Return to a Sexy Island Read online

  I sounded like a recorded People’s Action Party (PAP) rally stuck on repeat mode.

  Of course, this was my fault. The old travel curse had struck again. Should you live in a country in need of a sudden injection of luck and prosperity, just insist I never stay there. When I left England in 1996, the country was tumbling towards the abyss of post-Thatcher monochrome mediocrity. Six months later, New Labour rode the brash technicolour wave of national euphoria for the next few years while I swiftly took care of Singapore and the Asian Currency Crisis. In 2006, I departed for Geelong, Victoria, and thereby gave my consent for Singapore to transform into the Monaco of Southeast Asia. Hotels, casinos, museums, conference and heritage centres, nature trails, theatres, Grands prix, giant flyers, eco-tourism and ah longs, or loan sharks, all flourished in my absence. After a mere five years, Singapore had become sexy. Who would have thought it? With my usual impeccable timing, I had swapped a sexy island for a pair of suburban secateurs.

  Like a jilted lover jealously watching from afar as a former girlfriend goes through a lusty makeover, I read all the Time and Newsweek articles about shiny, sparkly, shimmery Singapore wooing visitors and winning over sceptical locals (some of them anyway, we’ll get to Aljunied later) while I went about my business of cutting the lawn and contemplating slicing through the electrical cord just to bring a bit of spark to suburban life. After a particularly stimulating Saturday morning applying weed killer to the cracks in the driveway, sentimentality got the better of me. I took out my old map of Singapore, the one that had accompanied me around the island for my valedictory tour back in 2006. On the map, Sentosa still boasted tourism delights such as Fantasy Island and the Asian Village (before nitpickers write in, the map was bought earlier than 2006). Marina Bay had nothing to offer except Clifford Pier and the old Change Alley. Curious, I compared my tattered, former travel companion with the latest efforts from Google’s cartographers. The changes were breathtaking, even as tiny symbols on a laptop screen. I was examining two different maps—two different islands—less than a decade apart.

  In Australia, it is possible to pinpoint the location of a single tree after 30 years. I kid you not. Mad Max, the cult classic of Australian cinema, was filmed in Geelong in 1979 and to mark its 30th anniversary, an exhibition was staged with mini-tours arranged to revisit filming locations. Biker gangs came from all over the world and I remember an excited Japanese gang member, decked out in black leathers, tapping me on the shoulder as we gazed at an empty paddock before exclaiming, “The tree ... same tree ... There, the tree ... Mel Gibson ... He stand in front of tree ... Same tree ... never change ... same tree.’’ I agreed with him, largely because I was alone and I wasn’t sure how far his homage to post-apocalyptic, psychopathic mass-murdering bikers went. The man had flown from Japan to look at a tree, for heaven’s sake. I checked the DVD later and the Japanese Easy Rider was right. In Australia, it is possible to locate a solitary tree in an unchanged environment after 30 years. In Singapore, a futuristic metropolis topped with a swimming pool in the clouds can mushroom around Marina Bay in less than five.

  Singapore was offering me the unique opportunity to tour a country for the second time in five years and not visit the same place twice—unless it had been transformed in the interim. Would such a tour even be possible in any other country? It was an intriguing premise. And then there was also a chance for our daughter to learn conversational Mandarin. And Singapore has pasar malams, or night markets, region-free DVD players and cheap hor fun. The pull factors were too many to mention. I just needed a final push.

  My next-door neighbour continued to dribble on about the trivial tanks, gesticulating aggressively and prodding me in the shoulder to emphasise a point (usually something about a camouflaging screen for water tanks being more important in the suburbs than life itself). To my credit, I had a sudden lucid moment of clarity. I heard a voice laughing. It was my voice. My subconscious had assumed control, mocking the insanity of the situation and forcing me to take stock. I was not going to get into a street fight with a neighbour over a pair of water tanks. I was not.

  “I’m an intelligent man,” I muttered and walked away. I think I was going for profundity, a kind of “less is more” philosophy, and for a few precious seconds I lived up to the billing. The worldly, much-travelled author was leaving the trivial little man to poison the air with his colourless invective. The trouble is the much-travelled author occasionally gets overruled by the kid from Dagenham who is less verbose, but more pertinent.

