Friday the 25th: Chinatown & the City of Love

On Friday, June 25th, I was planning to just hang around the dorms. I ran into some other SEAS kids in the canteen, though, who were planning to go to Chinatown (yes, this is the third time I've been to Chinatown) to do souvenir shopping, so I decided to tag along.

Not much to say about this trip. The evening of this day corresponds with the blog I wrote about falling in love with the city (see: Singapura, City of Love). The first half of the day was just me buying the rest of my postcards and a few souvenirs. So here are pictures from the adventures.

The next three pictures are from a shop in Chinatown where you can buy these paper products shaped like material goods and burn them for your ancestors so they will have wealth in the afterlife.

Squids!

Chinatown Alleyway

Chinatown has beautiful street signs.

A lot of the shops in Chinatown have these shrines out front.

There are lots of posh tea rooms in Chinatown.

A random alley in Chinatown.

This is the alley where I do most of my souvenir/postcard shopping. The MRT stop is at the end. For some reason, the glass/steel structure seems to clash with the "traditional" looking buildings.
A carving on the Sri Mariamman Hindu Temple.

Thursday the 24th, Part II: Dinner with UNC Alums & Walk Around the Riverfront

After the HDB visit, we all went to a Thai restaurant in downtown to have a paid-for-by-the-program dinner with some UNC Alums living in Singapore. I actually wasn't wowed by the food, but I did get Thai Iced Tea, one of my favorite drinks even in the U.S. (there's a great Thai café in Greensboro that has AWESOME Thai Milk Tea).

I also got durian for dessert - I don't remember if I've talked much about durian, but it's pretty infamous amongst our group. It is a big, spiky fruit that is expensive and horribly pungent. There are many places - the MRT stations, certain hotels - that have explicit "No Durian" signs. The smell can apparently get into fabric and never come out, and it's really not a pleasant smell.

Despite all these drawbacks, it is a delicacy among most Asian countries. We all joked that it is a fruit that has done everything to scare people away - it's big and spiky, it smells terrible - and yet people still eat it!

So, of course, I had to try some. The dessert was actually quite good, but the texture was rather odd. I'm glad I tried it, though. I rather enjoyed the taste, but the smell lingered in my mouth for a bit too long afterwards.

After dinner, Hui Qian led a group of us around the downtown area to see some of the important Singaporean landmarks - the Raffles Hotel, the World War II Monument, the Esplanade Theatre, the Merlion, the Marina Bay Sands Integrated Resort, the Business District at night. It was a slow, easy, chill evening, very romantic and atmospheric. It was the first time I'd walked around downtown at night, and it was really neat to be in a big city at night time.

^^ The Raffles Hotel, an iconic building in Singapore.

^^ Group photo in front of the World War II monument. Since you can't really see the monument, here's a picture of it, thanks to Google.

Walking through the Esplanade, the premier arts theatre in Singapore (which happens to be delightfully shaped like a durian!), we decided to stop and take funny pictures with these weird paper maché statues in the lobby.

Here's the iconic Esplanade theatre viewed from the riverfront. The third image, again thanks to Google, is of an actual durian. See the resemblance?

Pictures taken by the riverfront with the business district in the background.

The just-opened but already-iconic Marina Bay Sands Integrated Gambling Resort/Hotel/Skypark (you've already seen pictures of this in some of my earlier posts).

The hyper-iconic Merlion, a fusion of a lion and a fish artificially created by the government to be a symbol of Singapore. Even if it was only created specifically for tourism, and has absolutely no cultural or historical significance, it's a pretty neat thing.

Thursday the 24th, Part I: HDB Headquarters

On Thursday the 24th, we went to the Housing Development Board central office. The Housing Development Board (I can't remember if I've explained this before or not - if it sounds familiar, just skip to the next paragraph) is a branch of the government and has enacted perhaps THE most effective public housing scheme in the world. Something like 80% of Singaporeans live in HDB housing, and Singapore provides more housing for its people than any other country in the world.

