Singapore Swing, Malaysia Malaise
SINGAPORE
MARCH 9
I was sitting in an internet cafe in one of the many shopping centers that dot the Beach Road area of Singapore. The sign in my cubicle, warning against improper behavior, said a lot about Singapore.
Notice:
1. No pornographic/illegal websites.
2. No internet gambling.
Offenders will be referred to the police.
Chinatown
Singapore has questionable politics, and the population has chosen to exist in a controlling state in return for economic prosperity and a high quality of life. I was currently reaping the benefits of this lifestyle, and was enjoying fresh salads, the air-conditioned Park View hotel, and orderly streets featuring traffic lights and "walk" signs that count down the seconds to "don't walk." I visited Borders bookstore and browsed with no intent to buy, and sipped iced coffees at sidewalk cafes. I had my vacation from my holiday, and recovered slowly from the color and chaos of Indonesia.
Seconds to cross the street on Orchard Rd.
Obtaining my Chinese visa was easy in Singapore. I waited in two lines at the Chinese Consulate, left to do my laundry and get my roots bleached, and then returned to navigate three more lines. At the end of the day, I was prepared for China. Except for the small matter of my train ticket, but that would be forthcoming in Hanoi.
Hindu temple
Singapore is a city, but it is also its own country. At some point, it was part of Malaysia, but that hadn't worked out and the two had divorced. The population is the penultimate melting pot, and the Chinese, Malaysian, Indian, Arabic, Western population communicates with each other in English. It was like being in a spotlessly clean New York, except that all the stores sold the same upscale Gap-like products.
Raffles Hotel
MARCH 10
After investigating the bus to Thailand, I decided to take a train. The bus to Hat Yai, just over the Thai border from Malaysia, took 16 hours. The train would take longer, but I could go from Singapore to Malaysia on a day train, stay in Penang, and catch the overnight sleeper train to Bangkok. I'd have a comfortable berth and get a decent night's sleep. I bought a second-class day ticket for Malaysia, but the ticket office warned me against purchasing the ticket all the way through to Bangkok.
"Buy the Bangkok ticket in Malaysia," said the agent. "It is much cheaper there."
The rest of the day I wandered around Funan, the IT Mall. It was a giant shopping center solely devoted to computers, computer peripherals, and mobile phones. I loved Singapore.
MARCH 11
"The Singapore Zoo has Komodo dragons," read my guidebook. I couldn't believe it. I'd hauled myself all the way to Eastern Indonesia, and needn't have bothered. But since I had seen the dragons already, I gave the zoo day trip a miss, and instead went to its "Night Safari."
Public transport to the Singapore Zoo was meticulously indicated. I took the subway to Ang Mo Kio station and caught bus #138. "This way to Singapore Zoo and Night Safari!" said the sign, pointing the way with an enormous arrow.
The MRT, or Singapore subway, was an adventure in itself. It's clean and easy to naviagate, and the seats seemed bigger than U.S. seats -- ironic, since mose American butts are wider than Singaporean behinds.
The Night Safari was carefully engineered for maximum tourist enjoyment. I boarded a tram with about twenty others, and we drove silently through the nocturnal zoo, listening to the low-volume lecture of a zoo naturalist.
"If you look just to you left, you will see the wild Indian Rhino. There are very few of these left, and this is the first sighting of the night! This is very exciting!" The guide sounded like he meant it.
Everyone -- myself included -- got very excited. Wow, a rare Indian rhino, and we'd seen the first one of the night! I had to remind myself that it was a zoo. Of course we'd see an Indian rhino. He was in a cage, albeit a well-disguised cage. He had nowhere to go.
We continued on, listening to the narration as we changed continents.
"Leaving the vast savannahs of Africa behind, we now enter Southeast Asia."
And here I'd planned a year off when I only needed a few hours.
I left the tram and walked the Fishing Cat Trail. Loads of cute wild cats surreptiously sneaked around bushes and streams, but none of them were kind enough to fish for me. I did spot the leopard in his habitat, but this might have been related to the giant slab of raw meat that had been hung next to the viewing window. The leopard tore at it hungrily, oblivious to the gawking tourists.
