Day 66 (11 August): Plastic
I took an early morning flight from Kuching to Johor Baru, Malaysia which is back on the pensulia and just across from Singapore. I proceeded from there through the border formalities and into Singapore.
Arriving in Singapore I dropped my bag at a hotel in Clarke Quay (since I would be coming back to the area in the evening to meet up with Laurent, a former co-worker of my friend Lisa's at the US Embassy in Singapore.) I then took a walk through the Colonial District stopping for some lunch at a Hawker Food stall for some excellent cheap food. From there I went to the famous Raffles Hotel where I stopped at the Long Bar and had a Singapore Sling as this is a traditional stop on any world tour. The hotel also has a net little museum that's worth seeing (including a picture of a guy who shot the lion under the billiards table when Singapore was still a wild place around 100 years ago.) Moving on from the Raffles, I took a walk up Singapore's famous shopping street, Orchard Road, where I perused the scene before heading back to Clarke Quay for my second US Embassy employee happy hour in just over a week.
Observations:
1) Sarawak has a completely independent immigration authority from the rest of Malaysia. I actually got passport stamps coming in and out of it to the rest of Malaysia. According to a local that I spoke to on the way to Singapore this is due to history and that Sarawak has traditionally lagged economically so the intra-country immigration was designed to keep opportunites for true locals.
2) Population boom. According to the same guy, Kuching's population has doubled from 400,000 to 800,000 in the last 4 years. He said that most of the immigration is coming from Western Malaysia and tend to be by the wealthier ethnically Chinese Malaysians there who seek out the more relaxed lifestyle of the city.
3) Johor Baru. The city is trying to compete with Singapore and starting to succeed given its lower costs as a manufacturing center. It also has recently become a larger transportation hub (shipping of containers) than Singapore according to the guy I sat next to on the plane.
4) Several Malaysians I talked to today seemed highly concerned about drugs in Malaysia, particularly in KL and that they were a problem. I saw no evidence of this. In fact when arriving in Malaysia they print on the arrival documents that smuggling drugs in is a capital offense in big block letters.
5) Singapore is so clean that the place almost seems like its made of plastic. This is one of those things that you hear about, but don't really understand until you see. Along with that its also a fairly sterile, quiet, and orderly place. Even the Hawker food stalls are probably cleaner than many US restaurants.
6) There was a Ferrari parked in front of the Raffles. This just seems completely useless given the lack of long streches of open roads in Singapore; I guess the point is to show that you are wasting money by owning one in Singapore though.
7) No jay walking. This is a serious offense in Singapore. Knowing this made me a little nervous at intersections and looking around to see if I could find anyone doing it I couldn't.
8) No soliciting. This also seems to be a big deal. A white guy who didn't look like he was from Singapore came around to a bunch of tables with a note basically begging for money. When the proprietors were notfied he was promtly kicked out with disdainful looks.
9) Singapore shopping actually takes place in malls. I imagined botiques on the famous Orchard Road but instead you find enormus malls most likely due to the heat and tropical weather outside. The malls all have ridiculous names as well. One particularly high end one was called 'Paragon' which I thought was great.
Arriving in Singapore I dropped my bag at a hotel in Clarke Quay (since I would be coming back to the area in the evening to meet up with Laurent, a former co-worker of my friend Lisa's at the US Embassy in Singapore.) I then took a walk through the Colonial District stopping for some lunch at a Hawker Food stall for some excellent cheap food. From there I went to the famous Raffles Hotel where I stopped at the Long Bar and had a Singapore Sling as this is a traditional stop on any world tour. The hotel also has a net little museum that's worth seeing (including a picture of a guy who shot the lion under the billiards table when Singapore was still a wild place around 100 years ago.) Moving on from the Raffles, I took a walk up Singapore's famous shopping street, Orchard Road, where I perused the scene before heading back to Clarke Quay for my second US Embassy employee happy hour in just over a week.
Observations:
1) Sarawak has a completely independent immigration authority from the rest of Malaysia. I actually got passport stamps coming in and out of it to the rest of Malaysia. According to a local that I spoke to on the way to Singapore this is due to history and that Sarawak has traditionally lagged economically so the intra-country immigration was designed to keep opportunites for true locals.
2) Population boom. According to the same guy, Kuching's population has doubled from 400,000 to 800,000 in the last 4 years. He said that most of the immigration is coming from Western Malaysia and tend to be by the wealthier ethnically Chinese Malaysians there who seek out the more relaxed lifestyle of the city.
3) Johor Baru. The city is trying to compete with Singapore and starting to succeed given its lower costs as a manufacturing center. It also has recently become a larger transportation hub (shipping of containers) than Singapore according to the guy I sat next to on the plane.
4) Several Malaysians I talked to today seemed highly concerned about drugs in Malaysia, particularly in KL and that they were a problem. I saw no evidence of this. In fact when arriving in Malaysia they print on the arrival documents that smuggling drugs in is a capital offense in big block letters.
5) Singapore is so clean that the place almost seems like its made of plastic. This is one of those things that you hear about, but don't really understand until you see. Along with that its also a fairly sterile, quiet, and orderly place. Even the Hawker food stalls are probably cleaner than many US restaurants.
6) There was a Ferrari parked in front of the Raffles. This just seems completely useless given the lack of long streches of open roads in Singapore; I guess the point is to show that you are wasting money by owning one in Singapore though.
7) No jay walking. This is a serious offense in Singapore. Knowing this made me a little nervous at intersections and looking around to see if I could find anyone doing it I couldn't.
8) No soliciting. This also seems to be a big deal. A white guy who didn't look like he was from Singapore came around to a bunch of tables with a note basically begging for money. When the proprietors were notfied he was promtly kicked out with disdainful looks.
9) Singapore shopping actually takes place in malls. I imagined botiques on the famous Orchard Road but instead you find enormus malls most likely due to the heat and tropical weather outside. The malls all have ridiculous names as well. One particularly high end one was called 'Paragon' which I thought was great.
posted by Traveling Brian at 4:54 AM
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