Sorry it's been so long since my last update, but it's been quite an eventful week here. I last left you before Ladies' Night at the club. Quite an interesting experience.
We decided to head to Zouk, where Jie Bin, Riya and some other friends were planning to go. It was one of the nicest clubs I've ever seen in my life (although I guess I haven't seen that many clubs), and I immediately felt not cool enough to be there. It was supposed to be Mambo Night, although I guess in Singaporean "Mambo" means "Euro-house and 80s hits". We sat around, drank, danced a little bit, and generally just enjoyed each other's company. Until they struck.
The guerilla dancers. It started with one lone guy on one of the club platforms, dancing awkwardly to what seemed to be a choreographed dance routine in his head. He got some weird looks, but I didn't really pay much attention. All of a sudden, I turned around and there were 20 of them, all dancing to the choreographed routine, on different platforms, giving wistful looks to the crowd and winking at each other.
The dance was something you'd expect to see in a cheap exercise video, a lot of arm waving and shoulder pops. The whole club just stared at them for a few minutes with a mix of awe and disgust, until the camera phones and video cameras started coming out. They were as proud of themselves as ever, giving each other looks that seemed to indicate, "Yes! We've conquered the club with our impeccable moves. They love us."
We all expected some advertisement to come out of the experience, or perhaps that they were dancers hired by the club, but the club employees looked just as dumbfounded by their behavior as the rest of us. By the time we left several hours later, they were still going.
The next morning, I decided to grab a quick meal at the nearby hawker stand before meeting some friends at the campus pool. Finding truly vegetarian food in Singapore is somewhat of a challenge, since the Chinese think that vegetarian meals can include seafood. Hindu food is always a safe bet, so I find myself often at Tamil stands. I ordered a south Indian vegetarian platter, which looked like an enormous feast (and was only $3).
I ate happily, bouncing from dish to dish on the platter, trying to decipher what vegetables and spices were in each. Some were sweet, some savory, and all had a bit of kick to them. Overall, it was incredibly delicious. One stew had something that looked like a flattened green bean, so I quickly popped it in my mouth and started chewing. Big mistake. HUGE mistake.
My entire mouth lit on fire, my nose started running, my eyes welled up and it felt like there was liquid coming out of my ears. It soon travelled through all my sinuses, and the man at the next table started looking at me, seemingly unsure if he should laugh at me or call an ambulance. I sucked down my entire glass of water chestnut juice, ate all my roti and naan, and started frantically looking for napkins to wipe my face, now covered in sweat and tears. As I then learned, hawker stands don't have napkins. Ever. You're supposed to bring your own.
After another 10 minutes of ascending through this hell, I finally felt okay. I found out later that my green bean was, in fact, a chile. If there was anything in my head that needed to be cleared out up until that point, mission accomplished.
Later on, a group of us decided to check out some other areas of town. We took the bus down to Holland Village, the area reserved for Westerners during colonialism. Nowadays it's still a wealthy area (although I think it's majority Chinese, although maybe I'm wrong), and serves as a quaint little shopping village with preserved historic storefronts and landmarks, like a windmill.
We did a quick walkaround, and soon discovered that we could afford little more than a sock in any of the stores. After a bit of wandering, we took the MRT (subway) to Chinatown. This turned out to be a fantastic decision, since the Chinese Lunar New Year (most important day of the Chinese calendar) is coming up in a couple of weeks. There were lanterns and lights everywhere, and the market was booming with shoppers looking for all the decorations, food, good luck charms and gifts they would need.
As our group kept walking, I couldn't decide whether to stop and take pictures or to marvel at all the things for sale, so I did both (which is probably why I lost the group later on, and had to be found at the closest temple). I couldn't really eat any of the food or fit into any of the clothes, and I had no idea what the paintings said or meant, but I didn't care. I just wanted to be in all of the excitement.
One thing I did want to do, however, was get one of the many massages offered all over Chinatown. I didn't get a chance to since we were moving so fast, but Jie Bin met me later on and informed me that it probably wasn't the best idea in the world. The myth of "happy endings" is very, very true, and unless you're looking for one, you probably shouldn't get a massage in Chinatown. In case you're wondering, sex work (prostitution) is legal in Singapore.
We grabbed some delicious dinner, and continued to walk around and admire the brownstone-type storefronts. Storeowners used to keep their shops on the first floor and live above them, and that look has been preserved, but now they're rented in a more modern division of businesses, having rental spaces split up or posh hotels taking a whole property.
We made our way down to the main street, a wide boulevard with lit up trees and decorations hanging everywhere, while a giant screen in the median played New Year music and illuminated what looked like floats for a parade, but were parked in the grass. We went up on the bridge to take pictures and look at the scenery, and there were a lot of families sitting up there as well, with kids playing and parents relaxing and enjoying the festivities.
The next morning was orientation. All of the exchange students were huddled in a lecture hall, and we had to sit through several hours of power points. The most amusing part of the whole thing was when a representative from the counseling centre spoke, nervously making hilarious jokes about the school that simultaneously endeared us to him and probably made the dean of students less than thrilled. A group of us quickly made plans to head to Bintan, Indonesia for the weekend: myself, Dana, Jeremy, James, Kira, Dena, Kevin and Tony.
