October 31 2010 / Singapore

(I know I didn’t finish writing about India.  I have been slacking on it a little bit, but I have my notes on it still, so have this in the meantime and I will write some journals tomorrow on my free day.)

SINGAPORE!  I woke up today and looked out the window to see long curvy towers that were only semi finished, signifying that we were coming into the port of Singapore.  Above us were cable cars that were connected to a building and stretching out to an island close to the mainland, and there were monorails speckled around too.  It was kind of like stepping into the future.  We parked it in the Singapore Cruise Center and headed out to our fun-filled adventure of the day!  The girl that I met at Dakshinachitra, Jessica, met up with Julie and me at lunch and together we headed out through port to go and find a place for acupuncture, as she had gotten it done before and apparently it’s fantastic.  Singapore is incredibly safe here, probably because they kill anyone who does anything otherwise—no, it’s true.  You can get a mandatory death penalty for carrying something like… a half an ounce of marijuana?  Basically they kill anyone off who threatens the “cleanliness,” which is kind of terrifying and fascinating at the same time.  I’ve never been in a city where I felt safer, that’s for sure, because even catcalling at women results in jail time.  Anyway though.

We first went to this place called the Far East Shopping Center.  Singapore has lots of shopping centers that are these big, semi-sketchy malls that are basically like compact malls based around a country, like Little India, Little Thailand, etc.  The first one was pretty much all closed, probably because it was early in the morning on a Sunday, and the acupuncture place we found wasn’t open.  So we asked around and found a place called People City Center, which was another mall that was a little more bustling.  After walking around for a little while, we found the place!  The sign was in Chinese and English, and we asked at the desk if we could have acupuncture.  She looked very confused—turned out no one spoke English (Mandarin Chinese is more common in Singapore).  Finally we figured out that the guy who usually did acupuncture wasn’t there that day.  We were kind of down but didn’t really want to go anywhere else, but I noticed a sign that had a man lying on his back with glass jars all over his back, splotched with red.  Jessica saw me looking at it—she had apparently gotten Chinese cupping done before, and said it was amazing, so I agreed instantly and followed the lady into one of the rooms. 

I was a little nervous because I didn’t know what to expect, but it was wonderful!  First I got an hour-long massage, which was absolutely divine and almost put my mind completely far away, it was just so comfortable.  My neck muscles are so incredibly stressed out—that always hurt the most, whenever they would do the sides of my neck.  After that though, came the incredible part.  From behind me I heard a couple of flicks—I think it was maybe a lighter.  And then they placed these glass jars that suctioned up my skin all over my back!  The most painful were the ones near my neck, because those muscles were so tense, and at first I thought I had made a terrible mistake.  She put tons of them on, must have been twelve or so, all down my back and on my shoulders.  Then she draped a towel over my back and walked away. 

Did it hurt intensely?  Oh yeah.  Big time.  Every time I tensed, the glasses would tink together and hurt all the more.  But after a little while, the pain subsided and dulled away (aside from my neck ones), and the only thing I became aware of was this intense feeling of existing within my body.  Like, there was no mind-wandering, like what happens normally.  It was just incredibly body-focused, which is so rare to feel because we’re always thinking.  But it was amazing, especially since I’m sure endorphins were releasing to combat the pain, so it just was this incredible body-high.  When she came back after a while and pulled the cups off, the relaxation was immediate and my muscles just dropped.  Coming out of the room, everyone’s eyes were just drooping and were smiling.  The only problem with the cupping is that the methods leave these enormous, perfectly circular bruises all over your back.  Mine are especially dark, so it’ll probably take a while to fade and I’ve already had to explain their origins to a couple of people.  It cost 60 Singaporean dollars, which is epic because that’s only like 46 USD for an hour massage and cupping.  Entirely worth it. 

Jessica and her friend wanted to eat in Little Thailand, but Julie had an SAS trip, so we just decided to eat in the mall area.  So we split ways and went downstairs.  I bought this delicious dumpling noodle dish for just three Singaporean dollars (probably like 2.25 in USD?), and it even came with a soup.  It was delicious!  Julie tried to take a picture of me, but my eyes are just SO droopy because I was still so relaxed!  :)  She got a delicious noodle soup.  Like India, there are a lot of Vegetarian restaurants here, though the place she went to gave her some fried fish biscuits as well.  So that was a little sketchy.  That’s okay though, because everything was delicious (for the non-veggie, anyway!).

