Singapore, wild and tamed
Straight-laced island nation offers a thrilling ride, all neatly organized
SINGAPORE — It was about 10 p.m. when I boarded an electric tram for the 45-minute ride through the Singapore Zoo. Cicadas and crickets sawed over the soft hum of the electric motor.
In slightly accented English, our tour guide chirped: “We are greeted by the sounds of modern nature.”
(Photo courtesy of Singapore Grand Prix)
GETTING THERE: A recent online search turned up round-trip American Airlines flights from O’Hare for $750. Sorry, jet setters, but super-luxurious Singapore Airlines doesn’t offer flights from Chicago.
WHEN TO GO: Singapore’s climate is fairly consistent (read: hot) year-round. November-January are the coolest and wettest months.
STAYING THERE: Housed in a thick-columned 1928 building that was once the general post office, the 399-room Fullerton Hotel is Singapore’s grand slam. It’s also a prime spot to catch the action during the upcoming Formula One Singapore Grand Prix. Rooms from $235 — and much higher on Grand Prix weekend (Sept. 25-27).
The 769-room Fairmont Hotel in the heart of Singapore’s conference and mall district has 16 restaurants and pretty much any amenity you could ask for. The 50,000-square-foot spa’s “Shopper’s Relief” treatment focuses on sore calves and quadriceps resulting from Singapore’s favorite pastime. Rooms from $210.
The New Majestic is a more intimate boutique hotel of 30 rooms, starting at $160.
WHAT TO DO: The 1887 Raffles Hotel’s historic Long Bar is as much of a cliche as a must-see. Sit back under punkah fans and enjoy the atmosphere of colonial-era indolence. The Singapore Sling (invented here) is the drink of choice, and you’re expected to toss your peanut shells on the floor.
The Singapore Botanic Gardens is a 100-acre oasis northwest of the city center that’s perfect for strolling: orchids galore and a lovely, ranger-guided “rainforest walk.”
The Chinatown Heritage Center has historical exhibits and authentic recreations of tenement-style shophouses of yore, offering a glimpse of pre-modern Singapore.
MORE INFO: Call the Singapore Tourism Board in New York at (212) 302-4861 or go to visitsingapore.com, where you also can buy tickets for the Formula One races.
It wasn’t long before exotic beasts were basking in the pale glow of floodlights. The tingle of excitement you feel on the world’s only “night safari” stems from the fact that after dark, you’re even more outmatched by the sharp-eyed predators on display. Were it not for the fences and deep moats, the lions and hyenas that were up and about that night would have happily torn me to shreds — and I wouldn’t even have seen it coming. But I never felt a genuine sense of fear. The majestic lions barely seemed to notice the buffet on wheels rolling by.
Our guide maintained a soothing flow of information. On our left, three enormous sausages appeared to be bobbing in a puddle.
“Hippos will do almost anything in the water, even their private business,” she offered. On a rhino sitting with its back to us: “Not a social animal at all.”
I enjoyed her take on one of the animal kingdom’s most reviled scavengers: “These vultures can actually help us tidy up a certain area, and that prevents the spread of diseases.”
Where else in Asia, besides this prosperous, micro-managed island nation, would a nocturnal trip to the wild side feel so safe and under control? Or include such an appreciative nod to nature’s janitors?
A city comes to life
From the zoo, it’s only a half-hour drive to the scrubbed sidewalks and gleaming skyscrapers of the city center.
Famously sterile, Singapore’s downtown has livened up in recent years: Dancing in bars, once illegal, is now permitted, and carousing locals and expats jam the waterfront area of Clark Quay on weekends. In fact, many of the recent development projects in this commercial hub are aimed at keeping residents and visitors entertained. An adjacent theater and concert hall along the new Performing Arts Esplanade became instant landmarks when they were completed earlier this decade.
Several times my tour took me past the harbor, bristling with cranes being used to build the first casino in Singapore’s modern history. A far cry from the dark, opium-scented gambling dens of the 19th century, the $3.6 billion Marina Bay Sands will, when completed later this year, have 2,500 luxury rooms and a 2.5-acre “sky park” with panoramic views of the city.
