Farther East

I stopped in Singapore last week on my way to Bali for a microcredit summit. I was blessed with an eight hour layover--the perfect opportunity to see a city I wouldn't otherwise treat as a destination. Friends told me to stay in the airport--"the shopping is incredible." But, I've found that shopping is less incredible when you make an emerging market salary in a developed country shopping arcade.

I signed up, instead, for the free tour of Singapore for passengers with layovers more than 5 hours. It consisted of a bus ride to a boat ride and then back on the bus--all narrated by a happy guide. There are all sorts of talking points I'm sure I could have incorporated into this entry had I not fallen asleep the minute the wheels started rolling on the way to and from the boat.

Here's what I can tell you: Singapore is clean. We all know this, and true to form, there's no gum in sight. Additionally, there seem to be very few people who venture out of shopping malls--underground passageways connect one mall to another. I saw maybe a total of 5 locals the entire tour (could have been my own fault thought; as I said, my eyes were closed most of the time). Other notes: there are quite a few sky scrapers and more on the way. You will be sentenced to death for drug trafficking. And what else? Oh, this is what I caught from the guide: "Singapore is made up primarily of 4 cultural groups: Indians, Chinese, Malays and Others." I didn't realize that Others was an actual group, but according to the guide, it is group 4. This must be the category reserved for "Anglos of Global Origin."

Before the bus tour, I stumbled upon a coffee shop with a sizeable banana walnut muffin with my name on it. As I was perusing their cold food section, I stumbled across this lost soul: TEX-MEX potato salad. Really? I've never even had that in Texas. According to the "barista," the "chef" (this word is being bandied about with a bit too much creative license, me thinks. It is a coffee shop!) worked in the States for a while.

Other Singapore observations: it's a bit like San Francisco, a beautiful city completely devoid of energy or character. That's not a knock against the mass migrators I know who recently moved to SF. Just my opinion of the city of fog...and now Singapore.

Anyway, I whiled away the hours after the tour in the airport, abused the "testers" in the cosmetics stores, bought some Chinese goji berries, gagged as I passed the dried pork store, and seriously considered purchasing some Ginger and Lily Shanghai Tang perfume for $57. And then I remembered that I don't make dollars.