Asia

Singapore Impressions – Going Once, Going Twice

Asia, Singapore, Uncategorized /

Singapore Impressions – Going Once, Going Twice In 2019, my travel friend Kathy and I built a DIY trip to Asia, starting in Shanghai and including Singapore, a multicultural city with an interesting history, clean to the point chewing gum was regulated, and home to the famous Marina Bay Sands Resort, with its unique architecture and rooftop infinity pool, and to Changi airport with its indoor waterfall. We arrived with plans; I also arrived with a lung infection (not Covid) that I’d picked up somewhere between home, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Luckily, I was flat out only the last day and wound up in a clinic at our next stop, Cambodia, where everyone was capable and kind. But that’s another story. This did slow down both of us in Singapore, though. In any case, with only about three days to explore Singapore and with me incapacitated for a day, we left town with things yet to do, and planned to meet up there again, which we did in early 2024. As with other big places I visit, this isn’t a travel guide, but it’s my story about some of the things that enriched those days in Singapore. The rest can be filled in easily with guidebooks and online research. A Five-Sentence History for a Starter The island of Singapore has been a trading outpost for millennia. Perhaps what we think of as “modern” Singapore dates from 1819 when the British arrived, and Sir Stamford Raffles established a trading post for the British East India Company. Trade boomed especially after the Suez Canal opened. After World War II and Japanese occupation, Singapore was first British again, then became part of the new Federation of Malaysia in 1963, and in 1965 seceded from Malaysia, becoming the independent city-state that we know today. It has long been a multicultural society, with four official languages, Malay, Mandarin, Tamil and English, and most citizens are at least bilingual. Traffic congestion also happens in the waterways with trade ships. More Fives: The Five-Footway – Shelter from the Elements This is a short digression because we found the footways a great relief from end-of-monsoon rains in 2024. Stamford Raffles’s town plan included the footways, created by requiring street-level shophouses to be set back five (or so) feet from the street, with upstairs living quarters extending out as far as the curb. This went for public buildings as well, and created a type of “veranda,” originally intended to protect pedestrians from the tropical sun, a sudden downpour, and the dangers of the street. As you would expect, the verandas soon filled with vendors, food hawkers and assorted others, making the footways sometimes chaotic and unsanitary, a long-lasting, contentious issue. There’s a good article on the Biblioasia website (“Give Me Shelter: The Five-footway Story,” Oct-Dec 2019). Around Tiong Bahru where we stayed there are five-footways and modern covered sidewalks, so we were able to shop, visit cafes, and reach the metro nearly entirely under shelter. The Five Footway at Monkey God temple in Tiong Bahru. The covered sidewalks in Tiong Bahru are a nice touch. You can imagine that all those food vendors in the footways became a health hazard. So, the famously clean government of the newly independent Singapore began a program of licensing and regulation, resulting in development of safe, hygienic markets and hawker centers. The hawker culture is a huge part of Singaporean life, and I have more about it in Singapore Impressions – Tiong Bahru and its Hawker Culture. Ethnic NeighborhoodsStamford Raffles had clear ideas about developing a prosperous settlement that he had gleaned from experience in British and European colonies in Asia (Java, for example), emphasizing communal harmony and ease of trade. In his vision, that town plan would allocate land to each segment of society: government, Europeans and merchants, Chinese, Malays, and Indians. These fundamental divisions exist today, and visiting each neighborhood to see its temples, parks, markets, and businesses is probably on most first-timers’ agendas. Our Visits – Zipping Around; a Non-Chronological Account Before I continue with my favorites, here is an overview of our days in Singapore. We got around on foot and by metro. Singapore has a well-developed underground, clean, fast and extensive. We bought transit cards from dispensers, like in Washington, DC, Paris, and other cities. Easy. The first day in Singapore, back in 2019, we began with a visit to the Singapore Botanic Gardens. The gardens date from 1859 and if you like gardens, Kew Gardens near London, for example, this garden is well worth visiting. It’s the only tropical botanic garden on the UNESCO World Heritage list, and one of only three listed gardens (with Kew that I’ve mentioned, and the Orto Botanico di Padova, Italia, where I’ve also been). Do not confuse the Singapore Botanic Gardens with the Gardens by the Bay! Taking a selfie in the subway. The Chinatown Arcade. The buildings here have real charm and brilliant colors. The Sri Veerama. Temple Gold. A beautiful mosque. The next couple of days we saw the city in a hurry, zipping around by metro to Little India, with its temples and shops; Chinatown, where we saw the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple; and Kampong Gelam (the Muslim quarter), where you can follow the Heritage Trail and meet a true diversity of cultures. And I can’t neglect our stop at the Raffles Hotel Long Bar. We intended to wind up the 2019 trip by seeing the Gardens by the Bay, but my illness got the better of me at the Gardens, and I had to retreat to the hotel by taxi. The Gardens visit finally happened in 2024. When we met up in 2024, the plan included Gardens by the Bay, another stop at the Long Bar, some historic buildings in the government sector, and a sweep through places of interest we couldn’t include in 2019. The Raffles Hotel Long Bar – Home of the Singapore Sling The Raffles Hotel Long Bar is where bartender Ngiam

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Singapore Impressions – Tiong Bahru and its Hawker Culture