Another gamble that has paid off already is the addition of Singapore to the Formula One racing circuit. Last year, the country hosted the first night race in the sport’s 58-year history. (This year’s version runs Sept. 25-27.)
Designed as a Monaco-style street circuit, the groundbreaking race put the government’s notorious organizational skills to the test. The seamlessly executed race weekend happened to coincide with my trip. It was my first encounter with the sport, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget the moment I emerged, slightly disoriented, from an afternoon nap in my room at the Fullerton Hotel to what sounded like a swarm of furious giant hornets.
Out of the jungle
Like some of the zoo paddocks, the three-mile F1 circuit is walled in by mesh barriers. But Singapore wasn’t always this tightly controlled.
Founded in 1819 as a British trading post, the burgeoning island drew a stream of impoverished Chinese laborers and farmers. Immigrants from British-controlled India and Malaysia helped give the country the multicultural profile it has today.
The vast majority of Singaporeans are Han Chinese, leading very different lives than they did in colonial times. These changes are charted in fascinating detail at the Chinatown Heritage Center. Located at the end of a tidy brick lane that was once a hurly-burly of barbers, bullock carts, fortune-tellers, street performers and medicine men, it has authentic mock-ups of living quarters once considered standard for the working class: straw-matted cubicles with scarcely enough space for a bunk and cookware.
In addition to being dim and noisy, Chinatown’s endlessly subdivided tenements reeked from shared open latrines. As a result, Singapore had a much more vibrant street life than it does in its current era of jaywalking enforcement and air-conditioned underpasses.
Copious brothels, gambling houses and opium (available in secret shops recognizable by their red doors) beckoned. Originally used as a painkiller by overworked laborers, the narcotic ruined many addicts for life.
“As the rabbit is drawn to the rattlesnake’s power/As the smoker’s eye fills at the opium hour,” Rudyard Kipling wrote.
Meanwhile, the British busied themselves at defanging the island. At one point in the 19th century, indigenous tigers were being killed at a rate of one a day. As Singapore became crucial to the trade in Malaysian rubber and other precious resources, goldsmiths proliferated. Eventually, they were replaced by the banks that now dominate Singaporean commerce.
But it wasn’t until after independence in 1965 that the government embraced the regulations and clean-up work that transformed Singapore into the obsessive-compulsive’s fantasy it is today.
Take the Chinatown Complex, a shopping center with a market in the basement devoted to edible creatures. You can buy eels and turtles and cull through piles of live frogs. I spotted a sign promising “100% FRESH CROCODILE MEAT!!” The amazing thing about the place (especially for anyone familiar with New York’s fragrant Chinatown markets) is that it’s just about odorless. Fishmongers in neat blue aprons are continually hosing down the floor.
The garden city
After hearing the race cars roar, I decided to find some serenity in the Singapore Botanic Gardens. I’d been told that Singaporeans love flowers almost as much as they love shopping, and the normally less-than-approachable government allows citizens to request protected status for an individual tree. It isn’t called “The Garden City” for nothing.
I walked among the garden’s 400 species of orchids, seeing them every which way — delicately speckled, attached like brooches to a frangipani tree, dew-moistened in a greenhouse replicating an alpine climate. Near a large fig tree, yellow butterflies were doing figure-eights.
Along the walking path, an elderly gardener bent silently over his plants. Here, in a khaki shirt, was the personification of that Singaporean impulse to refine, improve, take nature and give it a gloss and a polish. But the amusement-park atmosphere I’d felt on the night safari seemed worlds away.
Why change anything about this place? Except, perhaps, to make it larger. Is it any surprise, then, as I type this, 24 acres are being added to the Botanic Gardens?
Darrell Hartman is a New York City-based free-lance writer. Information for this story was gathered on a research trip sponsored by Singapore Tourism and the Fullerton, Fairmont and Raffles hotels.