We took a cab back so Julie could go on her tour, and Jared joined me so that we could adventure into Sentosa, which is apparently the Singaporean tourist epicenter.  After looking at the glass cable cars that stretched high above the sea, we decided that we just had to do it, so we bought a couple tickets and took the elevator fifteen stories up to climb aboard—we didn’t even have to really wait in line.  The cable cars were pretty neat—we could pretty much see the entire city, though the massive skyscrapers blocked us from seeing the entirety of the island.  Singapore is a very small place for such a massive population—it’s smaller than Mauritius, and Mauritius was only 42 miles long!  Lots of construction was going on though—they tend to “reclaim” land from the ocean a lot, and because it’s such a busy port, there were tons of ships docked out in the bay. 

Sentosa, on the other hand, looked like a tourist hotspot if I ever saw one.  It was literally called “Resort World,” and when we got off we saw that there was a Universal Studios right there!  But our true intention was to see the looming and imposing statue that is the coolest country mascot to ever exist—the MERLION.  Part fish, part lion, the Merlion is a MASSIVE statue that stretches up to the sky, his jaws open in a roar.  We walked around and discovered that you can actually climb inside the Merlion and go into his mouth and up to the top of his head, which we of course had to do.  I really wanted a little merlion stuffed toy, but that was not going to happen on Jared’s watch, for he is far too reasonable for that kind of thing.  But anyway, first we walked through a little like… water exhibit that was inside the merlion, that had all kinds of sea monsters on the walls and around, little dragon and kraken displays and things like that.  And then we watched this TRULY ADORABLE cartoon about the origin of Singapore and how the merlion came to be, and it was SO ADORABLE because there were little babby merlions and just the cartoon style was so playful and aslkdfjlasf aww.  I made lots of squealing noises that embarrassed Jared greatly, I’m sure.   We also got a little gold coin with our ticket, and it was good luck to put it in the merlion’s mouth—we got little mystery gifts!  I got a magnet which was AWESOME because I am obsessed with good magnets now, living on this ship. 

So after the little cartoon we elevatored up to the mouth!  We were able to stand in his jaws and look out at the beautiful view.  Just being in the merlion was cooler than the view, I think, though Singapore does surprise me with its amount of greenery for such a densely populated area.  The head was much of the same—lots of view of construction sites, but I was happy as can be to be up there.  When we went back down, we explored a little bit this one little water play area, that was almost like Barcelona in that it had lots of mosaic stuff going on and there are water jets everywhere.  I was staring at the water fountains everywhere longingly—why did I not bring a towel?!  There were also Halloween decorations everywhere, which I thought were pretty funny most of the time—lots of skeletons impaled on things and stuff like that.  But I did get really creeped out when I saw skeletons that were being hanged from trees, because, well… that’s how Singapore executes people, by hanging.  So that was kind of awkward and not quite as funny.  Singapore kind of scares me, to be completely honest.  I felt safe, but it was very… “utopian” dystopia.  You know?

Anyway, after that we hopped back on the cable car and went to the highest point of Singapore, which was pretty neat because you could look off the deck of this hilltop restaurant and see all of the city before you, with Sentosa in the background.  Was definitely pretty neat.  I am happy with our decision to go with cable cars. 

