Singapore Impressions

I was recently in Singa­pore for a Liberty Alli­ance meet­ing. I had­n’t been in Singa­pore for 10 years, so it was inter­est­ing to see what was the same and what was different. 

Orch­ard Road was the same, but more so — more West­ern shops, more malls, more hotels. The air con­di­tion­ing in hotels and res­taur­ants, which I had remembered as being some­what over the top, was even more so, to the extent that we moved meet­ing rooms with­in the meet­ing hotel to find a room that was some­what warm­er and went out­side as much as pos­sible to thaw out! Out­side was the warm trop­ic­al air and thun­der­storms I remembered, the mix of people on the streets, and the trop­ic­al plant exuber­ance on the streets that helps make Singa­pore so memorable. 

Things have changed since 1995. People seem more relaxed, the streets aren’t by any means dirty but they’re not quite as “is this really a city”-spotless as they used to be. The tax­is no longer have the annoy­ing bell that says when they’re going too fast (just the stand­ard annoy­ing bell when someone isn’t using their seat­belt). The Long Bar in the Raffles Hotel is new, built to look much like the old one, but some­how without the same feel. It feels like a movie set, com­plete with over-eager air­con­di­tion­ing. The old Long Bar, the authen­t­ic one, had much more of that trop­ic­al sun­down­er feel. It’s prob­ably still worth see­ing as a tour­ist, but I would­n’t both­er going back, where­as the old Long Bar was some­where you could spend hours in, lazily watch­ing the fans and listen­ing to the crunch of pea­nut shells on the floor.

The old and the new — one block from Orch­ard Road 

On the way back to the air­port, I asked the taxi driver about the high­way with the large plants in pots, planned as an emer­gency run­way. It was quite a sight and I could­n’t fig­ure out how I had missed them. It turned out that Singa­pore had added a new dir­ect high­way into the city; the pots are still there on the older high­way. The taxi-driver was sure that emer­gency run­way would nev­er have to be used and I found his explan­a­tion touch­ing. Singa­pore is in the Com­mon­wealth and the Queen is very proud of what Singa­pore has accom­plished, and there­fore all the nations of the Com­mon­wealth would help if Singa­pore were ever to be attacked, he said. I hope he’s right, and I hope his belief is nev­er tested.