Singapore

Oct 29 & 30 Singapore:

Two of the boyfriends have left the building, or rather the ship. ‘Mass boyfriend’ and ‘Oh, no, it’s Pieter’ boyfriend are on their way back home; one I will miss and one I will remember fondly, but will be relieved not to have to avoid any longer. Godspeed to both.

I have decided that if I have to take another tour on a bus I will shoot myself in the head. I am also very good at convincing myself that whatever I miss will still be here in the future and that is a good excuse to come back. So I am in Singapore footloose and fancy free with June. She wants to clothes shop which makes me ill and the thought of one more open air market with bargaining also makes me ill. So we go through the very intense immigration procedure which holds up all the ships’ tours and takes a good half hour. We then enter the organized, efficient and Orwellian republic of Singapore. I have meticulously cleaned the gum from my purse as it is illegal to have or drop on the ground. Jaywalkers are fined on the spot, litters and smokers too, convicted drug traffickers put to death. The streets are clean and it is safe to walk anywhere, anytime. It only costs $100,000 to own a car and $20,000 to register it for 10 years, and you can only have one. This definitely discourages air pollution. This is the busiest port in the world and their number one industry followed closely by oil refinery and next by a 24 hour financial trade business.  While other countries trade centers’ close, Singapore’s stays open.

June and I part in the huge port terminal, she to find a cab to go shopping, I to find my way to the cable cars that glide above Singapore harbor and over to Sentosa Island. I follow signs out the building, along the sidewalk, into another building and up to a ticket counter. Then I buy my ticket and take an elevator to the15th floor.  There I board a glass enclosed car all to myself and suddenly fly out the building and into the sunshine and over the harbor of Singapore. I have a delightful view in all directions including right over our cruise ship. The cable car stops in three places, but I have no desire today to get out and walk in the heat or fight the crowds. I am happy to go along all alone in my little glass bubble and take photos of anything I please. After a half hour I am back where I started and I retrace my steps back toward the port and enter a large terminal/ shopping center. As I find out hours later, this center goes on and on and on. I just meander along looking in stores both familiar and unfamiliar. I stop at a tea store that has a display of teas I have never seen. As I read (yes, they have signs we can read in this city!) what each tea does for the human body, a young women in traditional Chinese clothing asks if I have any questions. I ask if one particular kind tastes good and she says yes, would I like to try it. So, having nothing else to do, I say yes. I’m always looking for unusual teas for my son Patrick. She takes me over to a fancy wooden Chinese design table with wooden carved stools in front of it and has me sit down. She then proceeds to set out about 10 -12 different tea making and drinking vessels all of which are new to me. I watch fascinated as the water is boiled, each vessel is heated by the boiled water which is then poured on the table thru scroll work I thought was just decorative, but must actually be a drain to a basin. Then tea is measured and steeped very carefully and poured into a tiny tall glass next to a tiny cup. All the while she is doing everything with beautiful and graceful hand movements and I am just entranced. I look at the cups and wonder what I’m supposed to do. She explains I should pour the larger into the smaller and then smell the aroma of the tea from the empty larger container. It’s kind of like wine tasting, only she makes this all look like an art form. She tells me exactly how long to steep the tea and how hot the water should be. We go on to try 4 more teas and I watch fascinated as she goes through this beautiful ritual with each tea, all the while her graceful hand movements indicating when I should try the tea. I spend a lovely 45 minutes in the shop and come away with five new teas and the information that loose tea should be kept in the refrigerator.

Next I stop at a bakery that is trying hard to be a Krispy Kreme so I can’t help but buy a mini 4 pack for later consumption. I make it my goal that day to stop in every bakery and supermarket I find and scope out all the goods. It is such a great way to learn about a culture and an economy by simply going into their food stores and drug stores. By the way, buy 7 Eleven stock. We haven’t been in a city, village or country yet that does not have one of these stores. They carry slightly different items, but the same store. The bakeries here make doughnuts that look like our doughnuts, but they can’t get the hang of frosting. Nothing they make is as sweet as we are accustomed to and the frosting on the doughnuts looks really good, but it turns out to be sort of semi-sweet plastic. They do however do a nice job with yeast products. You go into their bakeries and grab your own tray and tongs and go along and lift glass doors and pick what you want with the tongs and put it on your tray. At the counter they bag it and you pay. If you’re lucky they have English descriptions, if not, you guess. I’ve tried it both ways. Today I bought a lovely, buttery yeast bun with ham, tomato and cheese and it tasted as good as it looked. The pink doughnut had the plastic frosting.