That being said, it is a government department, and it does its deal of dirty work. From firm and uncompromising land acquisition rights to its "pro-family" policy (you can't buy a government flat before the age of 35 unless you're married) - which is pretty clearly a terrible way of running things, as it doesn't allow friends to live together, discriminates against homosexuals, and often pushes young people into marriages they aren't ready for - to its "Big Brother" methods of dealing with poor people (they're allowed to buy highly subsidized housing, but at a certain level of subsidization, they are highly monitored and checked up on by the government), one cannot blindly go around only talking about how "effective and wonderful" it is.

And yet, it really has worked wonders for this island. Look at pictures (unfortunately, I don't have any, but part of the HDB center was a museum with a series of exhibits that did show the evolution of Singaporean living conditions) of what Singapore looked like before the HDB (and this was as late as 1950s/60s), and you can hardly even fathom such rapid and thorough change as has taken place. Pre-1960s living conditions were appalling - people lived in shacks, had no electricity or running water, threw their waste out in the streets and in the same rivers they bathed in, had leaky roofs and drafty homes. Fast-forward to today, just 50 years later, and you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone living in these conditions.

Part of the HDB's success, of course, comes from Singapore's size. It's a lot easier to run such a program effectively when you're a small country. Even homes for the disadvantaged (homeless shelters), like the ones we volunteered at on Saturday and Sunday the 26th and 27th (to be discussed in an upcoming blog post), are much easier to run in a small country, where things are easier to regulate and manage. Of course, one obvious downside, as I've already pointed out, is that it also makes it much easier for the government to control things whenever and however it wants.

Anyway, you're probably tired of hearing political jargon. I didn't bring my camera to the HDB place, but I've stolen a few pictures from other people in the group. As I said, the place was set up kind of like a museum, with the information I've shared above (though in much more propagandized terms) and lots of biased videos and interactive computer programs. It was actually really neat, if you filtered out the propaganda - there were big computer screens where you could look at maps and choose which housing development you wanted to learn about, and other ones that told about future development plans. The neatest part was the show flats. The HDB apparently has a few pre-set flat layouts that vary based on number of bedrooms: 2-, 3-, 4-, and 5-bedroom. Most of the pictures I'm stealing are of some of the interiors of these show flats.

Honestly, all of us in the group thought they were pretty nice and neat. Many Singaporeans I've talked to, though, feel that they're "quite small" and cramped.

Here was a neat screen where you rolled the screen across a picture, and the screen also showed you a computerized version of the picture. Then, when you got to a certain point, the screen started playing a video based on what picture you were over. So when you crossed a picture of, for instance, Toa Payoh Housing Community, the corresponding video would start playing. Super neat!

Here was a thing where you could pull/slide an information board out of the wall.

^^ Lookin' trendy in the living room of the 5-bedroom show flat.

^^ All the beds had these silly flowers on them. But, hey, it matches my floral shirt!

^^ Bein' trendy!

^^ Haha we can't remember if we were trying to be velociraptors or lions...

^^ Family meal! No forks or spoons were set at the fake table, only chop sticks!

People Are Still People

Here's a link to a blog I wrote for class. Every week, we're supposed to write a blog relating some experience we've had to readings or discussions we've had for class. The week after we got back from Malaysia, I wrote one linking both homestay experiences and the Malaysia trip as a whole. I think it's pretty interesting, and hopefully the references to the readings are not too confusing. I think it should still make plenty of sense.

*Click here to go to the blog.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, the 21st, 22nd, 23rd: Take It Easy!

As you might expect, the Monday and Tuesday after the Malaysia trip saw almost all of us lying around the dorms recovering. Monday, we had to write a blog for our religion/globalization class, and Tuesday we had to write an essay for our Singapore history class. Needless to say, these two days were not really any fun, but they were much-needed rest periods after the stressful and exhausting excursion.

