When in Singapore...

I suppose my friend and I had become truly Japanese. We flew all the way to Singapore to go to Takashimaya, Isetan, and the Kinokuniya Bookstores. Well, what do you expect? Prior to landing, Japan Airlines (JAL) put up a short instructional video of the Immigration and Custom procedures. When this technical part was over, it was followed by a short program on Singapore. Both my friend and I watched intently at the cultural hot spots that the program might feature as its recommendation. To our bewilderment, the show featured Japanese shops and restaurants. There was nary a mention of the famous Singapore car park food vendors, or a suggestion to eat the Hainanese Chicken Rice, pepper Crab, or Roti Prata. Why even bother going to Singapore?

Today we actually went to the Kinokuniya bookstore so that my friend could get his own guidebook, something that he did not get to do before arriving here. Although in Tokyo we have our own Kinokuniya, the branch here was humongous. It almost felt like we were in one of those boxy mega stores of Wal-Mart or Target. The layout of the store at first glance was difficult to grasp, but for this trip, I had no plan to tackle the blueprint of this floor anyway…

The staff, unfortunately, was not as courteous as their counterparts in Tokyo. Within less than 30 minutes, three people had given me either the evil-eye, finger-talk, or the lazy-butt. Upon entering and not knowing where things were, we consulted a self-help computer at a kiosk. When that did not work, we summoned a nearby staff, Ms. Evil Eye, who approached us with an air of contempt, perhaps thinking that we were as useless as tits on a boar pig. That was, until she realized she stumbled on the same problem. Another instant, I asked Ms. Finger Point, who did not even lift her head to make eye contact, but instead used her digits to point at things. For a fleeting moment I wanted to be Hannibal the Cannibal and nibble on one of those digits, accompanied with a glass of Chianti… slurp slurp…The last one was Mr. Lazy Bums, whose behind were glued to his stool. From the low point of where he was sitting, it was rather difficult to see what landmark or reference point at which he was pointing. And may I remind you how humongous the bookstore was? Even Borders employees in the U.S. are much more helpful in finding things in the computer and actually guide you to the spot until you find the book! Perhaps it is time that Mr. Lee Kwan Yew’s son, Lee Hsien Loong, should start the second wave campaign of Mr. Groovy!

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Singapore, Revisited

Singapore…, boy, has this city changed since my last visit in 1991!

I am here to accompany a friend who had been wanting to come here for a while. This would be his first time ever. We flew in from Tokyo on a direct flight from Narita, arriving in the early evening, rush-hour Friday traffic. The interior of Chang-I Airport has not changed much at all, but the convenience was extremely remarkable: the path from disembarkation to the immigration hall to the luggage concourse to the taxi stand was the most straightforward route I had ever taken in my entire travel experiences (the opposite being Narita and Heathrow, among others).

My first trip abroad in the 70s was Singapore; in December 1975 to be exact, around Christmas time and shortly before our trip to Australia. Back then, Singapore was the affordable luxury for Indonesians residing in Jakarta: a weekend shopping trip, or a week-long wallet-walking. Well, that seemed to be the one and only reason to go to Singapore during that time: to shop, shop, and shop, and perhaps take a break and eat at the ubiquitous car park food fair in the evening. Most I knew never made it past Orchard Road, the famous stores-lined street.

Thank goodness my parents were not obsessed with shopping (although each and every member of our family has a weakness for any good bookstores). They took us to the satellite city of Jurong to see the Jurong Bird Park; the Tiger Balm Gardens (now the Haw Par Villa) and a trip to the Sentosa Island. The Tiger Balm Gardens, as one may suspect, was built by the Asian analgesic balm king, Aw Boon Haw, as an entertainment venue that featured Chinese legends and mythology.

Singaporean English was the first English with a local dialect that I have ever heard. When we were learning English, it was the formal British English, where rubber really meant eraser, and not the protective means that you put in your penis before a sexual intercourse. Our intonation was purely English, but to hear the locals speak English was quite entertaining, not too mention confusing at times. One evening, for example, we were trying to go back to the hotel, so my father told the taxi driver, “Hilton Hotel.” The driver kept looking at him quizzically. He kept on pronouncing the word with slightly different accents, but to no avail. Being the former Boy Scout that he was, he took out the hotel’s business card and handed it to the driver, who studied it seriously before a loud “A-HA!” “New-Toong Hotel!” said he. We were looking at each other and thought, “What?”

My father asked him to pronounce it again. He must have thought that this was how local pronounced the hotel’s name. So, the next time he told another taxi driver to go to “New Toong Hotel” and voilà, the driver understood it immediately. My father was beaming that he could speak like the locals; that was, until we were delivered to a hotel with the name Newton or something like that. Then the pronunciation game started all over again.