After that we decided we should probably head back to the cruise center—I had to meet Julie there at 5:30 and Jared had a trip.  So we split up at the cruise center, because I wanted to go and get some boba tea.  Now, the thing about the mall is that it’s six stories and it’s also ENROMOUS.  It is not designed like a “regular” mall—it is basically a maze complete with booby traps.  So I wandered around and it took me an ENTIRE HOUR to actively find a boba place and to get back to Julie!  It was kind of terrifying.  I even walked around outside of the mall but I just couldn’t find the exit that the buses were parked near.  It was horrible, actually.  :P  But eventually I found Julie and we decided to grab dinner and head over to Sentosa again, because she hadn’t seen it.  We hopped on a bus and made our way to the beach district area of Sentosa, where there was an Indian restaurant located.  Julie and I have kind of become obsessed with Indian food, courtesy of India, I suppose.  We watched the sun set in a cloudy sky besides the water, marveling at the dozens of massive ships anchored out at sea.  Then we were off to the Indian restaurant, which was besides the beach.  We sat outside and talked about our majors and finding jobs and lots of other complicated things.   I told the waiter to give me something delicious and he ordered Rogan Josh, which was this mutton curry that was red and rich and delicious.  I tried the local brew, Tiger Beer, and marveled at the Sin Tax that goes on things like alcohol and cigarettes—a seven dollar beer!  It’s kind of staggering, but then, I guess they don’t have any alcoholics in Singapore (an expensive habit, and you get thrown in jail for a good long time if you’re drunk in public).  Our meals were delicious, and out to our left we could see these duel Chinese-style pavilions stretched out on another mini island across a rope foot bridge.  We went over to them to explore—turned out they were marking the south-eastern most point of continental Asia.  So we interrupted a couple making out and climbed the pavilion, looking at the light show that was going on far away—lots of fireworks. 

After a while we decided to check out the Merlion again, because Julie wanted to see it, and walked over there—everything is so small, you can walk to get anywhere!   We sat underneath it and talked for a little while.  There was a Halloween special going on, and lots of people were in costumes for some kind of haunted house going on in the Merlion.  If it didn’t cost 36 dollars or something I would have probably been tempted!  But holidays kind of don’t exist on Semester at Sea.  Days are either class days or port days, and there’s the random reading day which is sometimes a break and sometimes a tradition (like Sea Olympics or Neptune Day). 

After a while we decided to head back, because things were closing up.  We took the express train back, which was free, and found ourselves back at the port.  Julie convinced me to stay out, which I didn’t really want to do because it was so late by that point, but I finally agreed—I can’t make exceptions for Go Big or Go Home when I’m this far into my adventure, so I ran around the mall to get a little more energy going—my politics professor wandered by, and hopefully he doesn’t think I was being a drunken student, just someone trying to get the blood flowing!  We stumbled across Alex and Jared, so considered it fate. 

We were going to go and visit Miranda and Kathy, a couple of acquaintances I’ve met through Jared, at their hotel, but it is pretty much impossible to get a cab at night in Singapore.  Instead we decided to walk over to this place called the St. James Power Station, which was only a couple of blocks away and is a massive club hub—it is a huge brick building that used to be a power station but now hosts tons of clubs.  We wandered in quickly (I wasn’t really dressed for any kind of fancy club) and walked into one called The Tiger I think, where some reggaeton was going on.  It was a live band and was mostly empty.  We were excited about the lack of cover charge and so sat down, but turns out you have to buy a drink—and the lowest price of a drink was 12 dollars for a beer! 

Now I thought I was going to be sneaky and dodge the system, so I ordered a Sprite.  After ten minutes in this nearly empty club, he came back with my Sprite and a bill for TWELVE DOLLARS!  Robbery.  Meanwhile, Julie and Jared had gotten into a bit of a tiff about the loud music and overpriced drinks, so Jared and Alex left, and after a while Julie went to follow them to apologize.  I just sat there, still—I was happy listening to the band, which played mostly reggaeton but then some songs that I knew and could sing along to.  I didn’t let myself get grumpy at the overpriced soda—if there had been a cover charge, it would have been even more.  I loved listening to the music, but slowly, like a poison that seeps through the body from a wound, they began to trickle in…

SASholes!

It started innocently enough, the odd girl dressed like a cat here, a boy in glowing sunglasses.  But then they started getting more and more obnoxious, their dance moves more erratic, and some of them started singing into the mics handed to them, to ill effect.  After a while Julie came back in, and we enjoyed the music for a while longer.  But I think in seeing the SASers come in (and by then the previously empty club was practically stuffed full of SASers) they changed from reggaeton to more mainstream music, and once the DJ started playing, we got kind of tired of girls dancing on the counters and decided that it was time to leave.  I apologized in advance to a security lady, and went on my way.  Julie and I had a nice, hassle free walk back—it’s so wonderful not to have to worry about people hissing at you if you’re not with a male escort!—and I climbed into bed, completely satisfied with my day’s exploring. 

I meant to write more about today as well, November 1, but I suppose that will have to be for tomorrow.  I’m pretty exhausted but I’m gonna catch up.  You’ll see!  :)