Singapore

At first, my plan for this post was to write one sentence with three words: "Singapore is boring." But then I thought, "That isn't the whole truth. Singapore is boring -- compared to India and Nepal." But then recently a friend of mine who is moving to Singapore with her fiance later this year told me that even her fiance, who grew up in Singapore, thinks it's boring. So, take that as you will. There's an emerging consensus that, yes indeed, Singapore is just a little bit dull.

But even so, I've decided that Singapore has some things worth noting, and I did have a good time there. The most important reason that I had a good time, as I alluded to in my previous post, was that Singapore was where I met up with my very awesome girlfriend, MP, who took three weeks off from work to trek around SE Asia with me. With her at my side, I was guaranteed and did in fact have a good time.

One of the things that contributes to Singapore's lack of "oomph" is that it somehow doesn't feel authentic. And in many senses, it isn't: From the land, much of which is reclaimed; to the population, much of which is borrowed (36% foreign); to the culture, which is likewise imported. The "heart and soul" of Singapore, insofar as it exists, is said to be Chinatown, with the other neighborhood reputed as having personality being Little India. When your only cultural standouts are not your culture at all, I imagine authenticity is a challenge -- especially when the Chinatown in question looks much more like the Chinatown in DC than the one in San Francisco. But then again, Singapore was built by the British as a trading port on uninhabited land less than two centuries ago, so maybe we should all cut it some slack. Okay, slack cut. (Then again, in 1819, when Singapore was founded, the US only had 22 states.)

At any rate, on our first day we wandered the city, just trying to get the lay of the land. Singapore is very modern: the first place I could drink tap water in a month without being guaranteed of getting sick (though by habit I didn't test this). We walked through Chinatown and down the river to part of the harbor. We saw some tall buildings, and one in particular that did look pretty cool and was designed to look like it had a cruise ship sitting on top of it (which apparently is an expensive bar?).






Then MP and I went to the Asian Civilizations Museum, ate lunch in their pretty great museum restaurant, and toured around inside. We saw an exhibition on the history of Singapore (summary: it was founded, and now it exists) and a few much more interesting exhibits on -- you guessed it, the culture of Asian Civilizations, notably not including Singapore's. Still, it introduced us to many of the themes we'd see throughout our time in Southeast Asia, including rice, the monsoons, Buddhism, and more rice. Oddly, there was also an exhibit on African civilization, specifically on African masks, which was interesting but not what you expect to see in an Asian Civilizations Museum. Bonus.






We kept wandering and saw a variety of buildings and monuments. A statue commemorating a visit by the King of Siam. The Parliament. The Supreme Court. A cathedral (St. Andrew's). Some temples. A monument to Gandhi. Nothing really stuck, and if I didn't have pictures of it I don't think I'd remember. We had dinner (Chinese food), wandered around looking for something (anything), and went to bed.








Then next day MP decided to hike up a hill, so we did. It was very rainforesty, though we did get a great view of a more industrial part of the harbor. It brought back fond memories of driving on the highway into Baltimore. On reaching the top we had very expensive sodas, and then went on to a pedestrian bridge that was noted for its "wave" design, where the weather drizzled a bit on us. Then we wandered around some more, had a very very expensive drink at the famous Raffles Hotel's bar, went back to Chinatown, grabbed some dinner, had a second dinner at McDonald's just for kicks, and went to bed.










That does it for Singapore. Sure, there are a few things we didn't see, like their zoo, but I don't think we missed that much worth seeing. There are a few other things I could write about, like the culture of consumerism that dominates ("shopping and eating" is what you do in Singapore) and the fascistic tendencies of their government. (For example, all movies you bring into the country are required to be sent beforehand to the Board of Censors to be approved, since Singapore bans lots of stuff, though this policy isn't actually enforced. Or, you famously can't bring gum in. Or spit. Or lean against the railings. Plus there's a "mandatory" death penalty for possession of any drugs.) But frankly even these things I learned more about from my books than from experience (thank G-d).

If you're looking for a nice, clean, safe place to escape from the nuttiness of the Third World and drink some tap water, Singapore is great. Nice and boring. But sometimes you need that kind of thing.

Kathmandu, Nepal

In the middle of my first day in Kathmandu I clenched my fists and growled to no one in particular, "I fucking hate Nepal!" But, by the end of my stay, it had more than redeemed itself and stood out as the most pleasant place I'd been since leaving the States.

