Another Beginning

Here I am in Singapore, my first dip into Asia.  The city is nothing like I expected, but I'll get to that in a minute.  First things first: the arrival.

Typical Singapore-- tall, tall buildings, some construction,
and an enchanting array of trees and grasses coexisting
alongside buildings and people.

I flew from Mexico City to Los Angeles on May 12th and spent a week in LA, seeing it for the third time but really, in many ways, for the first time.  The last two visits were short romps, more like drive-throughs than anything else.  This time I got to live there for a week, to walk the suburbs and get new-age fusion Korean food (whatever that means).  I picked up dry-cleaning and went to Goodwill and did other day-to-day things.  Really, the city's not all that bad-- certainly not as bad as I remembered.  Yeah, the people are kind-of loud and self-obsessed.  Yes, it's an unending jungle of cars and streets, but it's also got lush, rolling hills and a pretty good variety of trees and shrubs growing throughout.  I don't know, I guess my point is that the place has a more intimate, human element beneath that calloused exterior.

On the 18th I boarded a plane for Taipei and 13 hours later we touched down.  My layover was ten hours long, so I wandered the airport, found a good, comfortable spot, and slept.  At 7 am I made the 4-hour jump to Singapore, where I've been ever since.

The urban planning is amazing.  You're in the middle of a
five million-person city and if not for the misted facades
of distant buildings, you'd never know you weren't lost
amidst virgin jungle.

So Singapore.  It's absolutely amazing: huge buildings and modern architecture, an absurd amount of malls, and the most efficient public transit system I've ever been on in my life.  Trees and forests are everywhere; really the island is probably 50% city and 50% green spaces, mixed together in such a way that you never feel like you're in the middle of a humongous city.  The place is also like 75% Chinese by descent, with the rest being Malaysian or Indian and then whatever white people have immigrated here for business.  You hear English and Chinese everywhere, with Hindi and Malay thrown in at irregular intervals.  Every kind of Asian food is here in droves and in general the place just feels like a melting pot on a scale I've never experienced before.

And the famed draconian laws?  Pretty much Western media sensationalism.  Jaywalking is technically illegal but never enforced; people here jaywalk as much as in the US.  Chewing gum is allowed for personal use; you just can't sell it (so you have to buy it outside the country, I guess).  And the upshot of the strict penalties for crime (e.g. caning or death) is that the city/country feels like one of the safest places in the world.  In short, Singapore is like a tropical Europe with a hint of the exotic (via Asia) thrown in.

So much color and beauty find their way into the everyday
here, like this apartment building in Little India.

Other than shopping though, there really isn't that much to see as a tourist.  I've mostly been hanging out with couchsurfers, going hiking with a few, swimming with like 15, meeting up for dinner with a bunch more, pub trivia night with another gaggle, and then playing ultimate frisbee with, I kid you not, 40 of them.  I have met more people in the last five days than I probably ever have other than freshman year of college.  The couchsurfing community here is so active!

I'm thinking of leaving on Thursday, going to a play tonight and then heading off early tomorrow.  The next stop is Malaysia, which based on my discussions with people in Singapore could be summed up as "pretty alright but Thailand is better."  Honestly most people have said just to visit Malaka, Kuala Lumpur, and then leave.  Heh.  As with most advice though, I probably will just do my own thing and play it by ear.