For me, that first time abroad to a country known for its discipline and hard working people opened my eyes to what a city-state could look like: the sidewalks were always swept clean, the store fronts spotless, and the people honest. Lee Kwan Yew, the Prime Minister at the time, was having a campaign where he wanted the people of Singapore to smile more frequently. In most department stores I went, I encountered employees spotting a fried-egg-sized bright yellow button of with a smiley face we came to know as “Mr. Groovy.”

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Sprinkles from Heaven

En route to my hotel on the first day here, the chauffeur showed me some people who stood in front of the statue of the Virgin Mary, located directly in front of the Notre Dame Cathedral. There was a miracle, he said. The statue was crying. For days now, believers and plain gawkers have been flocking to the area to witness the shedding of the tear by the stone icon. It would have been difficult on that night to discern the difference between the tears and the drizzles that sprinkled from heaven.

I asked some locals, most of whom misinformed me that there were two religious camps in Vietnam: 50% Buddhism and 50% Catholics. Further reading shed better understanding on this topic: there are a handful of religions instead: Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism (predominantly Mahayana, as opposed to Theravada or Hinayana Buddhism), and Christianity. The first three, along with Vietnamese animism (the belief that the material world possesses souls) combine to form the Tam Giao (Triple Religion). Catholicism in Vietnam, beginning around the 16th century, is today practised by 8-10% of the population. There are also Cao Daism (a religious sect that fuses the secular and religious beliefs of the East and the West), Hoa Hao Buddhism, Islam, and Hinduism. I was also informed that, unlike in China, communism in Vietnam did not eradicate the esixtence of any form of religion.

While driving across the United States might yield plenty of Flamingo and Gnome sightings on people's lawns and frontyards, driving through the countrysides of Vietnam produced a curious view: statues of either standing female manifestation of the Buddha, or of the Virgin Mary, or of Christ the Redeemer, all of whom occupied the second-story balconies of the people's two or three-story homes. Seen from outside, these figures (especially of the Virgin and Christ) seemed to welcome you into the owners' homes. Perhaps that was indeed the intention. I remember wondering if there was a sense of competition inter- and intra-religion (i.e.: Buddhism vs. Catholicism; the cult of Mary vs. the cult of Jesus Christ).

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On an unrelated note, I also observed that during a trip to Nha Trang from Saigon (an arduous 9+ hour bus/van ride; mon Dieu I will take a plane ride next time . . . if there is a next time!) the existence of plenty of graveyards; or at least what I originally thought was formal graveyards, until someone explained to me that soldiers who died during the War were buried immediately and at the site where they had fallen.

The road between Saigon and Nha Trang was the same route used by the North to advance to the South, the very same area where the South positioned its defense. Rather than moving these makeshift burials to a designated formal graveyard or a military gravesite, the soldiers' families returned to the site and built upon the makeshift burial. As a result, the landscape along the route was dotted with mounds after mounds of memorials to the fallen ones.

I thought this was a more effective and constant reminder to any passers-by of the toll any war can take. Gathering the fallen soldiers in one formal site and honoring them would have been a solemn gesture, but leaving them where they fell across miles and miles of a major highway would hopefully persuade passers-by to reflect on their sacrifices.

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During that same road trip, I was also amazed by the existence of many Internet kiosks. In the seemingly most remote village where I did not think electricity existed, there appeared kiosk after kiosk of Internet access. Word had it that Vietnamese who fled the country in 1975 and had returned back to Vietnam either to visit their relatives or to repatriate had decided to bridge the digital gap and to make modest amount of money in the process. That reminded me of the speed at which a Vietnamese friend of mine in Los Angeles travelled to get his hands into this burgeoning and blossoming market that was Vietnam.

Saigon, Have I Seen You Before?

I just landed at the Tan Son Nhat Airport (Saigon Airport), an airport built by the US Army that used to witness the comings and goings of the US military aircrafts during the Vietnam War. The airport bore a quaint reminder of what Jakarta airport was like in the 70s (quick, quick, if you do not know how the Jakarta airport looked like in the 70s, come to Saigon now!). Lines at the immigration was long, but there were more than ten staff members working to process the entrants. The immigration workers had dour faces and worked very slowly, doing what Indonesian immigration used to do a lot: stamping, stapling, stamping, stapling, stamping, stamping, stamping. Then more stamping, stamping, looking at the photo in my passport, then at my face, then stamping, and stamping again. Finally, another round of stapling and stamping, and then returning the passport to me. *Whew* I looked inside, there was only 1 stamp. What the hell?

