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.
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