edwards block

On my final day in Singapore, I once again ventured out to the north end of the island in search of the Changi Prison Museum, this time equipped with a more detailed map and the freshly viewed Google Street View image in mind. As it turned out, I was only a couple of blocks off on my last attempt.

For all of my effort, the result was somewhat mediocre. I skipped over the chapel portion pretty quickly, for I’ve already seen umpteen monuments to Christian hocus-pocus in umpteen countries, and after a while it gets to be like watching reruns of a show you never liked much in the first place. The museum itself was sort of interesting, but the whole thing was obviously designed by and for the (primarily English as well as Australian and American) colonisers who were victimised by the Japanese occupation. That’s not to say that those victims didn’t suffer horrendously, but I wondered if perhaps the emphasis was a bit Eurocentric given the incomparable scale of atrocities committed against ethnic Chinese. On the other hand, I can hardly be an expert on a subject I knew almost nothing of before my visit.

Once done there, I took the MRT out to Pasir Ris, a community on the other spur of the East-West line. Pasir Ris Park was my destination, the third largest park in Singapore. Much of it is like any other urban park, with playgrounds, fields, picnic areas, and a small amusement park. However, it also contains a five hectare mangrove swamp through which has been built a series of boardwalks, and that’s where I spent all my time. Here’s a sampling of some of the wildlife:

The park had quite a few people in it, but the mangrove swamp, despite being fully board-walked and easily accessible, was virtually deserted save the occasional jogger. Not that I’m complaining – after all the hubbub of the central city, I relished the peace and tranquillity of the swamp. The only thing that marred the peace, really, was oddly entertaining. The amusement park is quite close to the swamp, though you can’t hear anything from it – except, that is, for one ride which features the amplified opening bars of Strauss’s Also Spracht Zarathustra, the sound of which echoes spookily through the swamp and invokes a degree of the supernatural.

I had unconfirmed plans to meet some people in Little India for dinner at 6:30, but by the time I got back into the city centre I didn’t have time to go back to my hotel to check for messages, so I just headed straight to Little India station. The group of workshopping academics – the indirect reason that I am here – were supposed to be taking an audio tour of Little India before dinner, so I figured I’d run into them somewhere. I strolled around for about half an hour and then decided that I was probably better off sitting in one spot and watching for them to amble by. After all, how hard could it be to spot a pack of mostly white academics wearing headphones?

I chose as my aerie a small outdoor bar which was in reality a bunch of tables set up in an alley near the Indian arcade. It was an oddly comic scene. All of the other patrons, except for the six year old daughter of a Chinese man who’d interrupted his shopping for a beer, were men. I sat in direct view of two 60ish white guys, one of whom had hair dyed the colour of ginger and wore an AC/DC concert shirt but had a face like a desiccated crab apple. His friend wore a ‘Thailand’ t-shirt that looked like it had been cut out of a velour painting. Call it stereotyping, but all I could think of was ‘sex tourist’. The rest of the patrons were single men, mostly Indians and a few elderly Chinese.

The music that was amplified through the alley was some sort of power-ballad collection, featuring songs such as “Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina” and “I Will Always Love You”, which went along very nicely with the televisions mounted on the wall that were broadcasting some sort of violent American wrestling program that, as far as I could see, no one was watching except the six year old girl.

I ordered a Guinness, which I managed to save in the nick of time from being poured over ice by the waitress, and watched the stream of people passing through the alley. Indians must surely be the most beautiful people on the planet, whatever the gender (and there were at least three genders represented), even – or especially, perhaps – all of the young Indian men sporting 70s gay-porn moustaches. I’m usually in the habit of making eye contact with people wherever I go, and most of the time people look away, but Indians, I find, typically look straight back, with deep, dark eyes that seem to bore into you, neither threateningly nor over-amorously, and often they will smile.

Shortly after I’d ordered my second Guinness (which I almost never do – one and a half is usually the optimal quantity beyond which I start to get a little silly), the television switched over to women’s wrestling, which seemed even more violent than the men, though undoubtedly it’s all just theatre. After several minutes during which a black-haired woman and a blonde-haired woman – naturally wearing some sort of absurd, revealing sleepwear – slammed and hit and limb twisted each other with little noticeable reactions, the blonde woman cornered the other woman against the corner, stuck her ass in her face, and jiggled it back and forth. The dark haired woman howled in agony in a way that she had not when her face had been slammed against the mat. The six year old and I looked at each other and I rolled my eyes, prompting a giggle.

I finished my beer and continued wandering the streets until I found a wall to sit on and took up the watch once again for the touring academics. My perch was across the road from the Maxi-Cash Pawn Shop and the Jewel Palace, both of which were lit up like an Esso station. Next door, at The Church of the Eternal Light, the porch light flickered erratically.