  “Oi, moron,” I heard myself shout as I marched back to the ranting one.

  I had somehow convinced myself that retreating to my suburban kingdom was not a dignified, noble act, but one of cowardice. Surprisingly, the neighbour did not take kindly to being called a moron. He hurried across his garden, narrowly avoiding his manicured rose bushes of course, and held his paw up to my jaw.

  “Don’t you call me that,” he screamed. “I’ll smash your fucking face in. I’ll smash your fucking face in. I’ll smash your fucking face in.”

  I wasn’t sure if he was repeating himself for dramatic effect or he really did intend to smash my face in three times, but it was at that moment—that exact moment—that I knew it was time to return to Singapore.

  One

  THE woman beside me was talking to herself. It was barely audible at first, but then she got louder and I peered up from my notepad. In my experience, I believe it’s not the people who have a little natter with themselves in public places that one should be wary of, it’s the people who suddenly increase the volume. They’re the ones whose shoulder you generally peek over to see if anyone is standing behind them holding a syringe. Personally, I enjoy a disarming chat with myself. It affords me the opportunity to pass the time and arrange my diary for the week. But I never start talking loudly. That has mothers shielding their children.

  I did that scratching-my-right-shoulder-with-my-chin thing to sneak a peek. The young businesswoman was muttering a few words aloud as we trundled along Nicoll Highway on the top deck of the No. 14. She needed to adjust the volume slightly but there was no cause for alarm. When I was a kid growing up in Dagenham, everyone engaged in healthy discourses with themselves on buses between generous swigs of cider.

  I found myself seated beside The Woman Who Talked Too Loudly because I had decided to begin the tour of new Singapore where my previous valedictory jaunt around old Singapore had almost ended: at Marina Bay. The former gateway to the country—and the very spot where dear old Stamford Raffles popped by in the first place—now linked a nation’s history with its prosperous future and, quite literally, marked Singapore’s spot at the centre of Asia’s blitzkrieg march through the 21st century. Marina Bay brought rubber, tin and coffee merchants into Singapore’s waterways two hundred years ago. Now it’s bringing bankers, Formula 1 drivers and gamblers.

  Besides, it was a humid, headache-inducing hazy day and I was desperate for a bit of backstroke in the world’s sexiest swimming pool. But I had to find it first.

  Now, Marina Bay Sands, with its three hotel towers symbolising three decks of cards, can be seen from East Coast Park. On a sunny day, or when Indonesian farmers are not playing Guy Fawkes, the resort can be spied from the neighbouring island of Batam. The gambling resort boasts Singapore’s largest hotel, one of the biggest conference centres in Asia, an art science museum, more celebrity chefs than an IKEA bookshelf and, some 57 storeys in the air, a canoe-shaped viewing platform from which you expect Boba Fett to fall off and tumble into the sarlacc pit. From travel magazine readers sitting on Singapore Airlines flights to leathery-faced fishermen lazily casting off from the jetty at East Coast Park, Marina Bay Sands is inescapable. And yet, do you think I could find the bloody thing from Suntec City?

  In my new shiny street directory—I never leave home to write a book without one—Suntec City and the Sands are linked by both Bayfront Avenue, a road that did not exist five years ago (just extraordinary), and The Helix, a pedestrian
bridge (ditto). But I failed to track down either as I continued to stagger around the monstrously long levels and soporific shopping stretches that fill the lost world of Suntec City. It is only a matter of time before anthropologists discover a forgotten tribe of people beside the Suntec City fountain whose descendents only popped into Carrefour for some cheap croissants.

  I wandered aimlessly into a Suntec City public toilet, more for the change of scenery than anything else, and sat down to re-examine the directory. The chap in the cubicle beside me was talking animatedly on the phone in Mandarin. He was also straining. Did the guy think I couldn’t hear him? More pertinently, did he not consider the possibility that the listener might discern the straining down the line? This neither happened during my five years in Australia nor growing up in the UK. Yet in Singapore, I’m no stranger to overhearing another man’s toilet talk. For a society preoccupied with saving face, some Singaporeans are not shy when it comes to conducting a business meeting while having a crap.

