Day 2 - Dragons, Orchids and accidental exploration!

[Rather an epic one for you today – sorry! But I saw so much and it was all so new…]

Good morning…
I have woken up in different world. Last night it was just a city – but the daylight brings fresh surprises. (One of which is the realisation that the bed is too short even for me!) I look out of my window and the little backstreets that would probably bring no joy to a local hotel guest seem filled with mystery. My window looks out over a series of tall, clean, white tenements and a couple of roads, some colonial in style with classical archways, others more local with flat glass roofs and rattan blinds. Further away must be the City district, with soaring, pointed, glass skyscrapers and further tenements. It’s all so green – the road to the ‘City’ is lined with strong, verdant trees under the hazy, cloudy, blue sky, and these trees appear to grow thicker further up the slight hill.
I wonder where I am on the map?
A bird sweeps past, high in the sky, and I eye its starling shape and swallow flight idly, still half asleep. Another one darts closer, right past the window, and I am struck (now thoroughly awakened!) by its rainbow pastel-hued belly, its long beak and the single pointed feather trailing behind the short, colourful fan of tail. It turns and it glides away below me and I see that its back is jewelled turquoise lined with mustard yellow.
What a colourful creature – I wonder what it is!
Well, it is 8am (though my poor, deluded body thinks it’s around midnight and longs for more sleep – but my showering, musically-inclined neighbour had precluded that!) so I shall think about a good shower myself, followed by some breakfast, for which I have a little yellow coupon...
I wonder what THAT will be…? Goodness, so much wondering before breakfast!
;)

Breakfast is two fried eggs – the choice being merely whether they were sunnyside up or not – two slices of some random, fried spam-like substance which I avoid, cold hash brown, happy-looking lettuce and some toast with juice and hot drink. Not too shabby, though I remain deeply suspicious about the spam-like stuff... I may ask not for it tomorrow!
After shower and breakfast, I decide, as I have no idea of Singapore at all, just to walk out of the hotel and see what’s there. They nearest MRT stop is Little India, so I decide to head up that way. Little India is no misnomer. Expecting somewhere ersatz like our own delightful ChinaTown and Soho, I was amazed to find myself plunged into what seemed to me like some main street in Delhi. It is genuinely a cameo of another culture, dropped in its entirety into Singapore’s northern side. Soon the sights, sounds and smells overwhelm me; sari shops, little restaurants emitting tantalising curry scents, shops with colourful leis in the window, people selling piles of cheap shoes in the street – and everywhere, Indian gentlemen with marks on their heads and the ladies in glittering saris like exotic birds.
And then there’s me.
I feel so like a sore thumb it isn’t even worth trying to pretend I belong – I am a white, blonde girl wearing turquoise in a city where everyone is dark-haired, olive-skinned and seems to wear mostly red.
D’oh!

