We arrived in Singapore late at night on July 4, and got to Minh and PA’s house at 1:30am after some slight mishaps with the address. They welcomed us to their beautiful apartment and promptly went to bed, as we did soon after showering. The next morning we woke up bright and early for our first day of exploring the city while they went to work.
After yummy leftover dim sum from their fridge for breakfast, we walked down from the Pearl Bank Apartments (the first high rise building of the many housing complexes built by the government for Singaporeans to live in mixed racial housing) to the outskirts of Chinatown, with cute wine bars and hipster shops and a beautiful Sri Lankan temple. We walked to Maxwell Food Centre, a bustling market with food and sugar cane drinks. The center of Chinatown had little shops and foodstuffs, and the MRT metro stop.
We went underground and got off at Bugis to go to Arab Street. The fun part about the metro is that when we got off we were in a huge mall with tons of people and shops and it was hard to even get out up to the street! Probably annoying on a normal day but fun when leisurely exploring the city.
After eating at a mediocre Turkish halal restaurant (Derwish), we hopped back on the MRT to the National Museum, to learn a little bit about Singapore. We had a 2 hour crash course in British colonialism in the 20’s and 30’s, Japanese occupation during World War II, post-war culture building and political reconstruction of the 50’s and 60’s, and more about the 70’s and 80’s which we skimmed. The most detailed was the period between 1959-1975, when Singapore achieved self-governance within the British empire (1959-1963), attempted independence through a union with Malaysia (1963-1965), and finally broke off from Malaysia in what Lee Kuan Yew (LKY, prime minister from 1965-1990) called a “bloodless coup.” He only died last year in 2015, on the 50th anniversary of the country.
The building of Singapore as a multiracial, multireligious, multilingual state is pretty interesting. From race riots of the early 60’s, LKY knew that he would have to address the racial tensions from the get-go. Education was established with 4 languages: English, Mandarin, Tamil and Malay to represent the Malaysian, Indian and Chinese founders and residents of Singapore. I’m sure there are many details left out of the exhibit, but the mandated multiracial state is something very unique about Singapore that we didn’t really know much about until visiting. It’s very much a city that reminds us of many other cities, but defies ethnic specificity.
After walking around all day we were exhausted, and rallied to have dinner with our friends at a swanky restaurant, Humpback. Overall, a great intro to this city!
Jet lag smiles.
View from the 35th floor.