Singapore: Asian

Singapore is a really cool place. Unfortunately, I wish I’d visited when I had a little more money, but it was fun nonetheless.

Singapore, famously the setting of Crazy Rich Asians, is indeed Crazy, Rich, and Asian. But for now, I’d like to start with Asian. I’ll cover Crazy and Rich in another post…

Asian

I say Asian here, not any specific type of Asian, because really, Singapore’s got it all. Most of the people here are either of Chinese or Malay descent, and English, Chinese, and Malay are all frequently seen and heard around here. But a simple tour around the city would lead to a discovery that there’s much, much more to Singapore than just this majority.

Let’s start with China. The majority of Singapore is of Chinese descent, and when you see a sign that has a translation, most likely, that translation will be in Chinese first. Radio stations played in public, in taxis, and in our hostel were in Chinese, and seemingly everyone speaks Chinese as a second or third language if it’s not their native tongue. Chinese is just as common as English in Singapore, and I am very impressed by the general fluency of both. It seemed like if we were at a place and the people behind us spoke Chinese, the person who was helping us in English would effortlessly switch to Chinese to help them. I think it is important to note that the Chinese spoken in Singapore is pretty standard Mandarin. In fact, I think from what I’ve heard, that the radio stations and announcements have very little accent. I had little trouble decoding the Singaporean Chinese accent—if I would have known what a sentence meant in Southern China, I’d know it in Singapore as well. It’s interesting, because in the north, including in Beijing, they have a pretty strong accent, but that didn’t make it all the way to Singapore. But let’s move into Chinatown before I ramble any more.

Fun fact, the Chinese name for Chinatown is Oxcart Water, paying homage to the fact that fresh water used to be delivered to the neighborhood using oxcart in the old days.

Chinatown is a neighborhood right off the Marina Bay, with, as you’d expect, plenty of Chinese shops, food stalls, and Chinese-style Buddhist temples. Chinatown was the first of the ethnic neighborhoods that we visited, and therefore, led us to the first of our interactions with Singapore’s foreign population—notably, the Hawker Centre.

In most areas around Singapore, you’ll find Hawker Centres: large food courts with stalls selling ethnic food made, usually, by expat locals. Each Hawker Centre has its own ethnicity it’s associated with, with the most common being Chinese from our experience. But even in a Chinese Hawker Centre, you’ll still find Pakistani, Indian, and Arab food certainly. The Maxwell Hawker Centre, in the middle of Chinatown, is the largest one we visited, and I’m sure it’s among the larger ones in the country. The food is not as cheap as you may imagine, especially for a Southeast Asian food stall. You can easily spend S$20, or USD$16 at one of these Hawker Centres just on food and a fruit juice or tea.

The quality of food at a Hawker Centre is not bad, though. I’d find it surprising if it was common to get food poisoning, really. Though they’re stalls like any other stalls across Southeast Asia, they look clean, and well-maintained and as well, they’re permanent, with ways to store food so that diseases don’t spread.

Another classic part of Singapore is Little India. From what I’ve been able to tell, the Indian population in Singapore is primarily of South Indian descent. The fourth language you’ll see on nearly every sign in the city, not just around little India, is not Hindi, but rather Tamil. I suppose just as Northern Indians may move to Dubai or the US, the Southern Indians move to Singapore. Both offer many of the same comforts of life, they’re just different places where different communities decided to move to.

The temples around the city look distinctly South Indian (not that I’ve ever been, but I’ve seen pictures). They have the classic rectangular pyramid of colorful deities stacked on top of each other. The temples are colorful, bright, and always filled with music and ceremony. From what I understand of Hindu traditions in different parts of India, that tracks with the culture of the Southwestern side of India.

We ate at an Indian restaurant in Little India one night. In general, Little India is cheaper than the rest of Singapore, but the restaurants are not really. It’s still between S$20 and S$30 for a meal (USD$16–18). We ate at this restaurant that promised authentic Indian food in an authentic style, with barefoot dining while sitting on the floor. The restaurant was only a little more expensive than all the other restaurants around, but it had a Michelin Star, so we figured it would be worth the extra buck or two. But to be honest, I was disappointed by the food. It felt like it wasn’t spiced very much. It tasted decently bland, not that flavorful explosion you’d expect out of Indian food. Frankly, I think Madras Masala back at home does a better job of flavorful Indian food at an equal price point.

