TWENTY-FIVE: A wedding in Singapore

I went to only one wedding during my time in Taiwan. As a guest you are expected to present the happy couple with a red envelope or “hong bao” containing about $1000 NT or roughly $40 CDN. This covers your share of the meal and wedding expenses. With that in mind, many wedding guests – and funeral guests – are seen stuffing their pockets with dinner rolls and wrapping their leftovers in napkins to take home. They paid for it, after all.

Eel is a wedding dish tradition in Asia. I don’t know if they steamed it or served it to me raw but I will never forget the slimy, inky metallic taste and feel as it slid over my tongue. I didn’t take any leftovers home.

A Whirlwind Tour of Singapore

October 2003

When I decided to come and work in Taiwan I was hoping to have the opportunity to see some of the rest of Southeast Asia. However, as I have a Resident’s Visa, I have been spared the trouble of going away for the weekend to have my passport stamped so that I can continue to live and work in Taiwan.

I’ll admit, on occasion, when I have learned of a friend’s planned trip to renew his visa and enjoy the weekend on the beach near Bangkok, I have been more than a little jealous. When another teacher showed me the great bikini and designer jeans she bought for a song in Manila, I tried to show enthusiasm. Especially when I remembered that her trip was paid for by the employer, as written into our contract.

But good things come to those who wait. I had my turn to arrive at work a little jet-lagged from an exciting weekend adventure, when I visited the island of Singapore in September.

I arrived at one of the world’s most beautiful airports (and I feel qualified to say that, having passed through a total of five on my way home to Canada in August…) and was met by my friend Sylvia, who is a native of Singapore.

“Welcome to my country,” she smiled, and then she took a closer look at me.

“Are you going out dressed like that? You look tired.” Well, it was a four-and-a-half-hour flight.

After a quick shower and change, we headed to Boat Quay, a strip of restaurants along the canal. My tour guide for the weekend recommended the Indian cuisine of The Maharajah restaurant, and I was pleasantly surprised.

It was nothing like the Indian food that many foreigners subsist on in Taiwan. This was the real thing. Absolutely delicious. Sitting there by the canal, I was instantly transported out of Asia to downtown Ottawa in the summertime.

Singapore is like a big Western city, with foreigner expatriates from all over the world, everywhere you look. Many of the locals are Malaysian, East Indian, or Philippine. So there is quite a multi-cultural mix of dining available.  

After dinner we went for a leisurely walk along the canal, past the spotlit Fullerton hotel, which takes up a city block and used to be the Post Office. It slightly resembles a Georgian manor house of a millionaire with its white columns and high windows.

‘Bum boats’ or water taxis cruised by us, taking people across the canal to the variety of nightlife on the other side.

Next we went for a drink at Father Flanagan’s, an Irish pub in the basement of Chijmes, in the city’s centre. Chijmes (pronounced “chimes”) is a popular hotspot with white walls, arches and spotlights surrounding a unique complex that includes a small white church, a boys’ college, several restaurants, nightclubs, designer boutiques and gardens. The architecture has an ancient feel to it.

As we walked along the garden path we could see a young blonde foreigner singing her heart out in one of the city’s oldest nightclubs, to the tune of the Rolling Stones. And it wasn’t karaoke either. She was really good.

After our Guinness we strolled through the spotlit gardens. The white of the buildings glowed incandescent in the moonlight. The Raffles Hotel was named after a famous character in Singapore’s history. This huge building is built in the square design, with a sprawling courtyard in the middle. The deep mahogany tables and bars gave off a musky, oiled scent. It is said that the last wild tiger in Singapore was shot under the table in the dining room. Guests step over the indentation of a tiger paw print as they enter the hotel. The crowd was pretty tame when we were there, however, as they sipped the requisite Singapore Slings (at about $20 CDN each) and listened to the live jazz band.

All in all, we covered a fair amount of ground for our first evening.

Saturday morning we awoke early for a hike through the nature reserve, where I was promised I would see at least a dozen monkeys, swinging in the trees and roaming free. Despite the warning signs to keep snacks covered and to avoid contact with the animals, I didn’t see one single primate. My hosts were very surprised. I guess it was the monkeys’ weekend off. The massive palms, tropical plants and abundance of blooms more than made up for my disappointment, however.

Singapore is a spotless, white-washed greenhouse of an island, with flowers hanging from balconies, windows and even bridges.

