On the far side of the world

Our hotel was located in one of the most ‘happening’ areas of the city, with loads of restaurants, bars and clubs right along the main riverside. However, with beer at over £10 for less than a pint, we decided on an early night!

The next morning, stirred by thoughts of the old founders of the empire and undeterred by the near heat exhaustion of the previous day, we set off on yet another hike, along the river to the old inner waterfront and harbour. These are both now some three or four miles form the actual open water as Singapore has been relentlessly growing though land reclamation. They describe this as ‘in-filling with unwanted materials’, relocating some of their own very small quantities of earth, dredging up sand from the sea and then ‘using soil from neighbours’. I wondered what the ‘neighbours’ thought of that? Early morning in Johore Bahru; “Wow – Where’s the beach gone?” “Dunno – but I saw a couple of guys from Singapore with wheelbarrows…”

All along the river were various plaques and monuments to the founding of Singapore. Singapore has always been about trade and making money and not really being a ‘nation’, they haven’t got too many hang-ups about the days of empire. Therefore, they seem happy to put up statues to Raffles and the other Brits who founded it. But they also had memorials to Nehru, Ho Chi Mhin, Deng Xio Ping and many other Asian leaders who helped them on their way, but of whom we in the west have different perceptions. The Asian perspective of history is not the same as ours.

By the inner harbour, near the ‘iconic’ sights of the lion fountain and Marian Bay Sands hotel, there was a scrum for photos. A lot of East Asians seem keen on heavily posed photos or videos with production values akin to a Spielberg movie. This demands time and space- and they aren’t shy in demanding both! S also wanted a selfie and having at last learned that saying ‘after you’ in Asia was a pointless exercise, she started to get embroiled in an unseemly shoving match with a woman who was trying to monopolise the whole waterfront! I know danger when I see it, so I slid away to watch from the safety of a Starbucks…

Having walked around the whole harbour and then gone for dramatic ride on the Singapore version of the London Eye, we inevitably headed to Raffles Hotel for the world’s most expensive drink. There was a small queue to get in but soon found ourselves at the bar. Realistically, there was no chance of a pint of London Pride, so we both had Singapore Slings. Absolutely truthfully, we had paid less for dinner the previous night- but it’s one of those things! There was quite a chatty crowd around and pretty soon, S found herself the centre of attention, without knowing why… One of the traditions of the Long Bar at Raffles is that there are mini sacks of peanuts to eat, which you help yourself to and just chuck the shells on the floor. Nothing is more of an anathema to S, who was being very British and had made a neat, polite little pile of hers on the bar top. This had never been done before and the patrons were fascinated! In the end, the crowd insisted that he did a ceremonial ‘chuck’ which she reluctantly agreed to, to great applause.

We then walked back to the hotel, stopping for a late lunch / early dinner on the way. I decided to splash out and order a beer, only to find that it was ‘happy hour’, so I could have another one free!! We had been walking all day with not really enough water – so a Singapore Sling, followed by two pints of Tiger beer had an effect that didn’t wholly meet with S’s approval. She was focused on getting back down to the waterfront for the evening’s ‘son et lumiere’ in the gardens with the giant metal tree things, “…and no, you don’t have time to sleep it off!’.

The taxi ride down to the waterfront felt a lot longer than it was (to one of us) but all was well in the end and the light show both in the gardens and then another one on the harbour was spectacular. Pavarotti and palm trees was an odd combination, but it does seem that Singapore is the crossroads of the world, where ancient and modern, east and west all join seamlessly on what was once a boggy little island just 90 miles form the equator. We felt a long way from Finchampstead!