SINGAPORE TO BUTTERWORTH, MALAYSIA
MARCH 12
My second class seat on the 8 o'clock train looked identical to the first class seats a few cars away. The Malaysian train had clean, big windows, cushioned, reclining gray and blue seats, and onboard noodles and rice in the dining car. As usual the toilets opened onto the tracks. We were given strict instructions not to use the toilets while the trains was motionless. People in train stations don't like to watch urine streaming onto the tracks, apparently.
I joined the queue of tourists heading to the Penang ferry. Once there, I gave the old Cathay Hotel and its in-house brothel a miss, instead checking into a Malaysian business hotel.
MARCH 13
The minibus left at noon, so I spent the morning wandering around the old section of Penang. Bicycle rickshaws and old Chinese houses surrounded me, and I revisited a few old haunts from last year's trip. There was the restaurant where Gerry and Lorraine had confronted our inept tour leader last year, and there was the internet cafe where Jitu, Pratima, and I had composed the complaint letter to his parent company. Not exactly the sort of nostalgia that made me all misty-eyed -- I was relieved when it was time to leave Penang.
Georgetown, Penang
A Malaysian man in the travel agent's office asked me the usual questions. "How old are you? Where are you from? Do you have children? Are you married? Are you religious? What do you do?"
I explained that I had made comics before abandoning my career in favor of travel. "Ah," said the man. "American comics used to be popular here but now the Japanese comics are more popular. Do you know why?"
I bit my tongue and did not volunteer my opinion of American comics today.
"Because they are in Malaysian! They are translated."
It seemed like such a simple thing... I hadn't even realized that American comics weren't translated.
The minibus took me to Hat Yai, where Pierre, a 60-something French-Canadian from Montreal, accompanied me to the train station.
"One to Bangkok," I said to the ticket agent.
"Sorry, no train today. There has been an accident."
Pierre and I stood stunned. Floods, accidents... what was going on?
"You want bus ticket?" said a tout standing at my elbow.
"Yes, I suppose I do." We both did. Pierre and I bought tickets on the overnight bus to Bangkok. We were joined by Lisa from the UK and Kirk the Kiwi, both young solo travelers we'd been crossing paths with all day.
There are lots of VIP luxury tourist buses in Thailand. This was not one of them. Our bus was a normal bus catering to locals. It was more comfortable than sleeping on a rock, but not a such a nice place for an overnight stay.
Pierre had retired at 39 and been on the road ever since. This horrified me. Was there no hope for me to ever relax and stay home? Was the travel bug incurable?
"Absolutely," said Pierre.
He went on to ask "is it true that Hillary Clinton is a lesbian? Because I read it in the Bangkok Post, and they can't write it if it is not true, because they would get sued."
I told him I didn't know. I didn't feel like discussing liable laws and how they aren't enforcable outside of the U.S. We were in a part of the world where a manufacturer could write "North Face" on a daypack and sell it as authentic. What was to stop the Bangkok Post from printing what it wanted to print?
MARCH 14
The bus stopped for gas at six in the morning. We all slowly woke up. Then, the driver yelled at us.
"Get off!" he said. "You're in Bangkok."
We were unaccustomed to being dropped off in gas stations, but Pierre, Kirk, Lisa, and I rolled with it. We flagged down a taxi to the tourist ghetto of Khao San Road.
It was too early to check into hotel rooms, so we sat down to breakfast.
Infamous Khao San Road
Khao San Road is open 24 hours a day. It was made famous in "The Beach," and I am alternately fascinated and appalled by it. It's chock full of hotels, guesthouses, restaurants, and convenience stores, all catering to the budget traveler. There is nothing "Thai" about it. The latest in backpacker's fashions are always paraded around, and any foreigner that hangs around long enough is bound to get a bit part in a commercial or movie.
I enjoyed the company of the others until they wandered off to canvas the guesthouses for a cheap room. I was paying a premium for the nearby Viengtai Hotel -- I was receiving my tax returns via Fed Ex, and needed a proper hotel.
NEXT: Tax returns, Bangkok, Cambodia, and not just one but THREE special guest stars!