But this lack of flavor (flavour?) really is something I’d been noticing in Singapore the whole time. I just feel like every meal we got was bland in some way. That I’d had better of every dish I had in Singapore somewhere else. The curries were weak, the Banh Mi wasn’t fresh, and the shawarma tasted like nothing but yogurt. I wonder why that is, because we weren’t skimping on places, nor were we necessarily going just to the tourist traps. And the chefs are making the dishes to the tastes of their own expat communities. So maybe it’s just that in Singapore, with the exorbitant prices of everything, having a real flavorful meal is just not feasible at a 22 year-old’s price point? I’m really not sure. But if anyone has any input, it would be appreciated.

I brought up shawarma, which brings me to the third and final cultural neighborhood we got a chance to explore: Arab Street and Haji Lane. With such a high Malay population, and with a decent Turkish and Lebanese expat population, there are a significant amount of Muslims in Singapore. But it’s interesting seeing Islam interact with other religions in a way it doesn’t in the Muslim areas I’ve been before. In Dubai, the old area of the city, home to the majority of Muslims, is sequestered from Business Bay. But even then, mosques are all over the city, with an audible call to prayer from any spot. When you look around, there’s always a minaret nearby. But in Singapore, you don’t hear the call to prayer. Maybe it comes from the mosques on Arab Street around prayer time, but we weren’t there at the right time of day to hear that.

Some Malay women will wear hijabs, and at every Hawker Centre, there is a separate tray storage area for Halal trays as opposed to regular trays. Every Pakistani stall has mashallah written on it. But the Muslim community, just as every other community in Singapore, is just normal. It’s as if Islam is present in daily life, but not a focus of daily life. It’s the way we practice Judaism—observant of the traditions, history, culture, laws, and food, but understanding that in a modern life, those things must coexist with business, progress, development, and most importantly, with other communities that don’t believe the same.

This understanding is really what makes Singapore special in my mind. The fact that there are dozens of communities from all over Asia, former Brits who have lived on the island for generations, and Australians moving for business, and that everyone just accepts it. I felt absolutely zero racial tension, no discrimination, no xenophobia, and no underlying frustration at the state of things. It’s a place where people work together, embrace each other’s histories, cultures, and languages, and set differences aside for the sake of progress and improvement. No matter where you are in the city, you’ll see people of every color, every descent from Europe, across Asia, and into Oceania. When I got my haircut, the barber asked me what barbershop I usually go to. When I told him I was just visiting, he asked me if I was studying or working. Nowhere, and I mean NOWHERE else have I ever been so easily mistaken for a local, to the point where someone had to double check that I really was just a tourist. In Singapore, when you interact with dozens of people of different race, heritage, language, and religion, seeing a foreigner isn’t out of the ordinary. It’s the norm.

And though I say Asian, there’s certainly a hint of British here. Well, maybe more than a hint. An overbearing presence that’s hard to forget. Singapore is left-side driving, they have double decker city busses, and food at the theatre is flavourful, the car park by the harbour runs along the quay, and you must mind the gap when getting off the train. Along with the slew of place-name-inspired streets and Malay named streets, streets like South Bridge St, Cecil St, Hill St, Keppel Rd, Cross St, Boat Quay, and Robinson Rd all are too foreign to feel like they fit in. And yet, they do. That’s just how Singapore rolls.

And that’s my favorite part about Singapore. It’s a place where culture can thrive and mix, where you can go to a synagogue, a mosque, a Hindu temple, and a church all on one street, and a place where every neighborhood has some unique flavor, some unique architecture and traditions, some unique smell or product. That it’s really a place that’s thrived on the success and cooperation of hard-working, honest people to build modern marvels, dominate global business, and bring a tiny island to huge international fame. Despite being a speck on a map, hardly visible, Singapore truly is the size of the world.