Asia, Singapore /

Singapore Impressions – Tiong Bahru and its Hawker Culture Back in 2019, my travel friend Kathy and I built a DIY trip to Asia, starting in Shanghai and stopping in Singapore, a multicultural city with an interesting history, clean to the point chewing gum was regulated, and home to the famous Marina Bay Sands Resort, with its unique architecture and rooftop infinity pool, and the indoor waterfall at Changi airport. For my idiosyncratic view of Singapore, and why we came twice, see Singapore Impressions – Going Once, Going Twice. This article is a quick look at Singapore’s Hawker Culture and the Tiong Bahru neighborhood, where we stayed on each trip. I’ll start with the all-important hawker (as in food) culture. Hawker Culture In Singapore Impressions – Going Once, Going Twice, I talked about food hawkers in the context of food stalls appearing early on the five footways, those clever street-level setbacks that create walkways sheltered from sun and rain. It was inevitable that food vendors would set up there, where migrants from China, Malaysia, India, Indonesia, and elsewhere could get their home country comfort foods. Some migrants earned a living by hawking these foods, too. But it was hard to keep clean, and stalls obstructed traffic. So, the famously clean government of newly independent Singapore began a program of licensing and regulation, resulting in development of safe, hygienic markets and hawker centers. The markets weren’t haphazardly located, either. The Housing Development Board was involved in the “meticulous” planning. (Note also that there are innumerable exhortations to stay clean and polite.) Tiong Bahru Market food court with Singaporean hawker stalls and wet market. National Environment Agency (NEA) promo located in the Tiong Bahru Market food court. A view inside the Tiong Bahru Market. So many food options, so little time. Big food halls, yes, but hawker culture is more than just a collective of stalls. A great article, “The History and Evolution of Singapore’s Hawker Culture,” on the Singapore government Roots website describes hawker centers as Singapore’s community dining rooms, and in our experience, our neighborhood center at Tiong Bahru Market was our community dining room, where we mingled with local people, and sometimes shared tables – with an older couple, a group of women chatting, a young man visiting from China, or people with work IDs clipped to their shirts. Tiong Bahru Market’s hawker center is on the second floor, covered, spacious, arranged around a large courtyard, airy, open to nature and sheltered at the same time. If you’ve watched Somebody Feed Phil on Netflix, you might remember that the Singapore episode opens with Phil at a hawker center – it’s Tiong Bahru! While Tiong Bahru is my favorite, I think everyone who has gotten into the Singapore hawker culture has a favorite. There are plenty to choose from – the article I mentioned says there are 110 hawker centers around Singapore, and that the government announced in 2019 that 13 new centers would be built by 2027. So, it’s no wonder that in 2020, Hawker Culture in Singapore was inscribed as Singapore’s first element on the UNESCO List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Kaya Toast and Chicken Rice There are so many cuisines and delicious, popular foods at the hawker centers that I almost hesitate to single out just two. But of course, I will. Kaya Toast is a long-time popular breakfast of toasted bread with butter and kaya jam, boiled eggs, and coffee. If you don’t know, kaya jam is coconut milk jam made with sugar, eggs and sometimes pandan leaves for more flavor. The way our kaya breakfasts proceeded was thus: our white bread was lightly toasted and spread with butter and jam. Two uncooked eggs went into a plastic pitcher, followed by scalding water to cook them. The first time, I didn’t leave my eggs in the pitcher long enough and they were underdone. Not cool. Thereafter, I left my eggs in as long as practicable, and it was much better. I brought back jam from both trips, and you can order it online.   Hainanese Chicken Rice is considered by many as Singapore’s national dish. Hainanese Chicken Rice (“chicken rice”) might be simple but is considered by many as Singapore’s national dish. It’s poached chicken and flavorful rice, maybe with some accompaniment such as cucumber and sauces. Every vendor has their own variation. I had chicken rice at Tiong Bahru Hainanese Boneless Chicken Rice, one of the seven restaurants or food stalls in Michelin’s online guide to Singapore Chicken Rice. As the guide says, the stall imply closes when the day’s chicken sells out, so come early. Tiong Bahru – Unique in Singapore Why focus on this neighborhood? We found it just by chance at first. As Kathy and I each did searches prepping for the 2019 Asia trip, we looked where we might stay in local hotels outside the tourist centers. In Singapore, that led to Tiong Bahru. So, we met up in this appealing neighborhood without knowing a lot about it except that the Tiong Bahru Market was exceptional, the community was architecturally significant, and the metro was close. We stayed at the small Nostalgia Hotel, just steps from Tiong Bahru Market, and ten minutes or so on foot from the metro station for city-wide access. In 2024 we chose to return to Nostalgia. And we’re not alone thinking that Tiong Bahru is a desirable place!   Architecture in the Tiong Bahru housing area. Starting with the architecture, Tiong Bahru is unique in Singapore. It’s the oldest housing estate in the city, very desirable today, built by the Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT) in the 1930s, in a “Streamline Moderne” style, which is based on horizontal and curved lines, aerodynamics, efficiency. Think about those classic posters for glamorous travel in the 1930s – sleek trains, airplanes, fast cars, cruise ships, always on the move – and you’ll have the idea: long lines, nautical elements, curves, heading to the future. Sleek and

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