I walk through Little India and see little birds – sparrows, a few, and some funny little starling-type birds. They are a lot cheekier than our own starlings, though have the same ungainly hop, and instead of rainbow black speckles, they have matte black plumage, highlit with bright yellow beaks and eyes and a flash of white on the tail. They are also fearless and noisy, hopping close to you and cocking their bright eyes to see.
I take the Dhoby Ghaut MRT stop to go to Orchard Road, where I think I will change to get to the Botanic Gardens, which claim to be a bus ride from Orchard Road MRT. I approach the MRT with a sense of intrigue. Will it be packed and filthy, or will it be clean and air conditioned?
It is far pleasanter than I imagined: marble floors and not a trace of graffiti or litter. It is almost welcome to sink down into the earth on the escalators - unlike the stifling fug on even the coldest winter day on the London Underground, Singapore’s public transport system is cool, clean, friendly, polite, cheap, safe and stable to ride. A far cry from our own overpriced, rattly, stinking, humid system. This may have something to do with the dire warnings on every wall bearing varying degrees of penalty – No eating or drinking (glad I spot that one – My nearly-taken swig of water could have cost me S$500!), no lighters or fuel, no littering, no… Hang on, you what??
No fruit??
Ah… More specific than that, no Durian fruit… I guess that’ll be the really stinky one! I arrive at Orchard Road on my single ticket and get myself in the queue for a 3-day pass around Singapore, accidentally stepping lightly on a tiny old lady’s toe. We both apologise. How very English! The pass costs just S$35, around £18, but $10 of which is a refundable deposit for the card. Bargain! Every ticket works on the Oyster basis here – one stop gets you a plastic card for which a refund is available should you have the inclination to queue for the return of your $1! Pass acquired, I decide to take a peek out at Orchard Road itself. Passing a chap in the exit waving the crowds by with enormous fluorescent yellow gloves I exit up into the humid heat once more. The escalators are fast and one stands to the left, not the right. The walls are opaque white plastic with coloured pastel lights dancing behind them. A line of busy lizzies and palms in pots guide the commuters out into the open air again. On my exit I spot not only a huge, alien road gleaming with tall, shiny buildings and a glass sculpture, but also a Borders and an M&S! Just for the humour, I wander into the mall containing M&S (everything is in malls here – the shops clearly get scared if they’re not in groups). It’s exactly the same as the one in Prague. But with air conditioning instead of heaters. I may wait until I get home before purchasing anything from M&S – if only I’d brought my gift card! ;)
I walk around the corner of Orchard Road, just to see and because it is there, and find that there is a sudden influx of tourists, particularly Westerners. It is odd that 95% of the adverts feature white people when 95% of the inhabitants are Indian, Chinese or Malay. Though even some of the locals are wearing hats or brandishing umbrellas – maybe I should put on my hat…
Orchard Road is, I suspect, only any good for shopping if you happen to be a label-whore out for a bargain – it’s crammed to the gills with shops from Armani to Zara and everything in between – a kind of consumerist Mecca. It is reminiscent of Wenceslas Square in Prague; i.e. the slightly jaded and overpriced area where all the tourists go to do their shopping and eat. It also has an Oxford Street feel to it in terms of the clientele, though it is cleaner and far classier in style.

I decide to press on the Botanic Gardens, having had my fill of looking at overpriced labels, and look in vain for a bus stop, finding myself drawn into another mall by my, now demanding, stomach in search of food (and a promised post office, which was shut. Grr.). I find neither food nor stamps, but I do see the ‘death’ of a ‘dragon’ who has humorously succumbed to his foe in a shop doorway, while drums and cymbals are beaten and clashed most noisily and triumphantly above his now immobile posterior. Other shops in the immediate vicinity include Mont Blanc, Tiffany, Cartier, Zegna, Dior, Fendi, Bulgari… I leave.
It is raining lightly – a bit of a relief as it has been teasing all morning. Mind you, the whole place feels permanently on the verge of a massive thunderstorm so it was no surprise!
Again my body reminds me it’s feeding time so I wander around Tang Market to see what is there – sights, sounds and smell are again overwhelming. It is so colourful – packets of things in reds and blacks, light multicoloured buns, things on sticks, things wrapped in banana leaves and steamed, things fried, boiled, roasted and cold. I eventually plump for a vegetarian butterfly bun and a peanut ball, clutching them in hand, I trot for and make a passing 77 bus…
Of course, buses are also ‘no eating or drinking’ so I clutch my buns in their bag and sit tight.
Singapore is easy to get around, even if, like me, you are ape enough to get the bus going the wrong way… I have no idea where I and my buns are, so I just look out of the window and enjoy the view.
Ooh – look! Raffles!

There are restaurants in Raffles where you don’t have to be dressed up to the nines, so I decide to save my buns for later and investigate larger lunchtime possibilities.
A sahib greets me at the door and obligingly fetches me a pamphlet detailing the restaurants – I decide to try the Seah Street Deli, which promises sandwiches, burgers and other tasty things.
It takes me a while to find it – Raffles is HUGE! It’s rather as if a large shopping mall decided to mate with a colonial hotel and Raffles was the result. There is even a Molton Brown outlet there! I finally manage to find the Deli after wandering through what feels like miles of courtyards and dainty palm-framed corridors and decide to go for fish and chips. Not the most authentic dish, you might think, but then again, Singapore is such a hybrid of cultures that nothing is really truly authentic. Fish and chips arrive and are steaming hot, though slightly less well done than I might have hoped – still it is tasty and it is to be hoped that a restaurant under Raffles’ auspices would know what they are doing! I pop into the shop here too, and stare briefly at the overpriced tourist tea; it crosses my mind that the whole city feels like a homage to consumerism – there is little here you cannot buy, but nothing here you need…