  Motivated to push on immediately, I powered on through the underpass of Esplanade MRT Station and was thoroughly entertained by an absorbing temporary visual arts exhibition. A puppet and video installation had been hung along the otherwise pristine walls of the underpass (roll your eyes all you want but I grew up with urine-stained walls in London underpasses, some of it was my own, so I’ll take pristine over piss every time). The exhibition depicted Singapore’s aunties and uncles going about their daily lives. An old man gave out leaflets, an auntie cleared the tables of indifferent teenagers, an elderly can collector explained how his earnings rarely exceeded $15 a day. This wasn’t a few puppets to distract swarms of commuters. This was social protest masquerading as a public art exhibition, a reason to be cheerful.

  Whistling Billy Bragg’s “Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards”, I marched purposefully through the Esplanade Mall and found a bench roughly halfway along Marina Promenade. On my right, I picked out The Fullerton Hotel and what was once the iconic Clifford Pier. I had sat at the pier in 2006 and peered through the darkness at the twinkling lights of the cranes that were laying the foundations for Marina Barrage, which was going to create a new metropolis, girdled by a freshwater bay. In Final Notes from a Great Island, I wrote: “Singapore has to get the Marina Bay project right and it will. It has no choice. The government now accepts that a five-roomed flat, decent education and pristine trains that always run on time no longer impress younger, restless Singaporeans. They need to have some bloody fun in their own country ...”

  On my left was the “fun”. The packaging was certainly alluring. From the close vantage point of Marina Promenade between the Esplanade and the floating platform, possibly the best place in the bay to see two worlds collide, Marina Bay Sands took my breath away. On first viewing, it doesn’t look of this earth, but rather the childlike imagination of James Cameron running around the CGI department with his 3D specs on. Championed as the world’s most expensive hotel at $8 billion, the three towers are home to 2,561 hotel rooms. On their own, they are just three tower blocks that might match the surrounds of an East London housing estate. It is the Kubrickian sky park that knits the trio together and gives the complex its surreal celluloid sheen. From where I sat, the sky park resembled a hoverboard awaiting the giant Nike-covered foot of Michael J. Fox to descend from the clouds.

  An elderly Chinese couple arrived to take photographs of their grandson with the Sands as a backdrop. The kid looked up and said, “Wow.” Nothing else. Just wow. I knew how he felt, of course. I can still recall the day we first spotted the new railings around our primary school.

  I had planned to reach the resort by crossing The Helix pedestrian bridge but found myself thwarted by the Singapore Grand Prix. The Formula 1 race was a few days away and parts of the Marina Bay street circuit were in the process of being fenced off and blocked out, much to the inconvenience of those to whom Formula 1 racing means very little (if one were being cynical, one might say that’s the majority of Singaporeans or anyone who cannot afford bottles of champagne that cost $1,000, but that’s only if one were being cynical). Marina Promenade was closed off around its floating platform. I had no access to The Helix.

  “Just go through, lah,” I heard a voice say. The elderly Chinese grandparents were waving me through.

  “There are construction workers inside,” I replied, peering through a crack in the temporary fence. “I don’t think I can go inside.”

  “Eh, never mind,” the grandmother continued. “Just go through and bluff. Take shortcut. They will think you are an ang moh with the F1.”

  She was right. I snuck through a gap in the fence and immediately found myself in the path of a couple of concerned construction workers heading my way. With hands placed authoritatively behind my back, I nodded. They nodded back. I started to enjoy myself. Clearly, I was an ang moh foreman acting on behalf of mad F1 chief Bernie Ecclestone. Clearly, such foremen always examine F1 tracks dressed in Abbey Road T-shirts and khaki shorts. By the time I had reached the Helix, I was nodding, winking, waving and giving the thumbs-up to any workers in my eye line.

