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Monday, Nov 23, 2009
Don't criticize Singapore until you've tried the kaya at the Chin Mee Chin.
Nov 30, 1999 | Singapore is the poor little rich girl of Asia: All dressed up in gleaming, modern skyscrapers, she'll house you in elegant hotels and feed you delicacies from one of the world's great culinary traditions -- but nobody loves her. Mention Singapore to most Americans, and you will hear about two things: caning and chewing gum. Which gives about as complete a picture of the place as saying that London is expensive and damp, or that everything in Rome is old and crumbling. Well, yes, but ...
Even the so-called experts are unkind. Articles about Singapore in travel magazines always tell the same story: The repressive regime of Lee Kuan Yew tore down the charming colonial city of Kipling, Conrad and Somerset Maugham and built a plastic, squeaky-clean shopping mall. The implication seems to be that if it's not squalid, it's not really Asia. Yes, the government is repressive -- but since when do we choose our travel destinations based on the niceness of the governments? And since when do we require countries to remain primitive for our enjoyment?
I agree that there are far too many rules and regulations and that caning criminals is a really lousy idea. But let's look at the chewing-gum ban. Yes, it's true, chewing gum is illegal in Singapore. If gum-chewing is your primary leisure activity when you travel, you'd better go to Paraguay or Chad or some fun place like that. But as a longtime resident of New York who has stepped on his share of warm, sticky wads of the stuff on subway platforms, I don't think this is the worst law in the world. It's a ridiculous law, and I don't say I approve of it, but I don't understand why people get so riled up. I mean, in China they make women have abortions, and put Tibetan people in prison for believing in the real Dalai Lama -- what's a chewing-gum law compared to that?
I'm being defensive, I know (actually a very Singaporean way to be). You'd think I owned a stake in a hotel there. I don't. I just happen to believe that fair's fair, and that Singapore has gotten an unfair rap. It's like Los Angeles: People who say they hate L.A., who tell you it's bland and boring, that there's no there there and so forth, when pressed will usually admit that they've never actually spent much time in that vigorous, inexhaustible city. Just so with Singapore. If all you know about it is that it has a lot of shopping malls and a law against chewing gum, then you won't be much inclined to visit. But you will be missing one of the most sophisticated, fascinating cities in Asia -- not to mention all that great shopping.
First, an important snatch of history, essential to understanding the place: Unlike the other great cities of Asia, Singapore is quite young, even by New World standards. In 1819, when Stamford Raffles arrived at this small island, 26 miles across at its broadest point, which dangles like a pearl drop at the tip of the Malay peninsula, there was no one living in its pestilential swamps but a bunch of pirates and fishermen. He claimed it for the British East India Co., and laid out the plan for a modern city. People who complain that Singapore doesn't look like Asia must take into account that, unlike most cities in the region, which grew up higgledy-piggledy over centuries, the basic design of Singapore -- its wide boulevards and spacious lawns and gardens -- was created by a loyal subject of King George, a knight of the realm (who had one of the coolest names of all time).
It was always a strange, hothouse hybrid, this English city populated by Chinese, Malays and Indians. And while it's true that a lot of the fine old colonial architecture was torn down to make way for office towers and shopping malls, much of it remains. It's quite possible to put together a four-day itinerary that consists entirely of places that would have been known to Somerset Maugham, at least, if not to Kipling and Conrad. I know: I just did it.
