March 2008

From KL back to Singapore, then off to Melbourne. One of the crappier airport experiences I’ve had was at the Tiger Airways “terminal” in Melbourne. Tiger Airways, in case you aren’t aware, is a Singapore-based budget airline that covers much of Australia and various points in SE Asia. “Budget” is the operative word here. Everything feels small and cramped, the stewardess outfits are cheap-looking, and if you were choking on a peanut they wouldn’t give you a drop of water unless you paid for it first. But that won’t happen, because they don’t give you peanuts either.

The Melbourne airport was recently voted one of the world’s top five airports, but the Tiger terminal is not in the Melbourne Airport. It’s in the middle of a parking lot or something, several minutes away from the airport, and is literally composed of unpainted concrete cinder blocks and cyclone fencing. It’s exactly what I imagine the place where the planes land in Guantanamo Bay to look like.

Melbourne was my first taste of the western world in over a year and it was a bit overwhelming initially. I suddenly had a reference point for how long I’ve been away. Posters for bands and movies I haven’t heard of, bookstores with unfamiliar new releases, the way people looked, the clothes they wore. Something about it made me miss everyone and everything so much more acutely. And at the same time, I had the pointed realization that I don’t feel the same way about the world anymore, that I don’t belong to the world in quite the same way anymore.

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From Singapore, I took a quick side trip to Kuala Lumpur, where I wandered for a day and a half with no map and no real intention, just hopping on and off the subway/elevated train and going up and down streets that looked interesting. It was pleasantly disorienting, although it was hard to get too lost with the Petronas Twin Towers always looming as a landmark. I eventually made my way to the Towers and spent way too long taking photos and ogling them from different angles. They’re really impressive up close, they have this kind of this sci-fi Islam quality that I found almost unimaginably appealing.

I also made my way to a place called the Colisuem Café & Hotel. It’s a colonial relic with a green bartop and stained wood furniture, fans rotating slowly among naked hanging bulbs. The walls have long turned yellow, and framed articles advise what to do “When Your Servant Has Malaria.” The menu is all old-fashioned cocktails and steaks and chicken cordon bleu, with the Malaysian food tucked into a section called “local specialties.”

I have to give this an incomplete grade, a tease of a city and a country that I’m eager to return to. Like Singapore, it’s a mix of Malay, Chinese, Indian, Indonesian, and more . . . all these different sounds and flavors . . . eating nasi goreng on the street while the muezzin’s call to prayer pierces the night, thinking there’s never enough time.

No place is ever the way you think it’s going to be. (This was especially true for me of Vietnam, where the connotative power of that word to the American mind, Vietnam, was immediately and almost entirely incongruous with the reality of the place. Vietnam was a perpetual surprise: the food, the sweetness of the people I met, the fact that I stayed there and taught literature for six months, which I hadn’t planned to do.)

Anyhow. On my way here to New Zealand, I stopped off in Singapore, which, according to my half-formed, insubstantial notion of the place, should have been a sterile, futuristic city-state of spotless sidewalks and orderly streets. Maybe the kind of place where people rode segways.

Changi Airport doesn’t disappoint on that front, nor does the clean and efficient MRT train you can catch from the airport . And as I glided along the elevated tracks on my way into town, I honestly found myself scanning the streets below for any signs of litter. I was surprised when I saw some fluttering papers, then an empty drink can, then several masses of undifferentiated trash.

Looking around, the glass and steel skyscrapers of my imagination were replaced by acre upon acre of concrete apartment blocks. In truth, most of Singapore looks like a NYC housing project.

I stayed in noisy and chaotic Little India (this is Singapore?), then moved to a cheaper neighborhood called Geylang, which turned out to be a serious red-light district once the lights went down. Who knew Singapore even had a red-light district? There were hookers everywhere. (My hotel was called The Champagne, by the way, and my room featured this poignant inscription on the headboard: “Toon loves you to mus.” The other thing Geylang is known for is its food, particularly the noodles called—I swear—hor fun.)

Of course, Singapore did turn out to have the glass towers and tony shopping streets as well; Orchard Road is pretty much one continuous luxury mall that seems to stretch for hundreds of miles. And it was even more expensive than I imagined; absurdly, heart-stoppingly expensive, especially having come straight from Vietnam.

But when I think of Singapore, I think of my lovely friend Pilar, and of my old friend from New York, Mark Yeo–the first person I have seen from home since before I started traveling–and I think of hearing ghost stories at a haunted hotel that is soon going to be torn down and of the best prata I’ve ever had and all these other things wonderful and personal and now kind of sad. One thing about travel: I’m getting a little sick of saying good-bye.