Stopped in Singapore

I went to Singapore for a few days last week. People ask me why I went, and I could give a few answers…truly, it was merely a visa run. I would be lying, though, if I said I wasn’t also eager to explore another nearby country; I could have just as easily booked the visa run in Thailand, but I chose Singapore. And I wanted to meet up with an organization. And I wanted to see an old friend I knew while in Kigali (Singaporean Kiran – who let me crash her couch while there). Lots of reasons.

I arrived in the middle of the night and took a speedy car through the wide highways to Kiran’s home. I then quietly slipped into the couch covers for a brief night’s sleep, before my busy 3-day schedule.

To me, Singapore could fit very nicely as a big city in Australia, if only it was closer. I felt like the city that was a mix of Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. In fact, if Singapore called itself Australian, I don’t think it would have phase me. And yet, it was still very much Asian. It’s hard to adequately explain my feelings.

If I had to sum up Singapore in 3 words, they’d be comprehensive, clean, and baller.

Now, hear me out.

Firstly, Singapore is pretty comprehensive in the sense that it’s a tiny country, yet it packs a punch. One minute I was walking downtown between skyscrapers and the next minute I hopped off a bus and ended up at a bay with gardens. Thirty more minutes and I was in front of a massive reservoir where people were fishing in a densely forested area (only a few blocks away from apartment complexes and restaurants al fresco). Kiran lives in a very sweet suburb area with beautiful little houses and a bunch of charming shopfronts. I was impressed with how much stuff is in Singapore, and such diversity in a small plot of land.

Second, Singapore is clean. Very clean. I know it’s famous for its cleanliness, but I have to verify this truth. In some ways, I felt like in some areas it was the kind of cleanliness you would see at an anal retentive cleaner's area (bleach bottle and all). Some areas were not as immaculate as this, of course, but a lot of it was very well kept. The UNESCO-endorsed Botanic Gardens, as an example, was extremely well managed but not sterile. 

I must admit that it was hard for me to remember all of the rules in Singapore in order to maintain cleanliness, such as no food or drink in many public areas and absolutely no chewing gum. Still, it was a really nice place to walk around because it was so clean in many different ways – I could walk around freely without being worried about getting hit by debris or people (then again, it was a weekday period, not weekend).

Finally, Singapore is baller. I know, this is an odd adjective to describe a city, but I kept thinking it when I was visiting. Singapore is baller because it’s got a lot of fancy things, and it’s super expensive. It’s, of course, the most expensive in the world today, and I choked back some tears when I went out for some meals and electronics shopping (A $35 burger?! really?!). 

But, it also has a lot of very nice things. Very, very nice things. The cars, for one, are fancy. And, the country is kind of like a massive, beautifully designed mall. Malls are omnipresent in Singapore, and a lot of the shops are luxurious. The less-expensive places I went into, even, were done out really glamorously – kind of like there’s a mindset of “go big or go home” to how business works here. 

It’s also baller because it’s clearly got so many model aspects to the country – the economy is a model for some countries like Rwanda, their wastewater treatment is world-renown as the best of the best, and even the gardens are created to be state-of-the-art and award winning. Kiran and I talked about this, and she explained with a sigh that the country is run like a business to the extreme; everything needs to be optimized, and everyone is on board. I could see what she means in the country’s overall aura of almost dogmatic efficiency, but I must say I’m still impressed.

But I did stuff. Let me share.

My first day was a work day. I went to the World Toilet Organization to network with the staff and chat about their role in and perceptions on the future of WASH. Afterward, I traveled to the incubator office called Impact Hub - I often work in the Phnom Penh office, and was able to arrange a desk for a day while in Singapore. The Phnom Penh office is intimate and a lovely space to connect with other entrepreneur spirits; the Singapore office was like being in a member’s only club! They had a nap room with beds and pillow-full couches, a kitchen with free ice-cream, several different areas for working, and a full-on café area where you could eat gourmet food while talking to people on sleek couches (this is also what I mean by baller). I got to network with a bunch of really interesting people doing very similar work to what I hope to do in the nearby future.

Also, I made sure to nap in the designated room after I finished up my working for the day.

I ate at a hawker stall for lunch, too. Hawker stalls are kind of like food court vendors run by small families, (cleanly) crammed into small spaces together. It was tasty and affordable, don’t worry.

A lot of my trip was around shopping for electronics. Part of this was intentional, since I was in need for a charger and some earphones that would last past my trip to Cambodia, and I got those things. I also had to get a new phone because early into my trip my phone decided it had had a good (albeit far too brief) life and pulled its power cord permanently. Many hours between Kiran and me were stuck in Samsung waiting to see if there was any hope of revival. When there wasn’t, we spent more hours hunting down people selling their unused phones on and in local marketplaces. We walked through the labyrinth of massive interconnected malls from one meet-up spot to another, searching for phone sellers. Fortunately, I got the same model as my own phone, but it wasn’t without some suffering (and sweating).

Oh yeah, Singapore was in a heat wave while I was there, so there was much sweating.

On my second day, I walked around the arcades of Burgis Street, roamed a bit of CBD, and walked through Little India for some sightseeing and eating. I also strolled up and down the shopping hub of Orchard Road while hunting for electronics.

I walked around the massive quay called Marina Bay Sands. It’s essentially another massive high-end hotel and mall – with a Venetian-inspired boating experience in the middle of it! – that hosts a lot of water-inspired art throughout the place. I admired the skyline, and ended up going to the Art Science Museum to escape the heat. 

Going to the museum might have been the best decision of the entire trip! The museum had an interactive exhibit full of bright colors and fun creative installations that allowed me to draw my own art and have it become part of the display for a little while. There were walls that changed shapes when touched, and brightly-lit balls that changed colors when rolled to hit each other. I cannot remember the last time I felt such childlike joy.

The museum was followed by a brief visit to the Gardens by the Bay. By this time I was getting tired of walking around and took a bus ride through the major center of the country before heading over to the Singapore Zoo for a tour of the Night Safari. This zoo area is specifically open at night only, where you board a tram that trucks you around the zoo to see the more nocturnal animals in dimly-lit open enclosures chilling out. It was a pretty neat idea, though unfortunately I had the luck of going the one day the zoo was having a children’s overnight party, and there were screaming/crying children surrounding me in this what-should-be-adults-only zoo area at 9:30PM.

A final note: would I live in Singapore? I’m not sure. I loved visiting the place, and I would love to visit again more to explore it in more depth. Living, there, however, would be a different story, I feel, and I’m not entirely sure I’d survive in such a pricey place. Also, I'm not sure my quirky lifestyle and crunchy needs would necessarily fly in such an economic masterpiece. But really, who knows?