According to the Singapore Tourism Board, more than a million visitors land in the city-state every month. Within this torrent of tourists, from the far away land of France, a Sciences-Po student arrives to attend the Model Asia-Europe Meeting Summit 2012 hosted by NUS. Solange Harpham gives her impressions of her two-week stay in the bustling Singapore.
=========================================================
“You’re too tall!” protests my Singaporean friend when she tries to hug me and finds my waist. And I am. I gave up on heels after I arrived on the 21st of June; no girl likes to tower over everyone else in clubs, or stand out in the crowd when crossing the street. A French student on holiday, I only started “living la vida loca” once I had done away with those stilettos.
This was my second time flying fourteen hours in a cramped plane to the city-state–why? Why was I always coming back to Singapore when there were more affordable trips to be made in Europe? Why come to the place which most of my Singaporean friends qualified as “boring”, the place which they sought to escape by studying abroad? The common refrain that “there is nothing to do in Singapore” didn’t deter me from running down escalators, jumping in MRTs, hailing taxis, always moving, always eating, always talking–sometimes all three at the same time–and probably making a spectacle of myself. But I was in a foreign place, surrounded by friends and enjoying all that could be enjoyed in the fifteen days I had decided to spend in Singapore.
For the first part of my holiday, I resided in a small bungalow near the Botanic Gardens. The heavy grey sky, the still palm trees lining the road, and the clinging humidity were constant reminders of where I was. “Singapore at last!” I told myself as I tugged on my luggage. My new home was more or less at the edge of a jungle-like forest, populated with various beasts unknown to me. I got to fight against ants scouring my apartment in search of food and, to my utter city-girl horror, I once woke up to find myself face to face with a huge lizard.
The heat, lizards, mosquitoes and bugs were things I would gradually get used to. Almost as soon as I landed, I took off on a major trip to do what every tourist should do: consume, consume, consume. Those two weeks made me more than broke–my account was in the red when I finally found myself jet-lagged back in France.
“You want, you will find” could be a Singaporean motto –the hundreds of brands side by side in those mammoth shopping malls you find at every MRT station are something of a dream come true. Paris has few of these shopping malls–at least size-wise–and most of them deal with luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton, Chanel or Dior. Orchard Street became a sinful pleasure on its own as I went from shop to shop, through the shining corridors, wielding huge bags of clothes from Orchard Ion and Wheelock Place to the four-stories-high Forever 21 store at Somerset.
Oh, and don’t even get me started on the food! Food is everywhere, however and whenever you want it. I got to taste local delicacies, exotic dishes and even century eggs. “A long time ago, these eggs were made by having horses piss over them,” a friend told me in his raw Singaporean accent. He and his parents, who kindly agreed to host me after the bungalow experience, nodded happily as I looked at the eggs from a new perspective.
After clubbing all night in Zouk, we went to have oily glistening egg (orluat), cheese pratas and ice milo at five in the morning. Living in Singapore means eating whatever you want, whenever you want, whether day or night. Having so much choice at so cheap a price is more or less impossible in Europe.
Food is everywhere, however and whenever you want it. I got to taste local delicacies, exotic dishes and even century eggs.
***
I eventually had the chance to attend a Malay wedding. It was an invitation from a friend to her uncle’s wedding. There I went, all dressed up in the Malay traditional costume, covered from head to toe, with long sleeves and a skirt down to my ankles, feeling increasingly hot. An exchange of gifts took place and we carried the presents carefully. I was in charge of a pair of high heels (why these things keep haunting me I have no idea).
At the end of the ceremony, the “tok kadi” handed out business cards to other families that might have a son or daughter ready to marry. Unimaginable for a European used to marriage in a church or at city hall–would the preacher start handing out advertisements for his services? I have trouble picturing it, and yet I liked the sharp, no-nonsense voice of the kadi and his reassuring tones when talking to the future husband or wife: he understood what a stressful experience it would be for both of them. My Malay friend and I watched from afar, but I knew she was paying close attention to every detail: one day, this might be her marriage.
I even experienced the Singaporean storm. As a European used to the occasional drip-drop of French rain, I did not think that I would need an umbrella and ended up completely drenched. Rain comes down in waves here, pushed in billowing clouds, torrents of rain. But here comes a man out of the rain who hands me an umbrella; the spontaneous kindness of Singaporeans astonishes me once again. He accompanies me until the MRT, chatting about being an air force engineer. I thank him profusely and off I am again, towards Holland Village where my friends await me.
***
“So what do you like about Singapore?” asked the tall gangly youth holding a microphone as I come out of the ASEM 2012 conference as the Myanmar representative. After a bit of chit-chat about Paris (yes, beautiful city) and what I had learned from the conference (it was difficult making compromises between personal interests and the common good), here I was facing a question I should have expected.
Above me towered the gigantic brainwashing letters spelling “CREATE” and farther along the skyline, “enterprise”, “innovation” and “research”. Thoughts and ideas jumbled themselves in my head until I reached that peculiar blank state which came from fatigue and a lack of interest. “Well, I like the food,” I said rather lamely. He smiled in a tight, bored kind of way. I tried again: “I guess it’s full of movement?”
There are no words to explain exactly why I took a liking to this place. I just love Singapore because it is Singapore, in all its singularity. Even the words I painstakingly wrote here are mere images, a few of my strongest impressions. How does one explain how alive one feels in the growl of the city’s traffic, how one can hop from culture to culture through friends and acquaintances? How my two weeks, although seen as “much too long”, were barely enough to discover all that I wanted to discover? I can only tell you this: Singapore is definitely worth throwing a pair of heels away for.
There are no words to explain exactly why I took a liking to this place. I just love Singapore because it is Singapore, in all its singularity.