Singapore Sling

Singapore Sling
xmas-newyear 2001

the streets of seoul started to fill up with american xmas carrols, a type of music i had never heard before. it hurt my ears and i thought of the traditional xmas songs i used to play on the piano twenty years ago; i hope somebody is still doing that. i was glad to escape this hollow shell of xmas and spend two weeks with weelim in singapore, curious to explore this island after she had told me so much about it. when i mentioned to my korean friends where i was going, they all said it is so clean overthere. i began to expect a sterile, characterless city, but i was pleased to see that is only a part of reality, probably the only part you get to see on a 5 hour touristic tour of the island. in a tropical climate, nature is constantly fighting to win back space; plants grow on the facade and roof of some neglected old shophouses and the paint is falling off.

but the most interesting are the singaporeans themselves. this society has gone through such rapid changes that the difference between generations is bigger than in any other place i know. the language has changed from chinese dialects to mandarin to english; some young people don't understand their grandparents, and use a different language speaking to their parents and to their friends.
singapore was one of the three straits settlements, with penang and melaka, which are both part of malaysia now. these ports controlled the trade between china and europe, driven by their predominantly overseas chinese population. dutch, english, and portuguese colonists also left their traces. in melaka, we strolled through harmony street, which has a malay mosk, an indian temple and a chinese temple within short distance of eachother, with no signs of any tension between these communities.

on xmas evening we walked to the outskirts of the city, where a community of eurasian descendants of portuguese colonists still speaks a medieval form of portuguese according to our guidebook. they had decorated their gardens with colourful lights and the streets were packed with people. however, no traditional xmas here either.

we continued north, to the city of georgetown on penang island, which has the best preserved historical chinatown.

the long narrow shophouses are still inhabited by chinese families, but due to the legal situation neither tenants nor owners want to spend money on maintenance of the houses, so they look rather delapidated, very different from the singaporean chinatown where the government kicked all the residents out, renovated entire streets so only luxury shops could afford the high rent.
back in singapore we enjoyed a walk under the stars through the night safari park. i was excited to have a close look at hanging bats the size of a cat. on the last day of the year, we took a boat to bintan island, part of indonesia. amazing how only one hour away from singapore life can be so different. we checked in at a quiet beach hotel far away from the resorts. monkeys came to look at us from the balcony; a funny inverted zoo experience. we had the most romantic new year's dinner i could imagine, just the two of us on a wooden beach terrace lit by one candle. we opened the bottle of pyongyang soju (north korean rice wine) that i brought from seoul, strong stuff.

the next day we strolled along the wide beach observing the life of the local fishing people. because we did not want to eat twice at the same place, we walked one hour and a half to the next village, where a chinese couple ran a restaurant on a kelong, a wooden house on pillars in the sea, connected to the shore by a wooden bridge 800 meters long. crossing this narrow bridge surrounded by darkness and the sea was magic. again weelim ended up talking chinese, they seem to be everywhere! the owners turned out to be singaporeans who were running this kelong as a holiday camp. they were even so friendly to drive us back to our hotel.
first place we went to back in singapore was a hawker center, those are terraces surrounded by cheap food stalls selling all kinds of asian dishes. i can't say i missed korean food for a second.

in the national museum we watched a movie called 'the singapore story' about the history of the island. heavy propaganda; i thought i was in north korea for a while. but singapore's dear leader has done a great job, and people seem happy with the way things are going.
back in seoul, 30 degrees colder, i found myself looking for the same sun i had been hiding from for two weeks. my friend youn-ho invited me to go skiing for a day, and before i realised i was trying to keep up with him on the white slopes under a clear blue sky, while the skin was peeling off my arms after too much sun on the indonesian beach. sunday afternoon i went to a rock festival; just as the previous time the audience was pretty small, and gradually i realised it consisted mostly of the musicians of the other performing bands. they had a small lottery and of course i won one of the cd's, i think i was one of the few people that had actually bought a ticket to get in.. anyway, decent stuff, but it seems no korean above the age of 22 seems to appreciate this music. i wander around in seoul thinking about the young nihilist characters in 'shanghai baby', a chinese novel i am reading, who struggle with their identity in a cosmopolitan city; sounds much more western than seoul in a way.