We met in the afternoon and hitched a ride to Vivo City, where we caught a ferry to Batam and went through Indonesian customs. Getting a visa only requires $10, and you get a nice sticker that takes up a whole page of your passport. Pretty cool. We were supposed to catch another ferry from Telaga Punggur through to Tanjung Pinang, but the last one was cancelled. The security officer at the port offered to take us across in a charger for 2 million rupiah ($1 American = 10,000 rupiah), but we cautiously decided to crash in Batam Center for the night. Probably a very smart decision on our part.
Of course I was freaking out at this point, but the Lonely Planet guide said that a lot of people end up having to crash here, and the locals are pretty friendly. That turned out to be true, but almost depressingly so. We were stared at everywhere we went, with looks of "what are you doing here?" and a prompt offer of a taxi ride, even in stores. It seemed like nobody believed we could actually want to be here. A group of little kids ran after us asking for money in the middle of a busy street.
Everyone asked where we were from, and would quickly ignore the Canadians and say "Ah, America? OBAMA! OBAMA! Nooo Bush...OBAMA!" (Obama grew up for a bit in Indonesia.) Once certain people got more comfortable with us, ie: the taxi driver, the hostel receptionist, the waitress next door, they were actually very sweet and very helpful. We spent the night getting to know each other better and explaining our backgrounds, and woke up early to catch the ferry to Bintan.
We caught a taxi to the Traveller's Lodge, a section of the Shady Shack, a lovely beachfront hostel. We spent the day lazily on the beach, talking, swimming in the sea, walking along the island, and enjoying ourselves. Lunch was an amazing feast of local favorites, including tempeh, vegetable stew, seafood cakes, rice, seared chicken and more I can't remember.
We went for a walk through town, and everyone we walked past or that drove past us on the road waved and smiled. Some kids playing nearby giggled and yelled "hello!", and made Jeremy take pictures and videos of them. A hut on the road was selling cookies and snacks for pennies, so we stocked up. About 5 kilometers down the shore was the expensive resort section of the island, where wealthy Singaporeans go on vacation. The island itself is owned by Singapore, and Sing dollars are accepted far more widely than rupiah.
There was nothing but trees for miles, and most people just went for joyrides up and down the road for fun. There are probably about 20 motorbikes for every car in Batam and Bintan, and safety doesn't seem to be much of a concern. Helmets are only worn by some, and almost colliding with oncoming traffic in order to pass a car is extremely common (we didn't witness any crashes, but there are many). I saw one motorbike being driven by a girl who couldn't have been a day past 12, with her friend and two toddlers on the back. No helmets.
We met a nice couple also staying at the hostel, a Canadian man and a Singaporean woman who had gotten married and lived in Toronto. They were visiting her family and had decided to get away for the weekend. We shmoozed with them until dinner, egg and fried rice with some local beer. The cook (Asep) asked if he could play some music, and we happily danced along to a repeat of the same 4 Indonesian pop songs from what sounded like the 80s. He called it Pop Dangdut.
After our little dance party, we sat on a bench by the water, talking and watching the waves roll in. Jeremy proudly caught a crab, and Asep brought us an Indonesian dessert of fruit in peanut sauce, which we quickly discovered also contained chile. From the little English he spoke, he was able to teach us the Indonesian words for different colors, body parts and expressions. He also laughed hysterically upon discovering that when white people go in the sun, they turn red. He hung out with us for a while until we went to bed.
The next morning was a breakfast of some more egg and fried rice, and we headed back to catch the ferry. While we waited between ferries, we decided to grab lunch at the mall in Batam Center. They were having a modeling competition that somehow involved huge recliner chairs, and we shamefully resigned to eating pizza instead of the mysterious local food, although we were able to get a ridiculous amount of food for about $4 per person. The next ferry had a television playing Indonesian soap operas, so we all picked a character and "translated" what they were saying. I laughed so hard, I cried.
Once we got back, I quickly cleaned up and went with Joanna to meet Jie Bin and Suvi at Clarke Quay. This area is the nightlife playground of the rich, but it is absolutely gorgeous. Everything is situated on the river, which is lit up by steps that change colors every few seconds. The clubs along the water are made to look like beachside houses, and the bridge lights up as well. If you walk under a bunch of colored canopies, there is a giant fountain and luxuriously hip bars and clubs.
We went to Bellini Grande, a dance club, where Jie Bin's Russian teacher was having her birthday party. There were several other Russian businessmen there, in varying degrees of creepy. One wouldn't stop staring at Joanna with his eyebrows raised, one never spoke to us, while another was actually quite nice and made fun of everyone else so we'd feel more comfortable.
We soon found out that the bottle of tequila they were drinking was roughly $200, and I felt very young and very out of place. The birthday girl was also a champion ballroom dancer, so she whisked away the creeper to dance to the live salsa band. Relieved, we bid farewell to everyone and went to sit on the river and burst out laughing. I may not be rich and fabulous, but at least I have my head on straight.
Again, sorry for the length. I'll try to write more frequent, and therefore shorter, entries from now on. I'll be posting the pictures on Facebook, so if you have any trouble viewing them or you don't have a facebook, let me know.
Until next time,
Lizzy
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