  Now I love a good bridge. I always have. As a child, I would take regular day trips “up London” with my best friend Ross just to marvel at Tower Bridge (well, I admired the bascule mechanics of the English icon while Ross admired busty women). From Sydney Harbour Bridge to the Golden Gate Bridge and Brooklyn Bridge, I’ve been infatuated with them all but you never forget your first love. Tower Bridge stands tallest not only for its timeless bascules and elegant Cornish granite and Portland stone towers decorated in that Victorian Gothic style that is so quintessentially London but because I once found five quid there. My mum says this is the only reason why I remain fixated with bridges.

  Still, The Helix did not disappoint. The world’s first double curved helix bridge (although I seriously doubt engineers had previously been compelled to shout, “Quick, let’s go and build the world’s first double curved helix bridge.”), the 280-metre-long pedestrian walkway provided a pleasant, sea breezy jaunt. Steel tubes form the minor and major helixes and I later discovered that the bridge actually begins at the Youth Olympic Park. But I am embarrassed to say that the Youth Olympic Park completely passed me by. But then, many Singaporeans might say the same about the Youth Olympics.

  As I meandered across The Helix, I found myself humming, “Da da da da, da da da, da, da da.” It was “The Imperial March”, Darth Vader’s main theme from the Star Wars movies. The ArtScience Museum presented itself on the right side of The Helix and somehow plugged into my internal jukebox. The lotus-inspired architecture is meant to represent “the welcoming hand of Singapore”. No, it doesn’t. It represents Darth Vader’s sleeping capsule. I stared at the museum for several moments, waiting for its 10 white extensions, supposedly representing fingers, to open a little further and turn to reveal dear old Darth sitting on his black throne in The Empire Strikes Back and waiting for his helmet to cover his scarred head. Acclaimed architect Moshe Safdie designed the ArtScience Museum and he should confess now that when he was standing over his drawing book desperate for inspiration, he started humming, “Da da da da, da da da, da, da da.”

  I walked around the ArtScience Museum, along the boardwalk and rested on a bench that was part of an open-air theatre called Event Plaza. The theatre was bookended by two floating crystal pavilions. One housed a couple of nightclubs, the other was preparing to open the world’s largest Louis Vuitton boutique, which seemed incongruous. The glassy, Louvre pyramid-like facade belonged in a Dan Brown novel, possibly called The Lost Tai Tai’s Handbag. More than two dozen foreign construction workers toiled under a humid sky, presumably to meet some insane deadline, while a plump ang moh stood around with his hands on his hips and pointed a bit.

  As I scribbled away on the bench, a young Filipino woman appeared at my shoulder. She squatted to get a better view of my notepad and tried to decipher my handwriting. It was a futile exercise. I gave up trying years ago.

  “O
oh,” she said, smiling far too widely as she scanned the page.

  “Er, good morning,” I ventured cautiously.

  “Mmm, yes,” she said, continuing to read over my shoulder, her face almost pressed against my ear.

  “Can I help you?” I asked, more assertively this time.

  “No, no, I’m fine,” she said, waving me away like a mildly irritating fly.

  “Are you sure I can’t help you with anything?”

  “No, really, I’m fine,” she said decisively, annoyed by my constant interruptions as she read my notepad.

  “Well, I’ll be off then,” I muttered, rising quickly before she had a chance to pinch my notepad, and headed for the air-conditioned comfort of The Shoppes.

  Marina Bay Sands might trumpet its leviathan of luxury outlets, its 1,000,000 square feet of retail space and more than 300 stores, but its greatest achievement is having the silliest, most pretentious name.

  What the hell are The Shoppes? Was Singapore’s shiniest shopping mall named by a three-year-old? Did he one day squeak, “Can we have some sweeties, some drinkies and some biccies at the shoppes?” and the name stuck? The name has that medieval, ye olde English pubbe, whiff of a Deep England, full of idealised, pre-industrial rural villages found in children’s fairy tales. Anything prefixed by ye in England usually sells postcards, twee tea towels and shortbread biscuit tins for women with white hair in tartan skirts. Anything affixed with an extra e usually sells expensive lattes and has gone overboard with the Laura Ashley. With the quaint, jocular spelling of The Shoppes, I expected woodlands, pixies, toadstools and a troll beneath the food court.