevo, goes off by herself beside a rock promontory, doffs everything and plays like a
child in the surf (no photos).
In
the turquoise cove just beyond the promontory, I discover a setting Steven Spielberg
might well have created – there’s a wrecked bumboat grounded at the water’s
edge on a deserted, palm-fringed beach. I find willing models and photograph my
story – a beautiful girl shipwrecked on a deserted isle…
Two shipwreck photos: the difference between midday and
early evening light.
There is a steamy
high jungle trek across the island to more of the same – huts on a sense-soothing
beach that is virtually deserted. There is a government co-op resort but the rest of
the island remains more primitive with a few dirt roads and pathways and small cottage
style homes for its five thousand inhabitants. There is surprisingly little
commercialism. The overall feeling is tranquility.
There are no commercials to
program you. It's like a tropical Neverneverland. Days are sunny and it's
almost too beautiful here, like a promise destined to be broken. There are palmy
sunsets and campfires on the beach and moonlight walks with a dancer and a friendly
cat. It is all very seductive and there is a real temptation to stay on Tioman, find
an island girl and drop out of the world. But Melawend and the rest of the Odyssey
await in Singapore. At dawn, I trudge into the surf, climb aboard a bumboat and wave
goodbye to the dancer and the island – the bee leaving the flower for the hive.
Chapter 36
THE SINGAPORE
EXPLORER
I’m
back at Charlie’s place and there is no apparent way out of Singapore. What to
do? I have my cameras, my notebook and my improved traveler’s eye. The
Singapore Tourist Promotion Board puts me to work exploring the wonders amid the
bustle. I discover the zoo, the birdpark, the Chinese Gardens, the Chinese junk
cruise and the mythology depicted in Tiger Balm Gardens. I photograph the city from
the roof of the Westin Stamford, the world’s tallest hotel. I visit temples and
markets and attend festivals – the Moon Cake, Deepavali and the Festival of the
Hungry Ghosts. I prowl the streets of Chinatown and see impromptu street concerts
and puppet shows and the shophouses with laundry hung out on poles over the streets.
I learn of the STPB’s ambitious four-year billion-dollar Tourist Product
Development plan. I soon personify the well-financed hype and become a "Singapore
Explorer." Afterwards, onward passage is secured.
Back at Charlie’s, travelers
come and go, including the naughty Iranian boys who rumble with a drunk hooker in their
room. They give me their abundant groceries when they abruptly depart for
Korea. Some travelers linger, like the lonely "old salt" who tells of his
seafaring adventures.
Lonely too, I resume my cinematic
binge and, in walking home, am again lured by fleshy promises. I turn the tables on a pair
of perfume-reeking madams – now one of them follows me, enticing, bargaining.
It becomes too much to bear.
I conclude that Singapore, as
Tioman, as life itself, is something to be shared with someone special, not to become
fragmented memories held by one. I think again of how the heart of marriage is
memories. (And how ironic it is that one year after I leave, a lovely lonely Asian girl
will have to subordinate her hard-won university degree to come here and work at cleaning
toilets and wiping runny noses as one of the city-state’s thousands of foreign amahs
(nannies) – later to become my wife.)
For me, there is one
favourite retreat in Singapore – the relaxed colonial ambiance of Raffles Hotel
– dining on the Palm Court as a piano player plays "Stranger in Paradise",
having snacks in the Tiffin Room and lounging in the Writers’ Bar where I write the
last of my notes on Singapore. Somerset Maughm, one of the hotel’s long list of
illustrious regulars, once declared that Raffles "stands for all the fables of the
Exotic East." Maybe so. It was a sublime setting slated for complete
restoration.
There is another sad parting as
Melawend and I head for the land of her birth. I am nervous with my financial
resources virtually exhausted and only $8 in my pocket as I fly in my pampered Singapore
Airlines flight to one of the most expensive, crowded and yet insular cities in the world,
one that rekindles images of war – Tokyo.
