Singapore

If I'm being completely honest, I had very low expectations of Singapore prior to going. I've never been to Dubai, but I've heard generally unfavorable reviews comparing the city to a "giant shopping mall" coupled with exorbitant prices. My general assumption was that Singapore was going to be the Dubai of Southeast Asia. But I was gladly proven wrong!

It's true that the culture of commerce is quite strong in Singapore, replete with an abundance of modern malls. But Singapore has so much more to offer than that.

The food centers were overall probably my favorite part of my visit and I only wish I had had the capacity to eat more! I went to the Hong Lim Food Centre Complex for almost every meal while I was there. More than anything, it reminded me of Okonomimura in Hiroshima, which is a similarly organized complex but instead focuses almost solely on the savory Japanese dish okonomiyaki. On the other hand, the Hong Lim Food Centre Complex features a wide variety of Singaporean favorites from the Michelin-recognized Ji Ji's Wanton Noodle to Ah Hung's Curry Mee. Almost everything I had was excellent and seemed to be far cheaper than anything you'd find in the traditional restaurants in the same area of Chinatown. The aforementioned Ji Ji's Wanton Noodle was by far my favorite, and it was one of the best dishes I had had in a while. While most of the food seemed to be Malay or Chinese in origin, there were at least one or two Indian food vendors.

The only other food center I visited was the Maxwell Food Centre, which was only a 10-minute walk from the Hong Lim Food Centre Complex. After I saw what one of the employees at my hostel was eating, he directed me to Maxwell. I don't think I found the specific vendor he had recommended, but I found one that offered a very similar fare. I basically got a platter of roasted chicken, pork, and duck — a regular "meat pile" as I have come to call my standard breakfast in Thailand (which is a Thai omelet topped with ground beef and some vegetables). While I probably should have elected to get the smaller portion size, it was the perfect last meal to have in Singapore.

Other than stuffing my face, I generally just walked around. For almost every person I have talked to about their time in Singapore, this seemed to be the first thing they say after being asked what they did there. And what a great place to do just that! Not only do the well-maintained sidewalks make Singapore eminently walkable (take note, the rest of Southeast Asia), but the architecture ranges from colonial to just shy of sci-fi — and the juxtaposition can be striking. One minute you're walking on the Skyway between "Supertrees" that are reminiscent of the floating structure that made up Cloud City in Star Wars, and the next minute you're walking along an avenue with shophouses that date back to British colonialism. 

The Skyway allows one a perfect view of the Marina Sands, a giant silver structure that resembles three pedestals holding up a flattened hot dog, which is probably the most space-age example of architecture in the whole city-state. At no other point did I feel more like I was in another world than I did during that time on the Skyway. 

Earlier in the day, as I was walking across the Double Helix Bridge to Marina Sands and the flower-like architecture of the Arts and Science Museum next door, I spotted two bicyclists on the path parallel to me who looked oddly familiar. It was the short bleached blond hair sported by one of them that gave it away. When I was confident enough, I shouted, "Hey, Austrians!" Sure enough, they turned around, saw me, and took the next opening that connected our two paths. They were in shock more than I was, but this was the same couple, Christian and Gudrun, who I first met on Koh Pha Yam island several weeks earlier. Christian had his GoPro on while filming their ride and it captured the moment quite well. You can hear him cry out incredulously, "No way!" Christian and Gudrun were almost in too much shock in order to be able to communicate coherently. Through our collective befuddlement, we were able to make vague plans for dinner for the following night.

The following night, I took them to the Hong Lim Food Centre Complex. Alas, we arrived after many of the stalls had already closed (this was at 6:30 p.m.!), but Ji Ji's Wanton Noodle stall was still open so I directed them to that stall. One topic of our conversation over dinner was the abundance of Christmas decorations we saw around us. Little did we know at that time that, according to Wikipedia, approximately 20% of Singapore's population is Christian. However, this is true of other East and SE Asian countries like South Korea and Thailand. I know that in South Korea, Christmas is essentially a "couple's" holiday for many non-Christians, much like Valentine's Day is. I imagine this is a result of the myriad of romantic movies that take place during Christmas (hello, Love Actually) and that are then exported from Hollywood to the world over. It's just so odd to me how what was originally a religious holiday in some cultures has been reappropriated as a couple's holiday in another culture through an accidental use of cultural soft power. In Thailand, I have noticed holiday decorations in cafes and other establishments in Phetchabun, but they are much more copious in Bangkok. Is it an effort to appear more "Westernized"? If so, there must be some cultural capital — perhaps some sophistication — associated with that. Perhaps the same way that French is used as a signal of sophistication or value in the United States. Or, is it just another way that they just trying to appeal to the tastes of foreigners? Oddly enough, when my friend and I were walking in Bangkok, we noticed some kind of mural or advertisement that seemed to be mixing Christmas symbolism (e.g. Santa hats) with Thai folk and Buddhist imagery. It was somewhat bizarre even though the message was intentionally expressing the merging or overlap of cultures.

But, to bring it back to this post's topic, it's Singapore that seems to truly operate as a melting pot of cultures — at least, as far as I was able to observe. The predominant ethnicities of Indian, Malay, and Chinese seemed to communicate in the lingua franca of English. To my knowledge, there have been no major ethnic clashes or uprisings, unlike other democratic multi-ethnic nations like India or the United States. One has to wonder if the rather draconian justice system has played a part in keeping order. While riding the metro, I saw video public service announcements that made it clear that caning is still a possible punishment for certain crimes (in this case, the public service announcements were specifically targeting would-be perpetrators of sexual harassment or sexual assault). Furthermore, Singapore is one of four developed countries that still apply the death penalty (Japan, Taiwan, and the United States being the other three). 

Clearly, harsh punishments are not the only thing keeping the peace here, whether that is peace between different ethnicities or not. I get the impression that the relative prosperity of the city-state, currently ranking as the 34th highest GDP per capita in the world, that adds another layer to the peaceful relations between different ethnic groups. If I think about how different ethnic groups have been scapegoated throughout my own country's history, that type of rhetoric seems to be most prominent during times of social or economic upheaval. If politicians can take advantage of socially or economically unsettled times for their own path to power-grabbing, then it seems like it's often at the expense of a less well-represented and generally lower socio-economic economic minority group.

Nonetheless, the United States' current GDP per capita ranking is 8th in the world. So, neither the looming threat of harsh punishments for violence nor the average amount of wealth per individual seems to wholly account for the relative peace between ethnic groups. 

Benevolent authoritarianism is a form of ruling that I've often heard applied to Singapore. The New York Times had a recent op-ed exploring how benevolent autocracies have sometimes historically outperformed democracies economically but how that is often dependent on having specific leaders that are both charismatic and strategic, such as Singapore's founding leader Lee Kuan Yew. They pointed out that with Yew's oldest son now leading the city-state, the prosperity that his father brought to the city-state may be gradually disappearing.

I don't think I'm going to solve the riddle of Singapore's success. But that is why I found it so fascinating.