A couple of weeks back, as I was cycling out to Wreck Beach, my front fender started to make a hell of a racket, so I pulled over to check it out. As it turned out, I’d run over a piece of chewing gum that someone had coughed up onto the roadway. It was firmly stuck to my tire, and with each revolution it hit the edge of the fender and caused a clatter. In order to solve the problem it was necessary to pull the spitty, gritty lump of gum off with my fingers, which was surprisingly difficult for a warm day. After that I had to dislodge it from my hand which, in the absence of any useful implements, involved rubbing my fingers against the curb on Highbury Street. (If that doesn’t move you to search out a trash can the next time you need to dispose of your gum, then think of all the people with wheelchairs who experience the same trauma but with less convenience.)

Of course, the trauma was not so great that I now belatedly feel compelled to blog about the subject, but I thought of it now because I’m once again visiting Singapore, the only country in the world – that I know of – that has banned the import and sale of chewing gum. I remember when the ban was first implemented, in the early 1990s. At the time I knew absolutely nothing about Singapore and thought the ban an absurdly draconian example of Orwellian excess. I envisioned secret police sneaking around in trenchcoats nabbing schoolgirls with suspicious jaw movements, girls who were then dragged off to Room 101 for interrogation.

When I first visited Singapore in 2008 I wasn’t too worried about the chewing gum law, since I don’t chew gum. However, I remember that in grade six (that would have been about 1975 or so) I was accused by my teacher of chewing gum and told to come to the front of the class to spit it out. The trouble was, I wasn’t chewing gum. Somewhere along the line I’d picked up the nervous habit of making chewing motions with my mouth, unconsciously acting as if I were chewing gum. I didn’t even know I did this, but one of my classmates apparently did, for he spoke up in my defence, explaining that I always chew my tongue.

I know, a little weird. What’s even weirder is that I still do it. Not constantly or anything, in some kind of way that screams for a lithium prescription, but every once in a while I notice that I’m chewing nothing. It’s usually when I feel like I’m being observed in a moment of inactivity, such as when I’m on my bike at a red light and there’s a car full of people next to me. I suppose it’s the same social akwardism that makes me put my hands in my pockets, or reach for my key ring or some other handy object, when standing at a crosswalk waiting for a light to change, as if I’m somehow more vulnerable and exposed with empty hands. (Interestingly, I can’t recall ever having felt this sort of exposure when naked in public).

Anyway, I was on a bus yesterday, one of many buses I was on yesterday in a three-hour attempt to locate the Changi Prison Museum (thanks for the great directions, Lonely Planet), when I noticed that I was busily chewing nothing at all, and it occurred to me – possibly because right above me there was a sign encouraging citizens to call the police immediately if they see anyone suspicious – that possibly this mock chewing of mine could attract unwanted attention.

I never got hauled off to the gulag, but neither did I find the museum. Toward the end I spotted an imposing white building surrounded in chain link fence topped with three strands of barbed wire, with a heavily fortified guard shack, and thought I’d finally found it, but it turned out to be The Japanese School, which was sort of ironic since the Changi Prison Museum’s primary focus is the atrocities committed against POWs during the Japanese occupation in World War II. In the end I gave up and left it for another day, and made my way back to Little India for an afternoon snack.

Today I was much more successful in my quest to visit the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve for a little jungle birdwatching. With 600% humidity I was already well-moistened by the time I walked the short distance from the bus stop to the reserve gates, and by the time I’d ascended to the summit of Bukit Timah – Singapore’s highest hill at 165 or so metres, I was dripping wet. After traipsing all over the reserve, I’d only spotted three birds, and managed to identify only one of those (a Crimson Sunbird). I’d seen more birds outside of the Plaza Singapura shopping mall on Orchard Road, but I still enjoyed being in the jungle for a while, listening to the cicadas and looking at all the unusual insects, like Giant Forest Ants and something that looked like an earthworm with 100 legs that moved like the wind. Now I’m back at the hyper-colonial Raffles Town Club (where I feel more like a trespasser than a guest), preparing for a dip in the pool before I head out in search of a hawker stall for my evening meal.

While travelling in the eastern US and Canada this summer, I only had my point-and-shoot, and no mini-USB to transfer the images to my laptop. In Asia, I had the DSLR, but no laptop. Thus, I was unable to post any photos. Now that I am back in Vancouver, here are a few to catch up. Click thumbnails for larger image.