I return to Orchard Road via a bus – I ask this time and successfully make it to the Botanic Gardens – hurrah!
I think I might just pop in and flop down on the grass for a bit; then I notice the ants. Ants of gigantic proportions whose sole desire in life appears to be making themselves taller and pointier to exact the maximum amount of pain. Get closer than three feet away and they raise their amber abdomens in the air and straighten their legs in threat. Scary little critters! However, once inside the Botanic Garden there seems to be no sign of them and there are people playing, lying and sitting on the grass with no obvious leaping in the air and screaming, so I surmise that they are not about… However, there is so much to see in here, I just keep walking. It is hazy sunshine, breaking occasionally into bright light which shocks my sun-deprived eyes. Unusual trees and large, sturdy leaves sprout at every turn, and enormous fish rub shoulders with a little terrapin in a small lake.

I follow signs to the National Orchid Garden, which looks worthwhile. Entry is the princely sum of $5 –which, in my opinion, is cheap. The orchids are glorious. Waxen, silky, unreal blossoms glow almost unnaturally in the sunlight like botanical jewels. They are also incredibly well presented, and some are scented too. The Park as a whole feels rather like Regent’s Park in tone, but warmer; there are joggers and all the family out for a nice day in the park. The grass is odd though, large, sturdy leaves instead of the slim blades in an English park. A brown butterfly just flicked under my knee in the sunlight and flitted off. I can hear another ‘dragon’ being ‘killed’ in the distance; that’s the third one today – for some reason they generally seem to do it in shop doorways, surrounded by red-clad men furiously bashing percussion instruments.
The Orchid Garden is peaceful – water runs here and there in fountains and there is birdsong, some familiar, some exotically distorted. A tiny, pure red beetle runs past me on the bench. I look again in astonishment as this tiny dot of red dashes along the wooden slat, like a little lentil with legs. It could be a sort of ladybird, but seems far too round and spotless – I wonder.
On my way out of the OG, I spot two guys unconcernedly holding hands and a gaggle of girls pause to take pictures of two small, white, woolly haired dogs who have made friends. Everything is oddly English, despite the otherness and the heat. I cross the road back to the bus stop – the little green men count down how long you have left to cross in large red numbers beside them – very helpful!
I decide to return to the hotel, pondering as I go, that Orchard Road’s not really worth it. It’s like Oxford Street might be if it were populated in its entirety by places like Harrods! Other ponderings: ‘You’ve seen one crowded polluted stinking city, you’ve seen them all’ (Freddy, Chess) – not true. You may have seen one, but the making of it something new is entirely down to the visitor and their perception. Try to see it with the eyes of a child and there is ALWAYS something new and exciting!
I wonder if it is possible to find some hidden depths to oneself when travelling, or if all you can find are the hidden shallows. Maybe, everyone needs someone else to help them find the depths, or maybe we never work out who we are, however far we go. Ah well, at least I’ll have some good pictures and stories even if I’m still as bewildered when I get back!

Right, I’m off to find food. I walked past a place called Mad Jack’s taste of Australia, or some other such classy title which does a baked cheese, mushroom and rice dish as one of only three dishes it has as an inexpensive sop to pansy vegetarians. I must say in my defence that Singapore culture is so hybrid it doesn’t matter where you eat, it’s authentic, and also it’s got free WiFi, which is where I’m going to post this! I have, by the way, eaten my aforementioned butterfly bun and would heartily recommend them – part dumpling, part solid batter, it’s butterfly-shaped (if a butterfly is ever so chunky and covered in sesame seeds…) sweet, aromatic and satisfying… Just what I needed.

Once I’ve et and netted, I’m going to the Night Safari up North by the zoo, as I probably won’t have time tomorrow after eating at Raffles properly!
…
Okay, so the connection in the café was a bit pants and complicated… So I’m going to do this from the hotel instead! :P Despite the lack of promised connectivity and the slight grumpiness of the waitress, the food was very tasty! In fact, if you’re after a flavoursome, wholesome snack, don’t bother with Raffles’ little eateries and American cafés, go to Mad Jack’s – hot mushroom risotto with cheese on. Yum!
Also have thought better of the hour or so trip to the night safari – I shall attempt zoo-type things tomorrow, but unless Raffles throw me out early – I shan’t bother with the night safari – I don’t feel it’s a safe (or much fun) thing to do on your own…

;)