I flew out of Ho Chi Minh City on April 27 and landed in the glitzy mall city-state known as Singapore. Singapore is indeed as airbrushed as its reputation suggests, although its high-tech glitz was a welcome relief after the grim and chaos. Also, most importantly, Singapore has its own Borders Books, and I was reaching that catastrophic where I was on the verge of polishing off my last viable reading material -- Brother Number One, a biography of Pol Pot. There are no decent English language bookstores to speak of in Vietnam, and my supplies needed replenishing. So predictably, I lost control. I had barely gotten off the plane and checked into my hotel and I was out the door again and hailing a cab to Kinokuniya, and then off to Borders. Singapore is probably the wealthiest spot in Asia outside of Japan and very clean, although I stayed in Little India and it is indeed Little India, filled with sari shops and restaurants serving dosa and a music store blaring a pop song whose lyrics were taken verbatim from a Vedic chant I learned at the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram back in February. The scenery changes radically as you go southwest, which is shopping central. Taxis pulse in and out of the mall driveways to the beat of a metronome. Big glitzy movie theaters jockey for space with all the high-end designer clothing stores you could possibly imagine.
Singapore's wealth and pristine splendor provided that necessary stop gap that I needed after a month in Vietnam. I may not be the hardened traveler that I thought I was, because after a big chunk of time in a relatively undeveloped area, I start to yearn for the comforts I associate with home. Strangely enough, this often translates into the desire to visit the mall, although I hardly ever spend time at malls back home. Go figure. My time in Singapore was mostly spent in bookstores and eating Dim Sum, as well as figuring out some travel details at Malaysia Air and elsewhere and also adding some passport pages at the U.S. Embassy, a place where time stands still.
After 3 days in Singapore, I flew to Jakarta. My original plan had been to go from Vietnam to Jakarta, Indonesia being my last stop before I returned to the States. Then I added in a trip to Sydney, and then I decided to return to Thailand (not to mention adding in a 5 day layover in Hong Kong before I fly back to the States). This resulted in some confusion and some less than economical flight patterns. I had a two-day layover in Jakarta before flying to Australia which I was originally going to spend planning my trip through Indonesia, but then I joined an Intrepid tour from Jakarta to Bali that rendered that moot. So I had two days to kill in Jakarta, a city that basically everyone who has been there told me to avoid. I can see why-- it's huge, crowded, polluted, noisy and surprisingly expensive. I'm greatly looking forward to checking out Indonesia when I return in June, but I must agree with the majority opinion-- Jakarta is nothing to get excited about.
I flew out of Jakarta the night of 2 May and arrived bright and early at 6:30 a.m. the morning of 3 May. I had already been warned about Aussie customs. After I got off the plane, I walked by a deluge of signs posted above trash cans warning me to dispose of all food and drinks or they would be disposed of for me when I got to Quarantine. Lonely Planet warns travelers not to show up at Quarantine with dirt on your shoes, as this may lead to confiscation. The customs declaration form asks you if you've recently visited South America or Africa in the last 6 days and whether you've done any camping. Bee keeping equipment is strictly prohibited, and all gardening equipment must be scrubbed free of all detritus. All of this fuss is apparently intended to protect Australia's biodiversity as an island nation. For a fuller explanation, see here: Bill Bailey on Aussie customs . It all felt a bit to me like one of those sci-fi flicks you see which predict a hygiene-obsessed future. Certainly the contrast I've witnessed in the last 5 months between Asia and the West suggests that one of the principal characteristics of developed nations is an increasing obsession with hygiene that is to some extent getting a bit out of control.
Anyway, I became obsessed with Aussie customs and kept cracking annoying jokes about it over the next 10 days, which particularly grated on the nerves of my host. The Aussies I met all took this in stride, as Aussies are some of the chillest people I've met. In general, I really liked Australians. They have a sarcastic, ironic, light-hearted sense of humor that I totally love. I met an American expat there who described Aussies as Brits without the seasonal affective disorder and that struck me as dead-on. Sydney took some adjusting for me because it really felt like the volume was turned down after the hustle and bustle of SE Asia, but after 4 or 5 days I fell in love with the place. I'll definitely be back and I look forward to exploring some of its more extreme geography. I'll have to make it out west to Perth and north of Perth, which is Wolf Creek country.
If I ever hear that Bill Baily video clip again, I will kill. Kill randomly and brutally.
Posted by: Nicola | May 20, 2008 at 03:47 AM