I really liked Singapore, but Singapore did not like me back. Smoky air led to some medical problems that stunted my time there. Still, I left with a good feeling about the small city-country and enjoyed everything I was able to explore.
With an 11 hour direct flight from Turkey, Singapore seemed like a great place to settle into a new time zone and introduce myself to Asia. English is the main language spoken (along with others including Chinese and Malay), and the country is modern with a reputation for its wealth – perhaps known best today as the site of the Crazy Rich Asians franchise. While technically Turkey was my first time in Asia, this felt like Asia proper, and I was excited to check a new continent off the map.
I planned very little for my week in Singapore. It was meant to be a long rest stop, and anything I got to see and do would be a bonus. Plus, I had a ringer: a work acquaintance named Vincent who was an amazing local support and tour guide. Vincent and I met in New York about two years ago when he was on a work exchange program with an organization I worked with; we got coffee once. When I told some work folks I was leaving and would be traveling to Singapore, they offered to connect me with someone they knew there who was still working with them a bit on international issues, and what a nice surprise to see it was the same Vincent. We started texting and he sent me so many helpful lists of what to see, what to eat, and more. And then a few days beforehand he even offered to pick me up at the airport!
We met at the Changi Airport and exchanged sweet treats: for me a cake made of a local flavor called kaya, and for him some Turkish pistachio chocolate bars. We immediately walked over to see The Jewel, the famous indoor waterfall that is the largest in the world. It was so impressive and I had so many engineering questions! It was located in what felt like a greenhouse, humid and surrounded by greenery, and you could walk around for great views.
After getting in the car (passengers on the left side which was endlessly confusing for me), we stopped at a hawker center on the way downtown, the East Coast Lagoon Food Village. Hawker centers are one of Singapore’s cultural attractions, essentially giant food halls where you can get affordable food from multiple vendors and enjoy it at communal seating areas. They’re more than just a cafeteria, hawker centers are their own local vibe. They reminded me a lot of the Queens Night Market, with a little more of a permanent stall setup. Vincent selected a few options of chicken skewers and wings, some veggies, and a local carrot cake (unlike ours, it is not a dessert), and I drank out of a giant coconut. A delightful feast! Throughout my week I also got to check out the Maxwell Food Centre near Chinatown for Hainanese chicken rice, and Lau Pa Sat, a more touristic hawker center where Vincent and I sampled Michelin-ranked spicy chicken dishes and listened to a band celebrating Oktoberfest.
I took a much-needed rest day after arriving, and then it was time to jam in the tourism activities. I checked out the National Museum and its exhibit on Singapore’s history, and took a great walking tour that introduced me to parts of the city center. Singapore’s history seems to only stretch back about two hundred years; it is unclear if indigenous people were around before it was colonized by the British. I learned about the horribly violent Japanese occupation during World War Two, which ended when the Americans dropped the atomic bomb. Independence came a bit later when the Brits agreed; after a short stint of being part of a new nation of Malaysia, Singapore was asked to leave due to some racial tensions going on at the time, and the nation became independent as a tiny parliamentary city-country in 1965.
Since then, Singapore has rapidly developed into a shiny, modern, and wealthy city. Short on space, the government built out on “reclaimed land,” which now hosts many tall skyscrapers (similar to what was done in Battery Park City in NYC). The same political party has been in power since the nation’s founding, a startling concept, but people tell me it’s because they are making visible progress and older people still remember the bad times before independence.
All of this modernity comes with a price, apparently. There’s a seedier side to Singapore in the form of repression and lack of the kinds of freedoms we take for granted in the US, especially freedom of speech. Vincent said something to me that summarized it well, I think: “We give up a lot of liberties, but we are mostly okay with it.”
There’s the strict laws that we may giggle about — like no vaping or purchasing chewing gum. But there’s also very strict rules around things like protesting. Vincent shared a story about someone he recently befriended who has been to prison several times, and has become a bit of a villain in the media and the public eye. Most recently, he was arrested for peacefully holding a candle outside a prison where someone was receiving the death penalty. This was a difficult concept for me to wrap my head around as someone who uses protest as a legitimate and even routine advocacy tool to create change. Singapore must rely more on internal advocacy.
Some dark politics and history, I know! But my experience of Singapore was more cheerful and touristic. I found the city to be easy and comfortable, with extremely efficient transit, modern conveniences like being able to drink tap water, and a favorable exchange rate that gave me a 20% discount on everything. The highways are lined with flowers, part of a law around greenery. There are vending machines that offer fresh squeezed orange juice for $2. There are shopping malls everywhere. There are cute and interesting neighborhoods, like the vibrant Chinatown with its Buddha Tooth Relic Temple, and Arab Street with its narrow streets and culinary specialties that stretch from Malaysia to Turkey. I learned a lot about public housing and social services, things that grounded me in my experience of New York and made it easy to grasp the idea of the city. I went to a candlelight concert of a string quartet playing 80s pop music in the old parliament building. I enjoyed it all.