Here's one picture I took in the campus pit, just for fun, and to spice things up. It's a sign that has something to do with the rising freshmen's orientation at the university. The theme of the orientation apparently has to do with zombies, which is pretty cool, I must admit.

Also, it reminds me of another unrelated occurrence. There are often Singaporeans in the pit working on some sort of hall project. In order to live in a "hostel" (the Singaporean word for "dorm"), you have to participate in a ton of hall activities to earn "points." So, I was walking through the pit one day, and the students who were working in the pit were listening to ARCADE FIRE!!! I really really regret not going up and striking up a conversation with them, but it was still a neat thing to stumble across.

On Wednesday, we had a group trip planned to the National Museum of Singapore. I didn't take any pictures at the museum, unfortunately, but it was a really awesome place. They had all kinds of high-tech, multimedia exhibits, which I don't even know how to describe. The coolest room was the "Japanese Occupation/World War II" room. There were various-sized cubes on the walls (arranged very artistically) with small sections of maps painted on them, showing where something happened during the occupation (bombs were dropped? People were killed? I don't remember). The walls were black and the whole room had a very eery atmosphere. Every fifteen minutes or so, the sound of a siren would go off, and the cubes on the wall would slowly turn red as a searchlight moved across them. After burning red for a few minutes, a black and white film of army officers was projected onto the uneven surface of the boxes, creating a fragmented image. It was a really moving and unnerving setup, and just one example of how innovative and unique this museum was.

After the museum, we went to a mall for dinner and to kill time. Later that night, we were planning on going to see a production of The Full Monty at the National Library Theatre. The play was funny and a lot of fun, and we somehow got $50 tickets for $15. It was a good time, for sure.

Since I didn't really take any pictures that day, here's a picture of me and Abby and Hui Qian, all sporting trendy floral outfits! I got that shirt for only $20 in the Arab Quarter, and everyone complimented it all day.

Here's a picture of me with a delicious dessert that I split with a girl in the group named Kelsey at the mall where we stopped for dinner. I'm making that face because she spilled part of it on the table :-( It was a huge pile of shaved ice drenched in condensed milk and red beans. It was soooo good!

Look at this store in the mall with my initials!

And, finally, here's a picture someone else took of the Full Monty set!

Malaysia, Days IV & V: Kota Bharu, Woodcarving Museum, and the Long Ride Back

Click here for the accompanying picture album.

Like the first one, this hotel also had a delicious buffet breakfast, from which I drank several cups of coffee and had some faithful peanut butter toast. We headed out and rode 10 minutes down the road to a different hotel, whereby we had a talk with a Christian to Muslim convert from Ghana named Mohammed Michael. He told us about the basic beliefs of Islam, but his message was a little bit too evangelical and honestly a bit ridiculous. I don't think he realized that he was supposed to be talking to us from more of an academic than a religious standpoint, but it was interesting and sparked some thoughtful conversations, nonetheless.

After the talk, we went to a mosque just across the street, which happened to be the largest mosque in the state we were in. It was, ironically, the only mosque we visited the whole time, and we didn't even get to stay very long. Almost as soon as we got there, a man came and told Francis that the governor (or minister or sultan or something, I don't remember his official title) of the state was willing to meet with us briefly.

I'm not sure how or why this came about, and, honestly, we were all suspecting Francis of more foul play at first. However, it turned out to be completely legit, and the minister (for lack of a better word) was very old and majestic, kind of like Dumbledore or Gandalf. He had a very wise, patient voice, and even though he spoke in Malay and we only got to hear Francis' miserable translations, it was clear that he spoke poetically and eloquently. I'm still not sure how or why we wound up in his presence, but it was a very cool experience, and I'm glad it wound up happening.

After this spontaneous meeting, we rode in the bus for quite a while looking for a woodcarving museum/workshop, which was also the home of the woodcarver's widow, who ran the whole affair. I don't think the bus driver knew how to get there, and there were quite a few times when we wasted a lot of time going down a road only to make a U-turn.