There was another baggage scanning done during customs check, and observing very briefly, about 10% of the people were sent to the red lane for a more thorough check. A small kiosk of foreign exchange services stared me in the face so I took the opportunity to get my first Vietnamese Dong (VND): I have tried earlier to acquire VND in Japan and in Hong Kong, but none carried VND. The Hong Kong foreign exchange kiosk staff informed me that not a lot of people travelled there, so the exchange did not carry any VND. Back to the Saigon Airport foreign exchange kiosk: to my surprise, the bills given to me were spanking new. Certain bills, similar to the Indonesian Rupiahs, seemed to be made of Tyvek-like ingredients, making it untearable and longer-lasting.

It was drizzling outside when I finally breathed in the Saigon air, seasoned only with a hint of humidity as I chose to visit the country at the end of the rainy season. The hotel limo picked me up and drove me to my hotel (see review here), about 8 km away in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC). I want to remind you that Saigon and Ho Chi Minh City are two names for the same city. Before 1975 the city was Saigon, but after that year, it was renamed the Ho Chi Minh City. According to guidebooks and learning from locals, the name Saigon is still much prefered here in South Vietnam.

As I was driven through the city, I felt a familiar scene welcoming me: low rise buildings and multitudes of store fronts, street vendors jamming the sidewalk and road traffic running amok, all serenaded with a cacophony of car horns and bike bells. Such encounters I have had in other Southeast Asian big cities. I could be in Bangkok or Surabaya, and probably would not know the difference unless I see local writings and hear people talking. All of these nations have been colonized at one point or another by a Western power: Indonesia (the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the Japanese); Singapore and Malaysia (the British Empire); Vietnam (the French), and the Philippines (the Spaniards). Some came out strong and prosperous, some remained probably more or less the same, and some, like Vietnam, is still catching up with time.

I was delivered to District 1, so named probably because of its importance: most of the city's prominent buildings and formal government offices were located in this area, such as: the Reunification Palace (pictured above), the Opera House, the Main Post Office building, and the People's Committee Building (formerly Hotel de Ville), to name a few. For the rest of the late evening I stayed indoor, having woken up very early today to make the trip from Japan to Saigon by way of Hong Kong. I ordered Pho from room service, all the while telling myself not to expect much from any hotel food. I was surprised to find the dish very tasty, as tasty as the best Pho outside of Vietnam in Little Saigon (Westminster, Southern California).

*sigh*...gone is my first day in Saigon...

Bridges, Creeks, and Maple Trees

If I ever imagine a Japanese Eden it would be in the form of Ukai-Toriyama in Takao-san (Mt. Takao), a sprawling compound of lush greens and Japanese Maple trees, divided by creeks, united by bridges, and dotted with a multitude of pavilions, none of which has the same architectural design.

When my friend asked me out to eat lunch here -a mountainous area 50 minutes away from Tokyo's Shinjuku station by an express train- I had no earthly idea that I would end up in such heavenly a place. From Shinjuku-eki, we took the Keio train to Takaosanguchi. A complimentary bus from the Ukai Toriyama company picked us up and delivered us to the second restaurant (the first was a smaller one at a lower level of the mountain).

Reservation had been made for 4 people the day before; otherwise, it would be almost impossible just to walk in and expect to get a pavilion. There is no dining hall; instead, the vast area is host to numerous pavilions scattered throughout. To reach any of these private rooms, one has to navigate on a pebble track under a canopy of trees while listening to the sound of flowing water in the creek down beneath the many bridges that have to be crossed. I do not think anyone would mind.

We chose the highest course in the menu and were rewarded with a parade of small dishes containing many different Japanese vegetables and meats. At one point, each of us was given a suspended rock that was really hot. This was to be the place to put our raw beef with ground miso topping. As there really is no such thing as "main entrée" in a Japanese meal, each dish bears equal weight.

(When we left Tokyo, it was actually raining very hard. As we were waiting in a station somewhere along Tokyo and Takao-san, an earthquake shook the northern part of the country [6.8 in the Richter scale]. We did feel the train rocked back and forth while in its stationary position.)

It was still grey when we reached the mountain, but as we consumed our repast, the cloud broke and the sun appeared, sending his mighty rays to our compound but they were filtered by the leaves of the Maple trees. The effect was just so beautiful that neither words nor photographs could capture its essence.

Would you mind my sharing with you a little bit more of the pictures I had taken from my outing today? Please visit www.flickr.com/photos/bloompy.