Next stop was a total spur of the moment Chinese spa in the mall for semi-permanent eyebrow makeup. I know that’s really weird, but I was on my own, they were all dressed up like Geisha Girls and I’m sick of my thinning eyebrows. It didn’t cost anymore that a bus tour and would last longer, so what the heck. After being told I was “beeyootiful” by all the Geishas I went to find the feet eating fish. I tried to find them in Cambodia, but it was too crazy there and we were told they were available here. These are the fish you put your feet into a tank with and they nibble all the dead skin off your feet. I think they have closed all the places in America for health concerns. Tough. So I go down a hall and sure enough I see a big sign with fish and feet and I know I’ve come to the right place. The lady beckons me in with “$10 for 10 minutes.” That’s Singapore dollars, which is about $6 so I’m game. She tells me to wash my feet and then go stick my feet in one of the tanks. There is what looks like one large spa with a wooden seat all around it and another smaller one. There is an Indian couple in the big one and two Americans in the smaller one. They all tell me it’s fun. So I wash and sit at the big spa and look inside. I see lots of black three inch fish swimming around their feet so I swing my feet over the ledge and notice before my feet are even in the water the fish all swarm away from them and over to my shadow The second I plunge my feet in they are all over my feet and ankles. I scream really loud and laugh uncontrollably and am heard all the way down the hall. The other people can’t believe I just plunged in. Most people do it slowly and I hadn’t realized the Indian woman didn’t even have her feet in the water. I just kept laughing as it both tickles and is absurd. After a bit the fish calm down and get a little tired of your feet and don’t go after you as avidly. I guess they like fresh meat best. I finish my ten minutes, pay up and decide I’ve had enough adventure for one day and head back to the ship with $20 Singapore burning a hole in my pocket.

Tonight we sail into the Archipelago Sea lanes toward the Indonesian islands and in the early morning we pass into the Southern Hemisphere. I want to flush a toilet and see which way the water flows! On Sunday, October 31 we will be in Semarong, on the island of Java, in Indonesia. I will go to see the temple of Borobudur built in 800 even earlier than the famed Angor Wat in Cambodia, it has the largest stone stupa in the world, but I will tell you more of that later and, if Mt. Merapi hasn’t erupted again. More importantly, the 31^st is my son Patrick’s 24^th birthday so HAPPY BIRTHDAY PATRICK!!! And on board the Amsterdam, at least 50 -60% of the crew is Indonesian and they have family day. Some of the crew sign on to work for anywhere from 9 -12 months at a time and are away from their families the whole time. This crew is lucky to have a port stop in Indonesia and the ship is opening this day for them to bring on any family members for a visit. Some crew will even get to meet a child whose birth they may have missed. I have seen the crew perk up this week. Most have family traveling many hours to visit and there will be 600 visitors on board. They have to come in two shifts so each crew member had to sign up their family for a morning or afternoon session and they get to show off the whole ship to their family. My cabin steward very quietly came up to me in the hall and said “May I talk to you Mum” I thought I was in trouble. He explained his wife and two young children were coming and is wondering if it was okay if he didn’t clean my cabin in the morning and only cleaned it that night. I said I didn’t care at all. I had seen him in town in Thailand a few days before buying a watch for his wife so I knew he also had children. I asked my other steward if his family was coming and he said yes, wife and two of three children. He also promised to clean at night. Our dining room waiters family is in Bali so they can’t come, but his young assistant is all excited because his parents, brother, sister, niece and nephew all are coming and he wants us to meet them. It makes me want to stay on board just to see all these reunions and watch all these proud workers show their families what they are doing for them.

Well, I’m off to bed as I need a good night sleep because I have to make my own bed in the morning. 36 days without making my bed has made me a bit soft – not sure I remember how. Sweet dreams to all. Prayers for all travelers tomorrow, and especially my second born son on his birthday.