Across the island

Ted and I like a Gin and Soda in the evening, with a little fresh squeezed lime juice if possible.  When we still lived in West Seattle, we bought our gin at the Coast Guard base in downtown Seattle. When we moved up to Whidbey to stay with my brother for a couple of months before we left, we bought it at the Navy base in Oak Harbor. Ted was a Navy pilot for 23 years and one of the perks is the ability to continue to use the exchanges even though he is retired from the Navy.  We buy other things too, but I’d be lying if I told you any of those other things were the real draw. In our home state of Washington, until quite recently you could only buy liquor at the state controlled liquor stores or at the military exchanges.  When liquor did become available in grocery stores, pharmacies, Costco, and some convenience stores as well as at traditional Liquor stores, it became clear that the convenience was mitigated by the addition of some hefty taxes. Alcohol at an exchange isn’t taxed.

Singapore has heavy sin taxes and as you may have guessed, our drink of choice, or any drink for that matter, is quite costly here.  A bottle of Hendrick’s will set you back $85 Singapore dollars if you can find it and a fifth (we are used to buying in larger bottles….) of Beefeater will cost nearly $60 at the local Cold Storage. We aren’t heavy drinkers, I’ve been alcohol free for long periods of time in my life, as has Ted, and neither of us have a drink the evenings that Ted works late, but we do enjoy our little 5pm toast to each other when we can.

Shortly after he arrived, Ted’s 4 year old laptop began to show serious signs of some terminal computer illness and gave up the ghost. I suggested he check around for an exchange on the island to buy a new one as electronics are every bit as expensive in Singapore as they are at home. The US does not have any military base in Singapore, but they do have some buildings at the Port of Singapore Authority, called PSA Sembawang. There is an exchange within the buildings there, and Ted made a trip up a couple of weeks before I arrived, but they didn’t have the computer he wanted. They did have gin though, and at amazingly cheap prices.

So, a few days after I arrived we took an excursion out to PSA Sembawang. Anyone interested in the history of the area can check the link here. Sembawang is on the far north west perimeter of the island, across from Malaysia, all the way on the other side from where we are staying. No pictures this time, I just never took any that day.

I may have mentioned the MRT in a previous post, but I’ll elaborate here. In addition to heavy taxes on things like alcohol, acquiring a car of your own in Singapore is extravagantly expensive. Singapore is not a large place and has a lot of people to move around the island, so the government has curbed vehicle ownership as part of their traffic management strategies. You can read more about that here, and here. So, in order to efficiently move their population around the island without further straining the traffic situation, Singapore has built an amazing public transit system, which includes trains, buses and taxis.

The MRT system is by any american standard, extremely clean and efficient. Pleasant even. And extremely inexpensive. Ted had purchased a MRT pass for me before I arrived, which works with the buses and the trains, and was loaded with $47 dollars. Several trips later I’m only down to about $42 and change, and that includes our trip across the island. When you enter the terminal you tap your card at a sensor on the turnstile and when you leave a terminal you tap on the way out, money is deducted based on how far you traveled. It’s the same with the buses, you tap upon entering and tap again when you get off. MRT terminals have lots of food kiosks, retail malls close by (often directly above), and are well linked with the other forms of public transit. The stations are large, well lighted and again, very clean.

Getting back to our trip then; we began with a short walk down to the Clarke Quay MRT station and rode just one stop up the north east line to Dhoby Ghaut, a huge station where a number of lines converge, there we switched lines and headed north up the island. Some of the lines run underground, but the north line emerges from underground and becomes an elevated train a few stops out from Dhoby Ghaut. It was fascinating to see the country side and the neighborhoods outside of the business and tourist areas, some of which still has a look of barely contained jungle.

Once above ground, we passed playing fields, high schools, community centers and mile upon mile of highrise housing. It’s clear that the further out from the central downtown area you get the less affluent the people are, but the streets and stations remain clean, the housing is fairly new (the country is getting ready to celebrate it’s 50th birthday in 2015) and while the units look as if they aren’t large, every one of them seemed to sport an AC unit, though clearly not dryers as the washing was neatly hung out of nearly every window.  The housing is subsidized and buildings have a somewhat institutional look, but they are nothing like the projects you would see in the US. The neighborhoods are served by tidy highrise shopping centers, and brand new looking highway.

People got on and off the train; running errands, coming home from school, meeting friends, going to work, and the range of age, ethnicity, religion and color remained very mixed. Singapore has 4 official languages; English, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil, I think I heard at least that many on the train, possibly more. Though the further out we went the less we heard english.

We arrived at the Sembawang stop roughly 40 minutes after boarding the first train; we disembarked onto a large elevated platform and made our way downstairs to the taxi stand. There are bus options, but we honestly weren’t sure (despite a number of apps….) where exactly we were to get the bus and which bus we wanted. Our taxi ride took us the the edges of the Port Authority and from there we walked again, getting a bit warm and sweaty in the afternoon heat. Several security check points later we arrived at the exchange.

The exchange at Sembawang is fairly small as exchanges go, but has a lot of american foods (which you might be able to find elsewhere but would surely cost you a lot more), a small section of toiletries, household goods, office supplies and the like, a very small clothing section and a small liquor area. We picked out a few things for ourselves; limes, sunscreen, oats (I like oatmeal for breakfast sometimes, even as dinner on occasion), cashews, gin of course, and a bottle of rum for Ted’s daughter, who is coincidentally in college here (but that’s another story). After acquiring our purchases we loaded them into a carry-on bag we had brought especially for this purpose and walked back up to the main road.

The return trip was fraught with somewhat more anxiety as the bus that we were able to catch doesn’t go to the Sembawang station, but to a station 2 stops further away, but it did take us directly to that station. By this time it was mid-afternoon and I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. I was more than a little hungry and those who know me well know that this isn’t a good thing. But the MRT station was loaded with food kiosks and small sit-down restaurants. We chose a kiosk whose name appeared in a language I cannot identify, but had lovely looking savory pastry things. We got one wrapped in something like a filo dough with scrambled egg and leeks inside and another that seemed like a fried egg pancake with shredded carrots in it. The two items together only cost $3 Singapore and tasted amazing. We took our food outside the terminal to a little outdoor eating area and enjoyed our snack with a number of locals doing the same. There are stiff fines for eating or drinking anything on the trains or in the terminals.

After satisfying my need for blood sugar we went back into the terminal and got back on the train. We retraced our train trips in reverse and made it home just in time for a gin and soda with fresh lime juice! Clink of glasses, and ‘To us’!

My next post will sport some more pictures!