Nevertheless, the area we were in is practically Thailand, and so riding around in the countryside was actually pretty interesting. I'm not sure how to describe it, but the landscape really did look different from Malaysia, and somehow like what I would imagine Thailand to be like. Wide, slow, brown rivers, marshy soil, lots of wide-leafed, verdant trees. The architecture in Kota Bharu also looked very "Thai" to me, though I'm not exactly sure where this feeling came from.

The woodcarving centre was very interesting (I should get a nickel for every time I use that word in this blog. I'd be rich). I'm going to post an academic blog which I wrote for our class blog that summarizes the experience, so I won't talk too much about it here. Essentially, it is at the house of a late woodcarver, whose widow, after his death, compiled his works into a museum and started running workshops to teach people about his craft. She saw herself as a sort of protector of his craft, guarding it against globalization and modernization. It was funny how well the stuff she said fit in with what we've been talking about in our globalization class.

After the woodcarving centre, we drove back to Kota Bharu and Francis let us run loose for two hours to find dinner. It was nice to have freedom, but Kota Bharu is a filthy, slightly sketchy town, and there were not really any restaurants in close proximity to our hotel. We finally found a place to eat, and the waiter was really nice and spoke pretty good English, which was a huge plus. The food was kind of awful, though, and I was not satisfied at all after finishing it.

Fortunately, the shadow puppet show we were supposed to go to was not being performed (I really don't know how Francis didn't know about this beforehand), so Francis decided to take us to a "night market." I'd love to tell you what this is, but I have no idea. As we were driving up to the night market, we saw a McDonald's and a big group of us decided we would much rather go there than to any circumspect "night market."

It was actually a good decision, I think. There was a big group of us, and the workers seemed pretty excited to see Americans there. The most ironic part is that McDonald's was one of the nicest, classiest establishments around. They even had a big flat screen TV playing the World Cup! The hamburger and ice cream I ate completely made up for the awful dinner I had had before, and were the first time I really felt satisfied during the whole trip! Before we left, the workers asked us to come behind the counter and take a picture with them, and then gave us all free kids' toys. It was a heart-warming, rejuvenating experience after so much lifeless riding around in a bus.

We went back to the hotel after McDonald's, singing songs together on the bus. Here's a video of one of them. It was an awesome bonding experience, and a perfect nostalgia moment.

At the hotel, a bunch of us met up in one person's room and had a good ole time. We danced without music, played truth or dare, and had discussions about life and identity and dreams for the future. It was, once again, a great bonding experience, but we stayed up really late because we knew we had nothing to do the next day but ride in the bus for 18 hours.

We weren't sorry about staying up, but by midnight Sunday night, when we were going through Singapore customs, we realized how stupid staying up so late was. I felt beyond dead, and we didn't get back to the dorms until 2am. Ick.

On the way back, we played a game like telephone and pictionary combined. Each person writes a sentence or a quote or a lyric from a song and then passes the paper to the person next to them. The next person interprets the quote into a picture, folds over the initial sentence, and passes the picture to the next person. This third person writes a sentence to describe what's going on in the picture and then folds over the initial picture. The next person draws a picture interpreting this second sentence, and so on. By the end, you always wind up with something completely ridiculous. It was a hilarious game - few things in life can make me laugh as hard as that game did!

We stopped at a shack (more or less) around 1pm and had lunch. Just down the street was the beach, so we all ate quickly and ran to play in the water. It was a perfect ending to an ambiguous trip. The weather was sunny but not too hot, the water was gorgeous, clear, blue, and so warm, the sand was soft and shell-less, and there were rocks to sit on. We tried not to get too wet, but it was more or less futile. My shorts got pretty soaked, so I put on my friend's sarong after we got back on the bus! Everyone thought that was a hoot (and it really was, but the thing was so dry and comfortable!).

That's about it! As I passed out on my bed at 2:30am Monday morning, our excursion to Malaysia came to a close.