Nepal both lost and gained in comparison with India, on the one hand being even less developed and more inconvenient, and on the other hand possessing a culture infinitely more relaxed, polite, and kind than the hustling bustle that is India. Sure, Nepal's only international airport looks more like an abandoned train station; there is zero public transportation and almost no public services of any kind; and, most relevant to my initial frustration, even the capital city only gets about 10 hours of electricity a day. But the mountain-Buddhist culture infuses these put-upon people with an enviable calm and equanimity that, after about a day, had me smiling from ear to ear.

This is just my ignorant guess, but I do suspect that the difference between Nepalese Buddhism and India's Hindu-Islamic mix has something to do with it. Buddhism teaches that life is suffering; that is its starting point, so it's no surprise the Nepalese deal with the challenges in their lives without the entitlement or desperation that is so pervasive in India. Whereas a Hindu's goal is to strive for what they can in this life with the hope of being reborn in a higher position in future lives, the Buddhist ideal is about moderation and ultimately escape from life and the cycle of reincarnation -- nirvana, or the "snuffing out of the flame." While this made the locals much more generous, less aggressive, and the closest to what I think of as "happy go lucky" in such a third-world context, I'm not sure how well it's ultimately serving them. They put up with pretty terrible governance and there isn't the entrepreneurial zeal and modernizing spirit that made India both dynamic and annoying. I was glad not to be chased incessantly by every hawker on the street -- no means no in Nepal, unlike in India -- but I also didn't get a sense that the Nepalese see themselves as headed anywhere new. It's charming, and a bit sad.

To be fair, the cause of my frustration on that first day was partly India's fault. M. W. came down with a bug on our last day in Delhi, and by our first day in Nepal I had caught it, too. I had a near-miss experience with what felt like vasovagal syncope (blacking out) while waiting in the visa-on-arrival line at the Kathmandu airport, and much of the rest of that first day I was out of commission with a fever and the chills. As luck would have it, we were staying at a five-star hotel in Nepal, courtesy of M's hotel points, so I picked a good place to get sick. But after hunkering down in the hotel and making a fair amount of use of the incredibly great staff while feeling guilty that I didn't have any Nepalese rupees to tip them, I wandered out to the street to find the nearest ATM, about a ten-minute walk away. No sooner had the machine accepted my card than we hit the top of the hour -- and electricity was turned off for the day. The power cut off while the ATM was counting my cash, so now here I was alone in Nepal (M took the day to wander), sick, my ATM card stuck in the machine, the money stuck, no way to access cash, and no way to go about retrieving my only VISA card (good luck using AMEX in Kathmandu!). I spent about five minutes just sitting in the ATM booth, waiting and hoping that the power would come back on. I was just getting on my cellphone ($3/minute, roaming) to call my hotel to ask them, basically, "WTF should I do?!", when a security guard noticed I had been in there for five minutes and started banging on the door yelling at me to leave. It was about then that I thought, "I've had it with this country."

But then the other side of Nepal kicked in, and a college student about the same age as me saw me looking a bit ill, seething, and being kicked out by the security guard, and actually decided to do something nice for me -- for what felt at that moment like the first time in Asia. He asked me what had happened, comiserated, and told me that the bank whose ATM had eaten my card had a branch about 15 minutes away, and he would like to walk me there, where they would probably be able to help me. Off we went, and he told me a bit about himself and his thoughts on Nepal. He's studying biology and wants to be a doctor, but doubts he'll be successful since the cost of that education will probably be prohibitive for his family. In the meantime, every time he'd explain one of the minor or major inconveniences of his life -- whether it was the electricity or the lack of jobs -- he'd laugh about it. At first I was suspicious, still in Indian-siege mentality, about what he wanted. Turns out he was just trying to do the right thing. We got to the bank, they told me they would retrieve the card later that day and I could pick it up in the morning, and I thanked the college student profusely and gave him my email address with the hopes he'd stay in touch. Haven't heard from him yet, but I really hope I do.

The rest of my time in Nepal resembled much more closely my experience with the student than with the ATM -- and not just because our hotel had 24-hour generators. But on to the sightseeing, and the pictures, which is what you really want.

On my first hale day, I took M's advice and wandered the town, starting with Boudhanath, one of the holiest Buddhist sites in Nepal and an effective world headquarters for Tibetan Buddhist culture during their current diaspora. More than 50 Tibetan gompas (monasteries) have been established in the area immediately around the Boudhanath Stupa by Tibetan refugees from China, and walking around was the first time I saw masses of the orange-clad monks doing everything from praying to their daily shopping. Quite cool.



