F&G: Singapore

29 November 2012

Singapore

We just got back from a whirlwind tour of Singapore. After our exhausting Hong Kong trip we were in Manila for about 36 hours before heading off to Singapore. We were quite tired the whole time in Singapore and had some nice naps on the plane and in the afternoons.

We arrived on Sunday afternoon and my old college roommate Hui picked us up at the airport. We went over to house, about a 15-minute drive from the airport, and then she took us out for a quick bite to eat at one of the many amazing mall food courts in the city. These look like food courts in U.S. but the food quality is actually really, really good. Singapore is known for having a great mix of food from all the different people who live there (Chinese, Malay, and Indian are the main groups).

After our quick lunch we went back to Hui’s house, where we staying, and had a short nap. Slightly refreshed, we got up to help Hui with the huge Thanksgiving feast she was preparing for us. We had hand carried a chocolate carrot cake that we bought in Manila as our contribution. It was a delicious meal and we both really enjoyed having familiar foods and spices again.

On Monday I had a conference to attend in the afternoon (the whole reason for the trip) that was in the old colonial downtown. We took the train to downtown and explored a little bit, stopping at the Raffles Hotel to check out the museum there. The Raffles is a grand old hotel that was around during the 1920s and featured a bunch of music. It’s one of the few venues I know of that features prominently in my research and is still around and in great shape. Their museum has lots of great photographs and things so I wanted to scope it out in advance of our longer stay in May.

Next, we grabbed a delicious Indian meal and I went off to the conference at the Museum of Asian Civilizations and Grace explored some of the colonial downtown area. The conference was interesting, especially because it featured the Indian writer Amitav Ghosh. I wasn’t familiar with his work but he was mobbed at the conference; everyone wanted to have their photo taken with him.

Tuesday, we walked to a German bakery near Hui’s house and had some hearty rolls with peanut butter. This was also a nice change from the soft white bread that’s all over Manila. Next we took the train over to the smaller campus of National University of Singapore, which has the offices of the Asian Research Institute. I’ll be affiliated with them in May so we wanted to meet some of the folks there. The walk from the train stop to campus went through the Singapore Botanical Gardens but we didn’t have time to explore them too much. The facilities at NUS are top notch and I really look forward to spending time there.

After our meeting there, we walked about 40 minutes past some enormous homes to meet up with Hui for lunch at another food court. Again, it was quite delicious. We went back to her house for a LONG nap and went out with her again in the evening for dinner at an open-air food court in a park near her home. We had some really tasty dishes, including an out-of-this-world stingray entrée.

For our last day there we went to scope out some possible housing options on the main NUS campus. It was on the complete other side of the country and took about an hour to get there by train. When we got off the train we accidently wandered into the National University Hospital and it took over 30 minutes before we could find our way to where we wanted to go. We swung by the graduate student housing (looks really nice but probably won’t be anything open for us), grabbed a quick bite, and raced back to Hui’s house to grab our bags and head off to the airport.

We finally got back to our apartment around 10:45 last night and are spending the day recovering. It will probably take us a few days to catch up on sleep and we’re glad that we have no more real traveling until January.