And of course there’s the iconic waterfront skyscrapers I got to see, including the Marina Bay Sands hotel. I thought about going up, but it was pricey and to visit the bar there was a dress code that I wasn’t sure I could meet. The famous infinity pool is just for hotel guests. Then there’s the Merlion, the mascot of Singapore. He lives in his own little park where he spits water out into the river while tourists pose with their mouths open to catch the water stream. He is delightful. I went back to see him at night, hoping to catch part of the nightly light show on the water across the way, but just as it began at 9pm sharp the sky opened up and a downpour sent everyone scampering under a nearby bridge for a half hour.
I went to Gardens by the Bay, a top attraction that provides endless parks and flowers and exhibitions to explore. I spent about 3 hours there and only saw a part of it, including the cloud dome and flower dome. The domes are massive indoor greenhouse-like structures with incredibly manicured gardens inside that also teach you about plants from Singapore and around the world. The cloud dome mimics a cloud forest climate, and was hosting a Jurassic World exhibit which was cute and well done, complete with a recurring performance where a zookeeper shows off “Blue,” his dangerous dinosaur that he is rehabilitating. The flower dome had a lovely exhibit on lilies that brought me joy.
The other main attraction of the Gardens is the Supertrees, a grove of massive fake metal trees that grow real plants on them. Each night they light up in a free show for anyone to enjoy. However, it would unfold that the light show was not for me, as much as I wanted to return for the iconic show.
Some things had started going wrong early in the trip, but nothing too serious so as to stop me from exploring. The main ATM company wouldn’t take my card. Someone stole my credit card info; I caught it almost immediately but had to deal with it late at night from the hostel. I struggled to find a post office, eventually tracking one down in a busy metro/MRT station that felt more like an underground mall. Happily, I successfully mailed my package home for $31 (high due to the U.S. tariffs) plus the box. The relative ease of this opens many new shopping opportunities…
Vincent initially warned me about the air quality, noting it was hazy lately. I brushed it off and conveniently ignored my scratchy throat, playing it off as exhaustion from traveling. Eventually I realized that it was probably a reaction to the air quality. I understand haze to be a natural phenomenon based around fog and humidity. This was something else: this was wildfire smoke.
It took some time to fully understand what was happening. Each year, farmers on the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Borneo start fires to clear fields to allow for palm oil production. This is illegal and serves as a way to skirt environmental laws that ban cutting down trees. The winds blow the smoke over toward Singapore and Malaysia, where the toxic dust settles for months until the rainy season begins later in the fall. This year, it is said to be worse than ever, and hundreds of thousands of people have developed respiratory infections or illnesses. It was apparently much worse in Kuala Lumpur.
The daily air quality readings in Singapore were often in the moderate range, but it was bad enough for me to feel quite sick from the air. I started wearing a mask outside. People kept telling me I was sensitive to the air. I knew this, given my experience with the recent wildfire smoke that blew into New York from Canada.
One day, while shopping at a nearby pharmacy for some things to make me feel better, my ear started throbbing. I was fairly sure I knew what it was, and I needed to get to a doctor ASAP to confirm. The panic of finding a doctor in a foreign country was brief as I went into action mode. As I texted with my travel insurance company and got several options, Vincent found me the location of a nearby clinic, like an urgent care, that I could go to. I took a Grab (like Uber) there and was seen immediately. The doctor quickly confirmed my ear infection and said it was a result of the bad air quality and my cough. He gave me antibiotic ear drops and some other pills to help, plus a backup antibiotic pill set just in case. I got all of this right at the clinic and everything cost me $85, and my insurance will reimburse me. I think with health insurance at home this would have taken several hours and cost more. And this is Singapore — an expensive country. What an experience.
So the hostel and I became very well acquainted. It wasn’t a bad place to be sick, and it was nice to have some other people around to chat with from time to time. The beds were comfy and the kitchen had everything I needed. There was just one other person in my room for most of the time, and she was very supportive. Sherika was from Kuala Lumpur, a 4 hour bus ride away, and visiting for some work and to visit friends. She decided to extend her stay several days because the air quality was so bad in KL!
I’m glad I got to experience some of what I wanted to see in Singapore, and disappointed that much of it was a wash for me. I left angry about the state of our planet, and worried about flying with my ear messed up. Still, I was eager to get out of there for clearer skies. But oh boy, did Jakarta have plans for me…
