bright lights, big city

After being on this lovely island for a week, I needed to stretch my legs and get my bearings. Until I have a chance to familiarize myself with my surroundings, I tend to feel very unbalanced. I needed to get out and figure out how this place works, and that is what I did (at least, I scratched the surface).

Tuesday morning I woke up, dressed for the inevitable sweat of the day, packed my camera bag and headed out. I had all the essentials for a venture out on a tropical island: camera, extra lens, water bottle, umbrella, sunglasses, map (a real one. Not any of this WiFi/bluetooth/GPS crap), and cash. All I had planned was which MRT (don't know what it stands for, but it means train) station to get on and which one I would get off. I felt sufficiently prepared.

See, my theory is that if this was my first time to downtown, I wouldn't know where to go that I would like and so why not just pick a centralized location and explore?

It takes about 30 minutes on the MRT to get from our neighborhood to downtown. On the train, I was the only visible white person, which made me laugh a little. Only when we got to the downtown stops did I start to see other white people. It was a very pleasant ride, certainly the cleanest train ride I've every had. The train is above ground for a lot of the trip and so I got to see a bit of the island on my trip. When we got to my stop, the station looked like the basement of a mall, which coincidentally it was. Very shiny and clean and lots of escalators. That's actually the best description I could possibly make of Singapore: shiny! clean! escalators!

The escalator spat me out slightly north and west of City Centre and not knowing exactly which way to go to see exciting things, I found a park barely half a block away and sat down to consult the map. In America, when we think about a city park, we think lots of grass, picnic tables, playgrounds, and maybe a tennis court or basketball hoop. This city park was like a jungle--very thick foliage with paths winding through and marble benches every now and then. It was awesome.

After realigning my inner compass, I started walking. It didn't take me long to realize that there was hardly anyone else walking outside. Seriously, apparently even the locals can't take the heat and humidity. My running hypothesis is that everyone in that part of town are important business people that are either too important to have to walk places or they don't want to mess up their suits. I was rather enjoying the sun and heat of the eternal summer.

To make a day long story short, I walked and walked just soaking in everything around me and it was glorious! One thing that I noticed upon arriving and then again during my exploration, is the overwhelming amount of greenery in such a big city. I guess I had expected immense amounts of glass and concrete and not many natural things. But I was completely wrong. Streets are enclosed in tunnels of trees, pedestrian overpasses are decorated with manicured flower bushes, and everything breathes tropical.

In the middle of the city there's a park called Fort Canning. It is seriously a tropical rainforest in the middle of a concrete jungle. I didn't have to go very far in before buildings were replaced with humongous trees and lots of flowers. It is perched on a little hill and so many stairs were climbed (my sweat glands had a field day). At the top there's a building commemorating the old fort along with benches and educational signs. I was curious what was on the other side and so I scooted past a group of school kids to a clearing in the trees. And before me was a massive expanse of tall buildings: City Centre. It was amazing.

All in all it was a really fun field trip. I decided that I'm going to need to get out more often if I want to see the rest of the country too. I made it back to my MRT stop and got distracted in the really really really nice library (shiny! clean! escalators!). When I finally tore myself away, I emerged outside only to realize that I had no idea how to get back to the house. Amy had dropped me off on the way to run an errand and I hadn't paid much attention to the route she took. But the best way to learn the lay of the land is to get lost, right? Half an hour and a few wrong turns later I found the familiar FairPrice (grocery store) near the house. I picked up a new batch of mangosteens and dragged my tired, sweaty, sundrenched self back home.

And there could have been no better end to the day then jumping into the pool...


[photos from this expedition can be seen at www.picasaweb.google.com/artmus987]