The history and design of the Stupa is fascinating and complex, with versions of it dating back to 6th Century and many legends having grown around it since. Like Hindu temples, Buddhist sites are modeled to represent their religion's universe -- earth, water, fire, wind, and void. The square foundation of the Stupa symbolizes earth; the white dome symbolizes water; the thirteen golden steps symbolize both the thirteen steps to enlightenment and fire; the umbrella protecting the top of the steps symbolizes wind; and the double-orb on top symbolizes the unity of the sun and the moon, representing the void and, I think, nirvana or supraconsciousness. The Stupa is there as a protective symbol, a physical manifestation of Buddhist philosophy, and an inspiration for enlightenment and merit. Pilgrims can turn Mani wheels (see below) and recite mantras to earn "merits," and several rituals are performed at dawn and dusk. The colored flags hanging from the lines are Buddhist prayer flags; the eyes on top of the dome are the Buddha's eyes; the faint coloring is meant to symbolize the lotus. It gets even more complex, I'll leave it there.








Next I headed downtown to Durbar Square in central Kathmandu. Translated to "Palace Square," it's one of three squares with that name in the Kathmandu Valley region, and probably the liveliest. I hired a local guide, Rajiv, to show me around this UNESCO site. (Rajiv is another one of those great Nepalese people I met -- they were pretty much all great.) Durbar Square is incredible for how much it packs into such a small area: the city palace of the former Nepalese kings, a market area, and more than 50 temples dedicated to what seems like every part of the local religion. Because there are so many temples I won't go through them much. Ones that stood out to me are the "Hippy Temple," taken over in the 60s by hippies; the monkey temple, both dedicated to and frequented by monkeys; the justice temple; the "Erotic Temple," with many pornographic woodcarvings "for the instruction of the people" (pictures taken but not posted); and the Qumari Ghar, the home of Qumari, Nepal's "living goddess." This is one of the stranger customs I came across in Nepal. Apparently they've had 70-odd reincarnations of this goddess who is the protector of the kingdom from disaster. A girl is chosen due to a physical resemblance to the previous holder of the office, usually at around the age of three, and holds the office until she gets a cut or has her first period. At that point she's cast out and lives a "normal" life. But, in the meantime she lives in this ornate temple and gets paraded through ceremonies all day for years.








Many of the temples were reconstructed after a massive earthquake in the mid-20th Century damaged them. Also, we just so happened to be visiting during Shivaratri, a major festival holiday, so much of the town was shut down but the temples were doing overtime, with special rituals and much food offered to the public.




Next my guide and I went to a hilltop with additional temples, including Swayambhunath, another much larger monkey temple. After Boudhanath, this is the most sacred pilgrimage site for Tibetan Buddhists. We also had a great view of the city and, in the distance, the Himalayas.









This temple is also where I had one of my favorite exchanges with my guide. As you can see in the first picture below, one temple was damaged by a lightning strike just a week before I visited. Later in the tour, my guide explained that the item in the second image is a talisman protecting the temples from lightning strikes. I said, "Well, it didn't seem to work." My guide looked at me, perplexed, and explained, "No, it did work -- for that one [pointing]" -- the main temple, after all, wasn't hit. Oh, okay.





That pretty much wrapped it up for the day. The evening I spent relaxing at the hotel, and the next day M and I teamed up again and set out for some Himalaya views with a long drive to Nagarkot. Unfortunately it proved too cloudy, so I won't post my disappointing pictures. Beautiful clouds, though. On the way back we visited Bhaktapur, an ancient town in the eastern end of the Kathmandu Valley. Another UNESCO site, it has the best preserved of the valley's Durbar Squares, with no vehicle traffic and many fewer tourists. Again we saw a palace and dozens of temples, and wandered around some tiny alleys where people still live much as they did 500 years ago. Mike learned how to play a Nepalese game called "Tigers and Goats" (a tiny bit like checkers), and we wandered kilometers of market streets, including areas with more temples and dedicated to certain crafts, like pottery.














Along with more wandering, some souvenir shopping, and time spent at the hotel pool, that pretty much wraps it up for Nepal. All in all a very charming place where M and I barely scratched the surface. I hope to be able to go back to see more and, health permitting, go trekking.

But then it was time for a different kind of trek, one I had been looking forward to for a while. While M was heading home and back to work via Doha, I was on my way to Singapore, to meet up with another friend -- the bestest best friend of all.