Singapore

by britishmisk

The last stop on our journey before returning home was the black sheep of South East Asia. Singapore is a developed and modernised metropolis surrounded by its neighbours who are still trying to catch up. The two main things Singapore has, is food and shopping. So if you’re into either of them Singapore has plenty to offer, including a lot of halal options. All of the fast food chains in Singapore are halal, (but if you’re the kind of person who gets excited about halal McDonald’s then you’re politely requested to stop reading my blog). Our first day was spent meandering around one of the shopping centres in the CBD (Central Business District), one cool thing we came across was a place called Awfully Chocolate, check it out if you’re near one. One of the main touristy areas of Singapore is the bay next to the CBD, from here you can visit the gargantuan Marina Bay Sands Hotel which includes a shopping centre, but the main sight is to take the high speed lift to the viewing platform at the top. The complex also includes the ArtScience Museum which has a number of rotating exhibitions and we took the opportunity to visit the Annie Liebovitz exhibition.

From there we made our way to Gardens By the Bay, a futuristic botanical gardens that has a number of interesting exhibits. A lot of what’s on display is used to educate people about protecting the environment and looking after the planet and so forth, which for the cynic in me felt like Singapore was trying to make up for cutting down all its rainforest years ago. From the Gardens we took a cab to the Singapore Zoo. The zoo is quite long winded to get to if you use public transport, so it may be worth taking a taxi or finding a coach that will take you straight there. The zoo has a large collection of animals, but like all zoos you’re getting a very sanitised experience of bored animals, exemplified best I felt by the Sumatran orangutan:

 

To see animals in more of a ‘natural’ surrounding, after the zoo closes the Night Safari begins in an adjacent part of the same complex. Although not a real safari, it’s as close as you’re going to get to one in a place like Singapore.

The next day we visited the best part of Singapore which is found in the area around the Sultan Mosque, this part of town is much like Penang, the hip “Shoreditch-y” part of town, but it is also still the main Muslim part of the city and there are a number of shops and restaurants you can visit. The greatest thing about this neighbourhood however is Wardah Books, for a Muslim bibliophile like me this place is a must-stop and I unfortunately missed out on it when I was in Singapore the previous year, so I felt very fortunate to visit it this time. They stock a number of books that are quite hard to find in the UK and even online. It was eventually also in this area of Singapore I found a decent artisanal cafe at Maison Ikkoku after all the disappointing cafes in Penang. From the Sultan Mosque area, which is the traditional Malay part of town, you can visit the traditional Indian part of town in Little India, though there’s nothing unique about the area that differentiates from any of the other Little Indias in south east Asia.

And thus ended our two day sojourn in Singapore and our trip in general. In the end I found Malaysia a mixed cosmopolitan country with plenty of space to improve and modernise into the future. The country is held up in the Muslim world as a beacon of modernity and a vision to aspire to, but from what it seems they still have plenty to offer. The different ethnicities and religions all get along with one another from what it seems, and it’s a far cry from all the debate and political postulating we see in Europe about emerging multicultural societies and how minorities need to integrate blah, blah, blah. Malaysia (and Singapore) in its post-colonial period relatively quickly got through all of that debate and now things work out pretty well. (Though positive discrimination of Bumiputeras leaves a bit of a question mark on the issue). Malaysia has a lot to offer to different types of travellers, my advice is decide what you’re interested in, and you’re pretty sure to find what you’re looking for here.