The biggest thrill of my weekend was a trip to the Singapore Zoological Gardens, which took up the rest of Saturday. I was surprised to discover that, instead of a cage, each animal has a sanctuary designed to look as much like his home habitat as possible. The lions and tigers stand high on a hill, surrounded by a moat and an inward curving wall. It’s quite breathtaking, if a little unnerving, to see the wild beasts with no bars between you and them. At feeding time, the white Bengal tigers were very active, swimming the moat and trying to climb the curved wall up to where the spectators were standing. We could hear them falling back into the drink with a splash, having failed to make lunch out of us.

Saturday night we went out for dinner with friends, on Pub Street. This narrow lane is lined with small boutiques and restaurants painted in pastel colors. It looks almost Mediterranean. Maintaining the cleanliness of the streets is a 24 hour job, and the results are impressive. I couldn’t find a single piece of garbage on the street, anywhere. This was incredible, as the home countries of both the Indians and the Chinese (the main population of Singapore) are typically littered with refuse. The spotless city was such a nice change from my warm and friendly but filthy Taiwan.

Another noticeable difference is that everyone in Singapore speaks a halting but fluent British English. I could feel myself relaxing right away. Communication barriers are just an everyday obstacle in Taiwan, adding stress and challenges to every outing.

Sunday was shopping day, which is one of the national pastimes of Singapore, I think. I have never seen so many huge shopping complexes in my life. The crowds were staggering, even on the day of rest. We had lunch at the Arts Centre, along the river (just like back home!) and toured around the island a bit more by taxi.

Sunday was also the big wedding day for our friends, and the main reason for our trip. The groom was German and the bride East Indian. The wedding was held at the Alkaff Mansion, overlooking the Singapore resort island of Sentosa. As dusk was setting, the estate was glowing white and the pink and purple bougainvillea vines and azalea bushes were vibrantly electric in color. The bride chose to have her party wear traditional silk saris in jewel tones to match the blooms. I sat quietly and looked around, noting every detail.

The bride herself wore a two piece elegant gown with a top exposing her belly. It was white silk, in the traditional East Indian style. The ceremonial exchange of the vows was short and sweet, under a gazebo roof on the estate lawn. The formal ceremony in the Indian tradition is to be held in the presence of family only, at another time.

A buffet that was replenished throughout the evening began immediately after the family and wedding party speeches. Traditional East Indian food was combined with some German favorites and Singaporean Chinese dishes to give guests a little of everything. Pitchers of ice-cold beer and bottles of wine were placed on each table and refilled throughout the evening. It’s a good thing none of us were driving home!

The highlight of the evening was a surprise to the bride from her groom. A troupe of young Punjabi dancers in full Indian dress emerged from the back of the crowd to perform acrobatic feats, hip hop dancing and interpretive moves set to a wonderful mix of modern break beats and traditional mystical melodies. The wedding guests couldn’t stay in their seats, and formed a standing circle around the dancers. It was a special treat for those of us who have never seen this type of dancing before. I was really impressed.

Next, the bridal party performed a specially choreographed Bollywood style dance number for the groom. It was hilarious, with the bride peeking around the columns and beckoning to him, then running to hide, feigning exaggerated shyness.

The dance floor opened then with a mix of music ranging from German club music to Canada’s Bryan Adams and back to the Indian Punjabi mix. I learned how to “screw in the lightbulb” while “patting the dog”. We danced the night away, leaving the party around 2 am. That was the perfect time, I was told, to head for Newton Circus.

This is a market of outdoor eating stalls serving fresh seafood, 24 hours a day. We feasted on pepper crab, lobster and stingray, until our eyes threatened to close on us from sheer exhaustion.

When we caught our flight back to Taipei the next morning at 8:20 (yikes; I had two hours’ sleep) we were sleepy but satisfied, knowing that we had seen the best that the island of Singapore had to offer.

-30-

One Singaporean tourist attraction that I witnessed (though only from the front entrance), was the club known as ‘the four floors of whores’ – notably the largest brothel in the country. In traditional Singaporean culture it is proper for a wife to look the other way and deny the husband’s extracurricular activities (which are considered a sign of business success), until they are made public, and bring embarrassment upon the whole family. Then she is required to make a scene equal in magnitude. Some women don’t wait for the indiscretions to become common knowledge, but rather vent their frustrations in other ways.

Work contracts for live-in maids often include an extra charge for ‘sleeping with master’. This blatant disrespect for the woman of the house often leads to physical abuse of the employee. One maid recently went public with the abuse she had been enduring at the hands of her employer’s wife, including having her nipples scorched with a hot curling iron.