In Concord, Massachusetts, I went to see what Thoreau saw. The bath house is, of course, a new addition at Walden Pond:

Also in Concord, Thoreau’s grave. There’s a larger family stone with all the full names and dates, and this small marker on HDs actual pile:

The good burghers of Concord apparently saw fit to memorialise the road they paved over the weir of the indigenous fishers they vanquished, if not the fishers themselves:

On to the commune. Here’s the view of the middle pond, from the lodge house. If you squint you can see white-tailed deer in the water:

The lodge itself, centre. To the right is the temple; to the left, the guest house:

The desk in my cabin. It faced south, toward the pond and was very bright. I didn’t do a lot of writing in it, since there was no power, but it was a great place to wake up:

A side trip to Vermont:

One of the great things about the commune is the casual dress code. Here I am doing dishes:

By the time I got to New York City at the end of July, I was getting a little grizzly, though I fit right in while watching HAIR in Central Park the night before. This was taken on the Hudson, with Jersey in the background:

On to Asia…

Singapore was the first stop. This image appears on a map of Fort Canning Park, a lush historical site downtown. Chewing gum may be forbidden in Singapore, but apparently public sodomy is just fine:

The next stop was Ko Samui in Thailand, an island in the Gulf of Thailand. This photo is at Big Buddha Beach, where we stayed. The clouds look threatening, but it was actually sunny most of the time:

Here’s Larissa at Zazen, our favourite restaurant in Samui. Or at least, our favourite rich, white tourist restaurant. Food was good, but I especially liked the little cubbyholes built into the wall outside, looking onto the beach. Nice and quiet:

Here’s a restaurant we didn’t try, the Mr. Poo Barbecue (a rather unfortunate transliteration of Mr. Phu):

The ferry dock at Big Buddha Beach:

The beach was very nice, and great for swimming, but an unfortunate amount of trash marred it in areas, such as this Fanta can, which had become an intertidal condo:

I have yet to identify this somewhat common bird. This one was seen in Angthong Marine Park:

Angthong Marine Park is an archipelago at which we hiked, kayaked and snorkeled. Here are some of the many small islands:

Next stop was Bangkok, but just for one night. Our room at the Shanghai Inn looked a bit like the Hollywood version of a Chinese bordello. Despite being in the middle of a human and automotive jungle, it was remarkably quiet.

Bangkok is astoundingly crowded and noisy (at least, compared to Singapore), but I loved it, even if I did have to duck into a cafe occasionally to desensitize:

A sample of the electrical work:

Not all streets were a maddening crush. This passage in Chinatown was comparatively sedate, and check out those paving stones:

On the way home I stopped in Korea to see my cousin, Jennie for a few days. She toured me all over Seoul, despite being six months pregnant, and her husband Kevin filled me with meat and Soju. By the time I left, Jennie and I had similar waistlines:

Those Koreans love their signs. Most of the urban areas I saw were built very densely, with lots of apartment buildings instead of sprawling suburbs, and at night they glow with neon and other lighting:

I’d say more, but I’m jetlagged. Off to bed.

I arrived in Singapore on July 28 – my first trip across the date line, and my first journey to Asia – where I met up with Larissa, who was attending a symposium on electronic arts.

Singapore has a reputation for being a pretty rigid place, where gum chewing is against the law. From my brief visit, it didn’t seem so bad. I only saw one cop in the four days I was there and he wasn’t caning anyone for jaywalking. As I understand it, most of the dictatorial power of the state is applied to discouraging opposition to those in control of the government. This has apparently been quite successful, as the same party has been in charge since 1959.

Although we had done no planning ahead of time, we’d intended to take a vacation while in the region. After considering Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and Laos, we settled on Thailand, and flew to the island of Koh Samui on August 1, where we checked into a small, middle-brow resort called The Secret Garden.

I was excited about visiting Asia for the first time, though now that I am here I am less excited about it. Samui, which once consisted of a bunch of fishing villages, is pretty much one big resort where the locals cater to the tourists in standard colonial fashion. Every town is comprised half of resorts, one quarter bars and restaurants, and one quarter tailors who make clothes cheap that bear labels of big designers, like BOSS and Armani. What sort of person would have so little self-esteem to buy an ‘Armani’ suit in Thailand and seriously add it to his closet, I don’t know. If you aren’t rich enough to buy the real thing, it just seems white trashy to try to fake it. Kind of like a labourer putting plaster lions on the fenceposts of his 33 foot lot in East Vancouver. Oh well, to each his own.

I am also disappointed by the amount of garbage on the beaches. I’m not sure it originates directly from tourists, or from poor disposal infrastructure. On the other hand, it seems generally safe here.

I did not bring my laptop on this trip, so I am using Larissa’s MacBook, which I am finding a challenge. Linux has spoiled me. I cannot even figure out how to resize an image or start an FTP client, so there will be no photos uploaded until after I get home.

On Monday, we’ll be flying to Bangkok for one night (where the world’s our oyster), and then returning to Singapore for another night. From there, Larissa will head for Toronto, via Vancouver, and I’m off to Korea, to visit my cousin Jennie for a couple of days in Seoul. Back to YVR on the 16th, the Aeroplan gods willing.